Making Tough Decisions
We make hundreds of decisions each day. Everything from what to wear, to how to invest our time and who to connect with. Most of these decisions come and go without us consciously noticing that we’ve made them, we effortlessly move into action. And then there are those decisions that stay with us for days, months or even years. We struggle with them, ask several people for their opinions and change our mind from moment to moment.
For the last few years of my corporate career, I struggled with whether to leave or stay. I weighed the pros and cons, what I might do next, what I was giving up, and what people might say about my decision.
I thought I was being indecisive and overly cautious. I often gave myself a hard time for not acting more swiftly.
Today, I offer myself a bit more grace. I understand that there are only a few possibilities:
1) I know my decision, but I’m delaying taking action,
2) I know my decision, and I’m ready to take action, or
3) I don’t know.
When it came to my corporate career, I was stuck in #1. I knew I was ready for a change. I also knew that a company change wasn’t going to be enough, I was looking for a more radical shift. How did I know this? I’m not sure, but I knew.
Do you sometimes know something to be true without knowing why and how? This I have found is a common human experience.
Here’s where the struggle arose. I had no idea what I would do next, and faced with this uncertainty, I stalled. I hoped that with time and with more thinking, things would become clearer.
Over the next couple of years, a lot of mental energy was spent trying to figure out whether I was making the “right” decision (as if the RIGHT decision actually exists), and what I would do next by weighing options in my head (not a good strategy for figuring things out).
today, I start with a simple question, “do I know the decision I want to make.”
If I don’t, what action can I take that would offer some clarity. Do that.
If I know, and am ready to take action, take action, now.
If I know, and am delaying taking action, what is the smallest possible step I can take to move myself in the direction of this decision. Go do that, rinse and repeat.
Making decisions becomes easy and simple.
The reality is that we often know what decision we want to make, but we get stuck in our heads trying to figure out everything, before we dare do anything about it.
If we‘re waiting on clarity or certainty, we can easily get stuck thinking things through for a very long time, because clarity doesn’t happen by figuring things out in our head and certainty is always an illusion.
when a decision feels difficult, it means that we’re stuck in our head trying to figure something out that our minds were not designed to do.
For example, we try to convince ourselves we are making the “right” decision, but the “right” decision is a matter of interpretation, and that can change moment to moment. We can argue both sides because there is no ONE RIGHT DECISION.
And hence we get stuck.
We want certainty around the outcome and how we will handle things post decision, however the possible outcomes are infinite and it’s impossible to workout all the scenarios.
And hence we get stuck.
We want a guarantee that we’ll feel good about the decision, that we’ll not regret it, but feeling good and not regretting it are thought based events. And so we can never fully guarantee that we will always feel good about the decision, or that we will never regret it - those thoughts might creep up into our psyche at some moment no matter how things turn out. It’s impossible to ever guarantee this because thoughts come and go. There are no gurantees.
And hence we get stuck.
Do you see how easy it is to make a simple decision a struggle? How we can innocently get stuck in a decision that we know the answer to?
When it came to my decision to leave my corporate role, there came a day when I decided to take action on the decision I knew for years I wanted to make.
I hadn’t figured out what I would do next. I hadn't gained any further clarity. I simply made a decision to follow what I did know, and see what happened.
I entered a stage of exploration and taking action, and from there things unfolded. My job, if I had one, was to remain open and curious.
A few months into this, I met a woman that was attending a coach training program.
A few months later, I found myself in a coaching course with no plans to become a coach.
A few months after that, I coached a young woman and instantly knew without a shadow of a doubt, that I would become an executive coach.
And that’s how making one simple decision based on the information I had in the moment, unfolded into a career, one that I love.
What did I learn about decisions?
Follow what I know.
Take action.
Stay open and curious.
See what happens.