MAKING A DECISION TO MOVE TOWARD YOUR GOAL
Welcome to The Small Jar, a podcast where we explore how to intentionally design the life that you want in the space between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 35.
Hello, friends. Let's talk about making decisions. I often coach clients about feeling stuck in indecision because I think it's something many of us struggle with in midlife for a large number of reasons.
It's funny because throughout my life, I've generally thought of myself as someone who's fairly decisive, but as I've become a coach and frankly spent quite a bit of time thinking through the results I want to create in my own life and how to move forward, I've realized how indecisive I've been in many ways that aren't entirely obvious. There are a few different categories of decisions, and for the sake of this discussion, I'm going to focus on two of them. The first type of decision is one that's fairly routine.
It's like when you have to make the decision whether or not to buy something or have to make a decision between products at the grocery store. Depending on the cost of these decisions, they can be relatively easy. Or if you think the thing that you're about to buy is expensive, the decision might carry a little more weight.
But the interesting thing about these types of decisions is that we have no control over the outcome of the decision after we make it. And what I mean by that is if we decide to buy a pair of Nike sneakers rather than buying the Adidas, our decision doesn't impact the result of our choice. Once we get home, we'll either love or hate the Nike sneakers, but we can't change anything about the sneakers once we have them at home, perhaps other than making the decision to return them.
We typically don't struggle with these decisions. We might deliberate, but the choice is relatively simple. It's just a matter of making a decision.
The second big category of decisions is much more complex than the routine choices where we have no power to improve upon the outcomes. Here's what I mean. If we make the decision to work out, for example, we know that the result we create from that decision is going to depend on the consistency of our focus on that activity, our commitment creating the result or goal we want to achieve.
So our decision actually does have an impact on our own outcomes. If we decide to work out and we don't, that has implications for us. And we get to decide how we view those implications for better or for worse.
Here's another example. If we make the decision to take a new job, we know that our performance at the new job is up to us, our work ethic, our ability to learn the requirements of the job, our skillset. So again, we have power to influence the quality of the outcome of the decision once we make it.
Any other goal you can think of, losing weight, writing a book, finding a new love partner, making friends, we know inherently that in order to achieve these goals, we need to do something to make the goal happen. We know that action is required, but before action happens, we need to make a decision to do something. And often we have to make that decision again and again, if our goal requires consistent action to achieve it.
And most goals require some kind of consistent action to make them a reality. So in essence, achieving any goal requires a decision. As we explore achieving goals together, I thought it was important to explore this idea that goals require decisions.
I'm going to come back to this concept, but first I want to dig into the process of decision-making and why it can be challenging for us for many reasons. We think of being decisive as being able to make quick decisions. While some of us may consider ourselves to be decisive, many others of us feel like we're inherently more indecisive, particularly with decisions we perceive to be important.
Research on personality styles suggests that there are particular traits we have that might make us more or less likely to be confident, quick decision-makers. You've probably heard of a lot of different types of personality rubrics, but Myers-Briggs is one of them. And Myers-Briggs says that if you are more of a judging personality, and by that, this doesn't mean judgmental, but if the last letter in your Myers-Briggs personality type is a J, you tend to like to have things decided and to have things under control.
In contrast, someone with more of a perceiving personality, with a P as the last letter, likes to stay open to new possibilities. So when you think about it this way, there's really no right or wrong in the tendency to make quick decisions, or rather to take your time in making decisions. So that probably suggests that the word indecisive is unnecessarily negative, but there are a number of challenges we face when we don't make decisions that are important for us to make in order to move forward in our lives.
So I mentioned, notwithstanding that I have a perception of myself as someone who's decisive, I realized one key area of decision-making where I'd been letting myself down. When I was first starting out launching this coaching business a few years ago, I was excited about the prospect of helping people as a life coach. I felt so much more empowered in so many areas of my life that I needed to share these skills with as many people as I could.
So I got certified and somehow taking that step itself was very easy for me. I knew learning more about self-coaching would be highly valuable to me. And so the investment I made was infinitely worth it.
But after I got certified, I spent quite a bit of time in indecision. I knew I wanted to build a business around coaching, but I didn't know how. And more than that, I didn't know where to start.
