A few years ago, while weighing up options, I was asked a fantastic question "Is the juice worth the squeeze?".
The analogy means, will it be worth it in the end?
When you weigh up the effort required, and what you would need to embrace and what you need to let go of to achieve the outcome you want, will it be worth it?
Depending on the moment in time you consider this, your response will vary. So many factors will play into your initital instinctive response - your emotional state, if you're feeling optimistic or pessimistic, confident or worried, are you chasing a dream or avoiding pain among many, many other factors. Your instinctive response though is a strong guide to what you believe beneath all this. We have become so conditioned to weigh up the options, consider the pros and cons, deliberate and debate, full engagement of the left side of the brain, a tonne of logic and it assumes that we know before we start, if it's worth it.
The Urban Dictionary entry states "Always know if the juice is worth the squeeze.Make sure that what you are doing and striving for is going to be worth any sacrifices you will have to make along the way. If it's a relationship, job, anything in life."
However at the end of the day, we all know there are no guarantees in life and the only way you will know if it will be worth it in the end or not is to give it a go. So listen to your heart as well as your head, be considered and intentional, have your eyes open and then leap forward into the delicious unknown.
Two wise quotes to remember when considering to squeeze or not to squeeze:
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards"
Soren Kierkegaard
“Life is too short to wake up in the morning with regrets. So love the people who treat you right, forget about the ones who don’t and believe that everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said that it’d be easy, they just promised it would be worth it.”
Author Unknown
