Ep 140: How Not to Get Stuck When Making Big Decisions

It's about having the clarity , self-confidence and unstoppable belief to go after and get everything you want . If you'll come with me , I'll show you how Well . Hello friends . I hope you had an amazing week . Today I want to talk about something that builds off of last week .

Last week , we talked about the three paths after failure , and if you haven't listened to that episode , I do encourage you to go listen to it because I feel like , well , for some of us , our whole life , but for , I think , most of us , when we get into that mid-career , mid-life period , I think failures tend to deal a lot of us a tougher blow , right , I

think when we're younger that's my theory , that's what I've noticed in my own life and in coaching others In our 20s , early 30s I think a lot of us feel like that's just a time for experimentation .

Right , we're just figuring out who we are and what we want , but we put all of this extra weight and expectation and , I guess , a super high bar on the things that we tackle , admit life and make career , and we , if we're not successful , we make that mean all kinds of things about ourselves or other people , right , and when we do that , all it does is it

kind of keeps us stuck and looking at the failure instead of really harvesting the lesson and using the lesson to move on from the failure .

So that is a lot of what we talked about last week , but I wanted to talk about something related to that and it kind of is the thing that comes both before and after failure , and that is about decisions and specifically about maintaining this ability to be decisive or , if you feel like you've never been decisive in your life , cultivating that ability .

It can bring a lot of peace and it's really super important because by the time we get to mid-career and mid-life , we have a lot of things going on in our life , right . So I define mid-career and mid-life as kind of our late 30s , so call it 39 up to late 50s , into your early 60s . Really it's that middle period of your life , right ?

And I think we can all agree that , regardless of what your life has in it right now compared to your early life . It's a lot more complicated for most of us . You know , if you had children , they're probably , you know , getting older and as they get older , their lives get more complicated .

And when their lives get more complicated , your life gets more complicated . Right , you ? Probably , by the time you're mid-career , you have a job with a lot more responsibility . Maybe it's a huge amount of responsibility , or maybe it's just more responsibility .

So you're making more decisions every day , more decisions that carry more weight , right , and you've got other things going on in your life . You've got , you know , a house . You've got investments , you've got managing the rest of your life .

You know your friends , your social circle , your family relationships , like all of those things , require you to make decisions and really , if you back all the way out of it , every minute of every day is a set of decisions . They just don't all carry a ton of weight .

So I would say the decisions that don't carry a ton of weight are what to buy at the grocery store , right . What to fix for dinner , how do you want to dress yourself for the day , you know ? What do you want to eat at your meals that day ? Are you going to go to the gym or not ?

That day , are you going to do all of your self-care routines that you know you want to do that day ? Are you going to attend the friend's birthday party or are you going to go on vacation ? Those kinds of decisions are everyday decisions and there certainly will contribute to the quality of life that you have , but not in a monumental way .

But when we have a bigger decision in front of us or a decision that carries more heft or more weight , it's easy especially , I think , at midlife to get stuck . Decisions that carry more heft or weight are things like should we stay in the relationship or not ? Should we commit to the relationship or not ?

Should we accept the new job offer that might require the move across the country , thereby upending our family's everyday life and routines ? Should we start the side hustle or should we , if we already have the business , should we commit fully to the side hustle and give notice at our corporate job ?

Those types of decisions tend to carry more weight and for a lot of us , I think , especially at midlife , when we're faced with one of those , it's very easy to become indecisive , even if we kind of think of ourselves as a really decisive person , even if in the rest of our life , or maybe leading up to that point , we haven't had any problems making decisions .

And this is coming up for me today , not only because I do think it builds off of the things we talked about related to failure , because I do feel like failure and indecisiveness are two huge ways that we can get stuck at midlife , get stuck in rumination , get stuck in regret , get stuck being unable to decide and kind of move forward with our life .

It can become a series of really bad habits . The decisions we make after failure and our inability to kind of make the bigger decisions in our life , our unwillingness to make the big , bigger decisions in our life , can really be a way , a couple of ways , that we really get rooted to the spot .

