How and Why

Why is it so easy to give advice but when the time comes you can't follow your own? How do you decide on something that will effect someone so greatly? This is something that I have been thinking hard and long on for awhile now. I have talked to many people about this but yet I can't make up my mind. What do I really want in my life, how do I want to live my life, what will make me happy and what will hurt me. There is only two answers to my question, my pain. One will keep making someone very happy and the other will hurt someone badly. At times I think that I decided wrong when I started doing this, but then again there was times when I thought that this was the best thing I have ever done. Lately though I have taken to hiding my true feelings and I know that I'm slowly tearing myself apart doing this and that I am never really happy anymore, but I'm scared. What if I stop, and find out that no longer doing this was the wrong thing in my life? I will never get it back. I just don't know anymore, I'm so confused. I know I'll have to decide on what to do with in the next few months or I'll end up tearing myself apart.