The options seemed too overwhelming. And although I'd started my own consulting business in the past, somehow this felt like something totally different. I tried taking in as much information as I could from experts who gave advice about the how to start a coaching business, but I remained stuck.
Needless to say, I got coached on this a lot. And when it comes down to it, what I wasn't doing was making a decision. I let myself stay confused.
And as long as I was there, I didn't move forward. And one of the things that happened when I allowed myself to stay confused is that I wasn't curious about the things that were underlying, why it was easier to stay stuck than to move forward. Now, this is just one example, but can you think of an area of your life where you've done this to yourself? Maybe you faced a decision and wanted to defer to others in your life because you didn't want to make the wrong decision, or you have a tendency to beat yourself up after the fact when you've made a decision that hasn't worked out in the way you'd hoped.
You may feel like there are just too many choices to be able to consider all of them, or that it will be too much work. There's so many different factors at play here. So I want to go through some of them in hopes that this might be helpful to you as you approach your next decision, or said another way, as you approach working towards your goals.
I was looking up online what others suggest in terms of how to make decisions. And I came across one list that I thought was particularly terrible. No offense to the author, who I will not name, but paraphrasing, here's the list.
One, as you make your decision, don't forget that the choice you make will affect others around you. Now, wow, that's like naming the elephant in the room. I think many of us moms are very cognizant of this.
We often make decisions taking into account the needs of almost everyone in our life before our own needs. But thanks for the reminder that we should worry about the impact of our decisions. Number two, you should make sure you know your priorities and limitations or else you might make regrettable decisions.
Come on, of course we don't want to regret our decision. In fact, this fear is often a huge factor in keeping us from making decisions in the first place. The article goes on with other advice, including be yourself, be reasonable, be responsible.
I don't know who the audience for this article was intended to be, but I'm fairly sure if you're someone listening to this podcast, you're the type of person who makes every effort to be responsible and reasonable as a mom. Look, it doesn't always work out the way we hope, but our intention is always there. I feel like this article highlights a number of the reasons we actually have trouble making decisions in the first place.
So let's dig into it. One of the biggest reasons we don't make decisions to move forward with our goals is because of fear. There are really so many different categories of fear.
We can be afraid, worried, anxious, insecure, disempowered, intimidated, nervous. We could come up with a huge list of adjectives to describe these different types of feelings of fear in various scenarios, but I'm going to use fear as the catch-all. We can tend to look at a particular situation in our lives, whether it be changing jobs, moving, or trying anything new.
There's a circumstance. The phrase changing jobs or moving to a new city, for example, those are circumstances and they aren't good or bad until you have thoughts about them, particularly what changing jobs or moving to a new city will mean for you, how it will impact you. Let's just take moving to a new city.
There might've been a time in your life when you had the opportunity to move to a new city, maybe when you went off to college and you were excited, maybe also a little scared, but you were ready. Your thought about the circumstance of moving was I'm ready to be independent and move away from my parents. The decision to move was probably easy, but there are other times when the circumstance of moving brings up indecision fueled by fear instead of excitement.
You might think I'll be moving away from my friends and family. I won't know anyone. I might not like it.
So if you're weighing the pros and cons of moving and these thoughts come up, you might have a hard time making the decision, even if there are other compelling reasons to move, like taking advantage of a new career opportunity. So fear is a big underlying driver of indecision. You might feel fear of failure.
This could be related to taking on a new job or advancing in your career. It could show up in your personal life, not wanting to put yourself out there to make new friends or to meet a new romantic partner. It could relate to taking on a big goal, anything from weight loss and hitting the gym to launching a business or writing a book.
Fear is a huge underlying reason we don't take actions to move towards these goals. As I'm saying this, it might sound obvious to you, but I want you to think about this for a minute. We so often beat ourselves up for feeling stuck, for not being able to move forward with a goal, ultimately for not being able to make a decision to take action.
But sometimes the real culprit is that we're afraid. We fear some outcome that we don't want, so it feels easier just to stay stuck. Another category of fear is the fear of the unknown, trying new things or taking on challenges that you've never experienced before.