And I feel like when we stop moving forward in our life , I feel like that's when life gets a little . I guess you could say , on the one hand , that it gets to be routine , and some of us really like routines , and so I think it's easy to .

If that's us that's not me , by the way , but if it's us I understand now that could be the case that you kind of settle in , you think this is my life and I kind of like the way my life is , that it would be easy to say , well , I don't know if I 100% want to change my life and , yes , there's this big decision in front of me , but I just don't

want to make the decision because I don't know if I want to shake things up . I kind of like the way things are . I don't know if I want this other thing , and especially if there's no guarantee that this other thing is going to work out .

So some of us just decide not to decide because we kind of like the way things are or we're afraid of what will happen if we make the big decision and it fails . It leads into last week's episode .

It becomes decisions come before and after failure and I guess , in the middle of it too , because it's the things you do inside the decision that might cause it to fail too . So it's just decisions are important and I think it's a discipline .

And so I want to explore decisiveness and the ways that we can get undecisive because of the things we're telling ourselves . And this is coming up for me too today , because a couple weeks ago I was coaching one of my private coaching clients and she has a bigger decision .

She's in , I would say , early midlife , so early 40s , and she's got a big decision , actually one that she spun up like .

She said yes initially to speaking to a recruiter who called about a potentially , honestly huge opportunity for her halfway across the country and she thought , oh , this is fun , like I should at least just talk to them , and nothing will probably come of it .

So I'll just hone my interview skills and get some good interview experience , just in case I need it down the road . So she wasn't really expecting this to become anything .

Well , now here she is and she's one of two in the finals and they're flying her there this week , and so she's got a 50-50 shot of getting this gig and it's huge for her , a huge step forward . And now all of the ramifications of the initial decision she made to just talk to them nothing will probably come of it .

Now here she is and all of a sudden there's all of these other questions she's asking herself . And there's nothing wrong with asking questions and gathering all the data and thinking something through from all sides .

I do think it's a good thing to do when you have a big decision that carries a lot of weight in front of you , something that's going to stay with you for a while . But it was interesting because in the course of the conversation , she was asking herself a lot of questions around the potential decision that she would be making that I think were not helpful .

Well , I know they weren't helpful because they were not questions she was asking in an empowering way . They weren't questions that were analyzing data points that she'd gathered . They were general questions designed to trigger Fear , uncertainty and doubt .

So that's one of the first things I want to talk about , because I do think it's good to have some awareness around this . Think about in your own life a bigger decision that you've made .

Maybe it was just very recently , maybe you're facing one right now , or Maybe you know , if you don't have anything reason you can think of , go back to the decision to have children , or the decision to get into your , the relationship with your partner , or to get out of you know a recent relationship , something big like that .

And I want you to Kind of take yourself back there and I want you to think about your mindset when you're making that decision , like how easy was it , how clear were you on if it was what you wanted versus not clear . How confused were you and and how quickly and cleanly Did you make that decision ?

Like If it's a proposal that your partner made , when they made the proposal to you , or when you , if you were the one that made the proposal ? When you decided to make the proposal to them , were you a hundred percent sure that that was the right person for you , or or were there a ton of doubts about it ? The same thing about having children .

You know , if you have children and you found out you and your partner found out that you were with child , what did you tell yourself ?

Were you a hundred percent sure it was the right thing , or did you tell yourself all kinds of things that Scared you , that spun up a lot of fear , uncertainty and self-doubt it this is important because it can become a habit . I think For some people it's how they always are with big decisions , even when they're younger years .

But for some of us , we have these unwritten rules around life and a lot of us and I would say to some extent myself believed .

I don't anymore , but I believed earlier on that , oh , your 20s and your early 30s are when you're figuring it all out and by the time you get into your early mid 30s , you kind of know , or you should know , are you better know , like , what you want and All of that . And I when I was younger I kind of looked at life as being more set .

Then what I believe that it is now there's just an experience and I guess my observations of the adults around me . Their life always seemed to be kind of the same and I do think it's also a combination of the world we live in today .

