Wise Choices: A Spiritual Guide to Making Life's Decisions

by Margaret Silf

Wise Choices takes the guesswork out of the decision-making process and offers a systematic and concise approach to making the right choices. Written in gentle, poetic prose full of compassion and insight, it encourages us to trust the processes of our own heart and mind as we make life’s many decisions.

Genres: Spirituality, Religion

128 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2007

Reviews

[Mary Brown]

A brief and simple book about trying to make and live with the decisions you make. Margaret Silf touches our spiritual strengths in guiding us "when two roads diverge" in our lives. Short reflections in almost poetry form are easy to understand and encouraging in spirit. Her books are all inspiring. This one is a little less detailed than many of the others, but still good.

[Joe DeGraaf]

I was a bit disappointed in this book. There is no discernible “spiritual guide” but rather a list of ways to think about and reflect on decision-making. None of this feels particularly novel or immediately impactful, though the author provides good questions for reflection along the way.

[Glenn]

In presenting thought-provoking connections which give rise to new ways of confronting problems and issues, “Wise Choices” asks as many questions as it poses answers. With most of us, the answers we are seeking--or sometimes avoiding--are often very near to us, known to us, but to just simply have someone tell us what to do would defeat the purpose of learning how to make good decisions. But we still need a little push. So the book's method of asking questions helps our brains get working, and hopefully leads us to recognize for ourselves what we must do, now and in the future.

One of the brilliant strokes in creating this book is its form. By setting the text in verse, Margaret takes some of the intimidation factor out of the equation--also the dryness of much “self-help/spiritual” book--and presents the reader with a much more user-friendly tool. The book is not exactly poetry, but in using its visual form, it prods the reader to take a more exploratory approach to the work of making choices.

The book respects both the rational process of decision making and what Malcolm Gladwell calls the “blink” mode. “Wise Choices” shows how learned experience and intrinsic knowledge are comrades, helping us through the times where either one would not be enough to guide us.

Margaret uses practical but poetic metaphors--sandy beaches, children's connect-the-dots puzzles, the tilling of soil--to provoke the reader to develop his or her own process of coming to wise choices. She also subtly taps into spiritual and religious ideas, without cant or dogma. The precepts of mindfulness and being truly in the moment--reflected here in Margaret's warnings about “what-ifs” and “if-only's”--are illustrated as being utterly practical, grounding precepts, not at all ethereal.

“Wise Choices” is much like spending a few hours with one of those friends whose wisdom is never forced upon us, but always there to be drawn upon.

[Knightgina]

really good, short & sweet!

[Etta]

Just what I needed! Short, insightful leaving me with many good questions to reflect upon.