The Next Right Thing: A Simple, Soulful Practice for Making Life Decisions

by Emily P. Freeman

The concept is perhaps most famously found in The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous: “We earnestly pray for the right ideal, for guidance in each questionable situation, for sanity, and for the strength to do the right thing.”1

Rather than a life plan, a clear vision, or a five-year list of goals, the leper, the paralytic, and Jairus and his wife were given clear instructions by Jesus about what to do next—and only next. Perhaps he knew something about our addiction to clarity. He knew if we could somehow wrangle a five-year plan out of him, we would take it and be on our merry way.

Let’s take our cues from Jesus and the recovering alcoholics by considering what it means for us to do the next right thing now. Not the next big thing. Not the next impressive thing. Just the next right thing in front of us.

The decision is rarely the point. The point is you becoming more fully yourself in the presence of God.

Becoming a soul minimalist does not mean that you should hold on to nothing but rather that nothing should have a hold on you.

Without a name, we can’t be specific. And there’s nothing fear likes more than non-specificity. We have an enemy who loves to cloud our minds over with generalities and a vague sense of anxiety.

After John’s dad passed away during the summer of 2011, we knew things would never be the same for a lot of reasons, the main one being that John was broken open by grief. After the funeral, John went back to work pretty much immediately, back to routine, back to his regularly scheduled life. But his soul lingered with the grief, and it wasn’t long before the disconnect between the pace of his life and the state of his soul began to show itself in the form of panic, sleepless nights, and intense fear. That was the fall of 2011. Unnamed narratives will reveal themselves one way or another. If we don’t have the capacity to name them with our words, they will speak through our bodies.

Am I being led by love or pushed by fear?

Pick what you like, then see how it grows.

Perhaps today, your next right thing is to release something you no longer need so that you can move one step closer to becoming who you already are.