It can be scary, largely because we don't know what to expect. This also could be related to the fear of change. When faced with decisions that might change important aspects about the way we live our lives, it can be hard to envision ourselves as easily in that future place.
Making the decision to make big changes or take on the unknown takes a big leap of faith. Our kids embarking on college are facing this type of fear, moving away from home for the first time to a place that may be very unfamiliar. As our kids embark on this journey into the unknown, we as moms are also taking that big leap into the unknown, whether we like it or not.
The empty nest doesn't require a decision from us. It's going to sneak up on us whether we like it or not. So welcome change, welcome unknown.
This change is coming whether we like it or not. But what we do with that space, the decision to do something with that next chapter, that can also bring up indecision rooted in a fear of the unknown and a fear of what that change will mean for us as mothers. Another reason we can stay stuck in indecision is because of our fear around how other people will respond.
Maybe we're afraid they'll judge us or think differently about us, or we might be afraid that our decision will make someone in our life angry, that it will cause conflict. Fear of the fear of failure. These are fears related to how we think a decision will impact us.
The type of fear we have about others relates to how we think our decisions will impact them. And I'm not even necessarily talking about the impact our decisions will have on our families. I'll get to that one.
In this case, I'm thinking about fear about judgment of others and conflict with others. Sometimes my clients have been fearful about getting a job, for example, because they think their partner or their children will think they're less committed to the family. There are other times when my clients have wanted to do something that they know that will require them to show up in ways that are out of their comfort zone.
And more importantly, that others will be watching, that others will have judgments about them as they show up to pursue these new goals. If we put out a book, others could read it and think it's terrible. If we go on a date or even on a dating app, we're worried that people won't be interested, that they'll think we're too this or that.
Sometimes we stay in marriages for too long because we're afraid the decision to leave would create a fight, and it seems easier to stay miserable. Fear about what others think about us is actually biologically wired in us. As much as we might beat ourselves up about it, the feeling of belonging is actually one of our basic needs, right behind food and safety.
In fact, this need is so important to us, it becomes difficult to access positive self-esteem and self-actualization if this sense of belonging isn't satisfied. So it's actually no wonder that the fear of being humiliated, looking stupid, or breaking connections with others brings up feelings of extreme fear. We don't want to be separated from the pack, and this is true on an instinctual level of all of us, regardless of how self-confident we think we are.
So fear of failure, fear of change, fear about how others will react, either with judgment or even anger, these are a few of the ways that fear keeps us stuck in indecision. Another type of fear that makes it hard to settle on a choice is the fear of our own judgment. Before we even make a decision, we project into the future the possibility that our choice will be the wrong one, that we'll have made a big mistake.
Maybe that all of our fears about failure, change, and other people's reactions, that maybe we'll look back on our choice and realize we did it wrong, that it's all our fault. I've done a few podcasts on the fear of what-ifs, and this type of fear, the fear of regret, is the type of fear where we project into the future our own failure and mistakes. It's like beating ourselves up ahead of time.
With all of these fears, is it really any wonder that we can get caught in the grips of indecision when it comes to moving forward in our lives? And look, for individual decisions, we may not be gripped with all of these fears in every single situation, but what often happens is that we don't even entirely know that fear is the reason that we're stuck in indecision. But there is another category of thinking that keeps us from moving forward with decisions, and that is the weight of the responsibility we feel for our family. And this applies to us very intimately as mothers.
Dads can feel this too. And fear plays a role here too, right? But our roles as moms really do tend to trump the list of considerations and concerns when we're contemplating almost any decision. In fact, when I'm coaching moms on tackling new goals or even deciding what their goals should be, nine times out of ten, one of the biggest hurdles in their mind is how their decision to move forward with their goal will impact their families.
We've spent our children's lives supporting them, and the last thing we would ever do is jeopardize our ability to support them or in any way sacrifice their needs ahead of our own. And when you think about it this way, that a sacrifice has to be made or that our kids' lives might be jeopardized, negatively impacted in some way, it just feels like it's an absolute no for me, right? And remember what I started talking about in the beginning. Routine decisions are no big deal, but complex decisions often mean that we have the ability to influence outcomes.