I just think the pace of change and the pace of technology and all of that , I just don't know if , like when , my observation of what my parents life was like and I you know I never asked them this question before they were gone , but I Don't know what they would say my mom would probably have said , oh , I don't know , our lives were always changing , but

Not probably in the last 20 years of her life . I would say it's kind of my observation was not really , you know , and I don't know if that's going to be that way anymore for any of us .

So for me this episode carries a lot of weight because I think a lot of us get to midlife and we Start telling ourselves things about the big decisions we face and the paths that are potentially opening up in front of us , and we tell ourselves things that Are designed to scare us .

Maybe we're not connected to that , but we do , like my client was doing , and I'll share some of her thoughts here in a minute and maybe feel some familiar to you . But I feel like , unlike I think what life was like for previous generations .

Now , with the changes in the technological breakthroughs that are happening every day in every Area of business and life , I don't know what the future looks like , and To me , what that means is we all Need to keep moving with life .

You know it doesn't mean you have to leave your spouse , you have to leave your job or whatever , but you have to , at a minimum you've got to keep pace With a lot of the technological advancements .

I think there's already a divide in this country on , you know , education and the skills needed for the pace of change , and so I think it's incumbent upon us , especially at midlife , to realize that the sleepy little retirement that Maybe our parents had I don't know , I'm not sure like what it's gonna be and even how long that retirement will be and what I

mean by that the pace of change in just extending our longevity . You know , I think a lot of us look at it and think , oh well , you know , hopefully I'll live as long as my parents are longer than a little bit longer , or whatever . And you know , for me my dad passed at 90 , you know . So if we pass that it's like I don't know .

Like I've always told myself , you know , I want to stick around as long as I'm healthy and I can get around and all that . My mind's good . But I think it's gonna look a lot different for us , even those of us at midlife . You know , what if it's 120 like , or one day like , and what if we can do that healthy ? Are you ready for that Like ?

Here's what I mean by that like I don't know , like the sleepy little sitting on the couch taking it easy , settling into your rut . I don't know About that and that's your decision to make , that's your decision to make . But that's kind of what I'm telling myself . And I want to keep pace in the areas that I'm interested in .

None of us can keep pace on all of the changes , but the things that I wanna kinda do or the things that I'm interested in , I don't wanna say no to those because I'm scared or because I think I'm too old to learn , or because I am afraid it won't work out . I don't think that's a great , empowered way to live , right ?

And so let's talk first about whom . We're faced with . Decisions at midlife , big decisions , bigger decisions at midlife , or are they even philosophical decisions , like on what you want your life to be ? Do you want it to be more of the same ? Are you comfortable ? Are you okay being a little uncomfortable ? Do you wanna keep growing and keep going ?

You know so some of the things that my client was telling herself . The question she asked herself because I wrote them down was what if it's a mistake ? And later in the session she even said what if it's a total disaster ? Okay , what kind of emotions does that bring up ?

When you ask yourself a question like that , it immediately sparks fear , uncertainty , self-doubt . You're basically telling yourself , well , it's probably gonna be a mistake and a disaster . So what are you gonna do ? You're gonna start spinning it in decision because of the potential mistake and disaster . Right ? She also said what if it's the wrong decision ?

I just wanna say something about wrong and right . I don't know . I mean , I would say I guess there are wrong decisions , like if you look at the facts of something and you look at your own wants and needs , maybe it is the wrong decision for you .

But I think a lot of times we're presented with options and the option isn't necessarily right or wrong , it's just path A or path B and maybe I don't know I don't think any of us know but maybe every path we take maybe leads us to the same place .

I think it probably depends on what you believe about life and I'm not 100% sure what I believe about this , but I think it's at least possible that we're born and we have this reason for being here on the planet and things we're supposed to learn and things that we need to do , and maybe we're kinda always gonna end up in the same place .

But the decisions we make and the paths we choose and how we choose to spend our time are just options for what the experiences on that path from that destination are . I don't know if that's right or wrong , but I think it's an interesting thought right that there aren't necessarily lots of different outcomes for us .

