The Next Right Thing

The Next Right Thing is your guide for making wise, thoughtful, and intentional decisions simply by looking for the single best action to take at the moment.

You’ve probably had to make a decision at some point in your life where you had to spend a significant amount of time worrying about possible outcomes. But Freeman says if you want to really do what’s best, stop worrying so much about the distant future and just worry about the next right thing. It’s a principle that both Alcoholics Anonymous and Martin Luther King Jr profess.

Freeman uses the story of Jesus raising Jairus’s daughter from the dead to illustrate this. After the miracle, instead of giving a sermon or telling them to kneel at his feet in gratitude, Jesus just says, “Give her something to eat.” As obvious as this request sounds, the author feels he was helping them see that they needed to be focused in the present moment.

“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,” writes Freeman. Rather than stressing about mapping out our futures as we so often do, we are better living our lives one next right thing at a time.

The author used this advice when deciding whether or not to get a graduate degree in her 40’s. She struggled over the decision because she was worried about it taking a toll on her time with her family, but she also felt she would regret it if she didn’t do it.

Rather than worrying so much about every detail of her future, she decided to do what was best for her then, which was enrolling. The truth is, we can’t know what exactly the future will hold, which is why she says to make decisions regardless of it.

In an age where the internet lies in the palm of our hands, sometimes it’s almost impossible to just sit with our thoughts. If you want to find what your next right thing is, you need to be able to declutter your mind and allow space to think. In other words, become an inner minimalist. As Joshua Becker says in The More of Less: For Freeman, this meant silencing her notifications. Instead of her phone deciding when she thought about things, she was the one in control. It helped her have the silence and clarity to reflect on decisions in everyday life. She suggests you declutter your mind from distractions and embrace the silence. Another thing that Freeman says will help you in the decision-making process is…