The question you bring up in this post resonates with me and is connected with the idea that longing and incompleteness are critical to our spiritual growth and creative process.

The way I formulated it for myself is, “What is my highest aspiration in this human life of mine?” I then came up with my own creative manifesto (in just a few words) and whatever choice I face in life I match against that “larger picture”.

As for making the decisions whether to go forward with something or not, what works for me is to go to my intuition, the wise knowledge of the body as a whole, not just the logic of the mind, and asking the specific question. An intuitive “yes” feels like an opening in the chest area, a feeling of joy from nowhere. An intuitive “no” feels as tightness in the stomach area and around the heart, when it’s a strong “no” it translates as nausea. Intuition though does not tell us what we would like to hear, rather what it is right for us. That is why I might not always choose to go with intuition (we are after all conditioned beings) but then I will know why doing the “right” somehow feels “wrong”.