There's just different experiences along the road to those outcomes . There's one way to look at life , I think another way to look at life is to say no , there are different outcomes and the paths that I choose will lead me north , south , east or west , and those experiences are different and the outcomes of those are different . And I don't know .

I don't know what's true because I haven't gotten at the end of my life , so I don't think any of us know . But I feel like this idea that there's a wrong decision if you get stuck there all the time .

That's not a helpful question to ask yourself Now , depending on what your own personal beliefs are , I do think it's good to have clarity about where you think you're one ahead and then to gather all the data and to get honest with yourself about whether you think this particular option in front of you that you have to decide about right now is gonna have a

good chance of leading you

there . We never know right . Maybe it will or maybe it won't , but all we can do is use the data that we have right now to make that decision right .

So in some ways , it's helpful to ask yourself if it's the right or wrong decision for you , but I know some folks who do that about everything , about you know where to go for dinner on Friday night or whatever . So if it's a bigger decision , I get it and I think it's worth examining that . But just be honest with yourself .

If you're always wondering if something's right or wrong for you , like , get clear on what you want based on everything you know right now , and then , when you have a big decision in front of you , gather the data and ask yourself if everything you know about it right now seems like it could at least head you in that direction .

If the answer is yes , then you know if you're gonna make the decision based on that , you could definitely say yes to the decision right . So don't get stuck in . If it's right or wrong for you , you know she was also asking herself the opposite of that . How do I know for sure it's the right decision ?

You know because I think what she knows about it right now my client she feels like it could very well be it seems to have the composition of the job for sure is right for her . It's a two-level jump , so that is a huge opportunity . She knows it'll be a challenge , but she feels she's up for it and ready for it . It's a slightly smaller company .

That's kind of one of the things she was hoping to find . So that feels right , and the people she's met she kind of vibes with , like she really she really likes them , you know , and it feels like an interesting culture based on everything they've said .

So so far , the only thing that feels bad is that it's halfway across the country and she's not 100% sure she wants to move to the Pacific Northwest . She has a long list of reasons why she's not sure about that , but even though it's a beautiful part of the country , so she's not sure if it's right for her .

On several different dimensions in her life , but everything else , including the pay , she's done her research on Glassdoor and other things , and at that level it is a significant jump forward , like to the tune of $150,000 all in probably . So she is wondering , though , even though there's lots of green lights and very few flashing yellows .

She's wondering I don't know , though , even though there's a lot of green lights , how can I be 100% sure it's the right decision ? And so I will tell you what I told her we never know . You probably already knew the answer to that , but we just don't know .

Listen , you can gather all of the data points , you can do endless research , you can think things through from every conceivable angle and I promise you , even the all green lights decision can turn into something that , down the road , you're like why did I ever say yes to this ? And the reason why is because we can't always see what's coming Right .

All we can do is make the best decision , going in , give it our all , go all in on it and pay attention . If things start to go wrong , if something changes that makes it untenable , then we give ourselves permission to make a different decision and get out , and don't make that mean anything about you . You just can't see around every corner .

You cannot see everything coming , and what I told her also is you have to gather all the data . You have to go out on this in person . They're flying her there this week . You have to pay attention while you're there .

Pay attention to the city , pay attention to the vibe of the culture , pay attention to everything everyone says and ask every question you can ask . And then listen to your gut when you're on the plane home and ask yourself if they made me the offer , would I take it ? How does that feel emotionally ?

Right , you can't know for sure that it's going to work out . Hopefully it does , but sometimes it doesn't , and there's nothing you can predict . Sometimes there's unforeseen things . She could take that job . They could be absolutely perfect for two years and they could get purchased , or they could fall on financially hard times or the company could split in half .

I mean , there's just you just don't know what's going to happen . It's impossible to know . And so the wrong reason to say no to the opportunity is because you can't know for sure that it's the right decision . You'll never know , so you have to take that off the table .

