Why Viewing Life Like a Tree Will Help You Make Great Decisions

The shape of your tree will say much about your life

You can achieve anything you want in life, but only if you make the right choices. I say only, but no one has a crystal ball allowing them to peep into the future. It’s impossible to know when we are making the ‘right’ choice.

While we can never be truly sure we are making the right decisions, the metaphor of the tree of life will help you make better decisions that will allow you to grow, develop and ultimately lead a fulfilling, successful life.

You, like the tree, begin life as a seed. Your birth is the equivalent of the tree sprouting out of the soil. Like the tree, you are a tiny, vulnerable sapling. Your parents stand by you; they protect you against storms; they water you and feed you.

As you grow from a sapling into a young tree, your trunk gets stronger, and you learn how to behave like all the other trees. The trunk is you coming to understand the world around you — how to socialise and be a productive member of society.

The trunk is essential in providing the stability you need for the rest of your life.

Branches that grow from the trunk are decisions that impact the course of your life. As a child, the branches that form are a consequence of decisions made for you, not by you.

There is a specific course of action, you know you will be going to school until you are at least sixteen years old, so there is stability to your life, structured around education.

It may not seem like it at the time, but looking back, life has certainties in that you have no other choice but to go to school.

Your choices define you

Once you’re a young adult, your trunk has solidified. You are nearing the end of education, and after years of protection and development, you are strong enough to go into the world by yourself.

It’s now, where you can make your own choices, that life begins.

Every defining choice you now make creates a branch that extends from the tree.

An example of a defining choice as a young person is going to university.

It may not seem like it, but as a young adult, the decision to go to university or not is life-changing. It’s one of those first choices where a branch of your life tree develops that isn’t confined or restricted and can set in motion decisions that will structure the rest of your life.

The choice you make sets you on a course, affecting the experiences you have and the people you meet.

The fact you choose one university over another or choose not to go to university at all means the branch that may have grown, had you made a different choice, never forms.

The people you would have met, the experiences you would have had, can no longer be because your choice to go a certain way severed the branch that would have been.

And so, while your life becomes defined by the choices you do make, it also becomes defined by the choices you don’t make.

So many choices

Even the choice to go to university or not feels like it’s a set path to take. It is when you leave university that life becomes more challenging because you now have no guide. You have your whole life ahead of you, but not necessarily an idea of what you want to do with it.

With no goal, it’s easy to start making decisions at random — or allow life to make decisions for you based on your circumstances.

There are so many choices that can define your life, it often feels like you are on a tightrope, one wrong decision, and you fall off.

The dilemma everyone faces is that if you don’t know what you want to do, you can quickly become overwhelmed by choices.

Having no idea where you want to go — or want to achieve — how can you possibly make the ‘right’ choice?

Define your purpose

That’s why defining a purpose is so essential to making great decisions.

Purpose provides direction to our choices. Your purpose is your life goal, the thing you want to dedicate your existence to achieve or accomplish. It is no small feat to come up with a purpose. It may take years to do so; it may initially involve getting to know who you are first and becoming comfortable with that person.

But even having the intention to get to know yourself better to find your purpose, is a stepping stone to determining your life purpose.

Think of your purpose like the sun. Once defined, it acts like a guide. The sun is a long way in the distance, but the purpose allows us to make informed choices that will lead you upwards — enabling you to develop in the way you want.

Suddenly, with a life purpose defined, you stop making random choices that have no direction in mind. The purpose, that star on the horizon, means you begin making informed choices.

You ask yourself, will this choice (and the branch that grows as a result) lead me towards my star?

If you are confident it will, then you’re making the right choice. If the choice will not bring you closer to your purpose, then it’s one you shouldn’t take.

No certainties

Not that we will always make the right choice. The purpose provides direction, but no certainties that choices will lead us the right way.

Some decisions we make will result in a branch that takes us away from the sun. If it does, you are aware you haven’t made the right choice because it is not leading you in the direction you want to go.

You can then correct the decision before the trunk becomes solidified, making it harder to break free from that path.

Having a purpose can even help you find that special person in your life (if that is what you want, of course!). Because if the person you do meet is supporting you to get closer to your purpose, that’s a sign, they are right for you.

If they take you away from your purpose, that’s a sign they may be toxic, and it’s time to let go before their tree gets entangled with your tree. To the point where your lives are so connected, it becomes harder to let go.

The tree of life, guided by purpose, may have curves and crannies, but it keeps heading in the same direction. It’s a tree that stretches into the sky. You may never reach the star, and that’s fine. As long as you made a good go of it and kept making decisions that could ultimately get you there, your life will be a fulfilling one.

The person with no purpose or direction has an elongated, distorted tree. Their tree looks confused, misshapen and sullen. Because whenever they had to make a life choice, they chose at random and hoped for the best.

A life without purpose is a life without direction. That’s not to say people with no purpose can’t be happy. But they will make life a darn sight harder for themselves.

Once you have your star on the horizon, informing your choices, anything becomes possible. Even the thought of one day reaching that star.