And then the last question that she was asking herself in the course of our session was what if it doesn't work out ? And what I told her is you answer that question what would you do if you moved to Seattle and it turned out to be ? There were a lot of things you didn't know about it and it wasn't the right decision .

Think that through in advance , because it might happen . It's not a reason to not take it , but you got to pay attention to you can't just assume that just because you fully vetted the options and made the decision that the path in front of you is perfect , even if it's perfect for a while . Just like my previous example , said , it might not stay that way .

So at some point whether it's immediately or down the road it might not work out the way you want . Now what ? And that's really the thing If it doesn't work out , it doesn't mean it was a bad decision . You took a chance , you trusted yourself , you believed in yourself , you went all in .

And if , for reasons outside of your control , it doesn't work , I would say the same thing about a marriage or any other big decision we make . Make a different decision , as painful as that can be , there are lessons that you learn by making that decision , by going all in on yourself and by trying and having it not work out , that are incredibly valuable .

That'll serve you down the road . There might be signs that you become aware of that you missed going into it that become valuable flag markers for you for future decisions , like there's value in everything that you do .

So I just want to say to you if there's a big decision in front of you , if you're not sure you should stay in your relationship , if you're not sure you should say yes to the new opportunity or relationship , if you're not sure if you should pack up and move from California to Texas , like half the world is doing right now feels like .

I say that because I live in Texas and I swear to God it is insane the number of people moving here . The traffic has doubled for my morning commute in the past six months , so it's crazy . Anyway , if it doesn't work out , it's okay , like if you have a big decision to make .

Here's my advice to you Gather the data that you can about the opportunity , about the relationship , about the person that's you know you're thinking of committing to , about the place you're planning to move to or about the job opportunity that you're considering . Gather not exhaustively , but gather as much 360 data as you can .

Pay attention to the signs that might indicate it's not right for you , but be clear on what you want , what your filter is . What do you want from that Like relationship ? What do you want from that new city ? What do you want from that job opportunity , and does this seem like , based on the data that you're gathering , that it could be the right decision ?

That's the first thing I want you to do is gather . Number two is I want you to self-coach , meaning I want you to take all the data , keep that in your mind , all the things that you gathered , and I want you to spend a little time reflecting and coaching yourself on does this seem like a good decision based on everything that I know ?

Don't get stuck in the questions that don't serve you . Don't keep saying , well , what if it does seem like that ? But what if it's a mistake ? Or what if it's the wrong decision ? Don't allow yourself to ask yourself those kinds of questions .

Just go off of the data that you gathered , that plus what you want your life to be where you went ahead in general . And then I want you to coach yourself on is this right for me , based on everything I know , and don't get stuck on but what if I don't know things or you know whatever ?

All you can do is gather the data and the things that you can know and use that to make your decision . So , based on that , does it seem like it's the right thing for you ? Does it feel good emotionally ? Do you feel excited about it ? Sometimes , more than your thoughts , your emotions , do you feel like if you said no to it . How does that feel ?

Would you feel relieved or would you feel disappointed , regret ? That's a really good clue about how much you want it right , sometimes queuing into your emotional state like playing it out and saying , if I said no to this , how would I feel ? You know , is a really good way to think about it .

And then , once you kind of get to that clarity of thought through yourself coaching , then I just want you to decide .

Make the decision and don't make it from a place of avoiding failure . Make it from a place of this is right for me or this is wrong for me , based on the things that I know , and then decide . Decide to keep going . Decide to trust yourself that if it works out or doesn't work out , you're going to be okay . Decide to keep going in your life .

Don't stop living just because you're 45 or 55 or 65 . Keep going , keep betting on yourself and keep deciding . So I hope you found this episode helpful and with that I'll leave you till next time . Make it a great week . My friends , do you have a life coach ? If not , I'd be so honored to be your coach .

I've created a virtual coaching program and monthly membership called Next Level . Inside we take the material you hear on this podcast , study it and then apply it . Join me at thepurposefulcareercom backslash next level . Don't forget the purposefulcareercom backslash next level . Join me and together we'll make your career and life everything you dream of .

We'll see you there .