And the implication in our minds is that our decisions will not only influence our own outcomes, but also those of the people around us. Maybe it's because we'll have less time for our family or our decision will require us to make an investment in ourselves. We might worry about what our family will think, that they'll sometimes think we're less committed to them.
So making what we feel is a big decision, and let's call it what it is, making a decision to pursue any goal, it's challenging. We're afraid. We might fail.
We might regret it. Others might judge us. It might be uncomfortable.
And what if my decision hurts my family? So it's understandable when we find ourselves stuck in indecision, stuck really in not moving forward, because there's actually a big part of us that thinks it's safer here. It's safer in a world where I haven't put myself out there or taken any risks. I haven't risked failure.
I haven't had to face the discomfort of change. I haven't risked others' judgments of me. I haven't created conflict.
I'm not searing with regret. I haven't changed anything about how I take care of my family. Status quo feels safer.
So we tell ourselves, I don't know, that we have to keep thinking about it. We want to carefully weigh the pros and cons, get others' opinions. It's almost like we wait for proof or permission to choose the answer that we think is quote-unquote right.
So when we allow ourselves to stay in the place where we don't know, we feel conflicted or confused, and we take no action, again and again, it's serving a purpose for us. It somehow feels safer. And look, you don't have to make a decision to take a big leap toward a new goal, but also know that not making a decision is a decision.
It's a decision to not take risks, to not risk failure, to not go out of your comfort zone. I'm not saying that you should say yes every time you're confronted with a big decision. Sometimes it's a no.
You just don't want to. It's not a good fit. Maybe you have no interest in moving to California or taking a job that requires travel.
Sometimes it's a hell no. But have you noticed that the absolutely nots are often so much easier to admit to ourselves than the yeses? Because when it comes to big goals, the yes is going to require something of you. It's going to require you to show up for yourself, to face your discomfort, maybe even your fears.
And all of this admits the roller coaster of our lives in our 40s and 50s. Our kids are growing up, they're being teenagers, our own feelings of loss when we slowly let them go, our hormones are raging, all of the changes we're facing. Sometimes my clients say, I don't have the energy for all this.
I don't have the motivation to do what will be required of me, to say yes, to move forward. Look, I've been there. This is exactly why I found coaching to be such an asset in my own personal journey.
We have so many emotions we need to process. There's so many ways we want to just curl up in a ball and say, I can't take it anymore. It's enough to just deal with my day-to-day, the frustrations, the anxiety, the worry about my kids, the worry that I should be doing something differently to support them.
There's that layer, and there's also the looming question, what do I do with myself once my kids are really gone? We know that at some point, a decision will be required of us. We'll have to find some other way to spend our time, some other way to find purpose. One of my clients would often say to me, I worry I'm going to be sitting at home doing laundry and watching TV.
That's not what I want. But I don't know how to get out of this spiral. I feel so unmotivated.
And when we feel unmotivated, we're typically not making decisions that move us forward. We're typically staying stuck. But again, not making a decision is making a decision.
So as I said, the yes is going to require something of you. But here's something else to consider. We often think about goals as these huge mountains that we have to climb, losing 20 pounds, finding a new job, writing a book, starting a business, finding a lover, moving to a new city.
The sheer magnitude of the effort we think will be required to accomplish these goals is enough to reinforce our indecision. Thinking about these big goals feels exhausting. We wonder how we'll ever be able to get there.
But I want to offer that achieving any goal requires you to take one step, just one step, one decision to take one step. That's it. That's really it.
For example, finding a job requires you to take one step. Today, it might be to update your resume. That's one step.
Tomorrow, you can take another step. Tomorrow, you can go online and look up job opportunities for 30 minutes. One step.
Training for a marathon? Right now, in this moment, it's a decision you make to put your sneakers on and to go outside and run for five minutes. One step. What if achieving any goal only requires you to make a small decision right now that moves you just a fraction closer to the goal, just a little, that that's all you have to do right now? What if we give ourselves permission to stop thinking about our goals as these overwhelming, scary things and start taking small steps, maybe a little bit each day or one time a week, small decisions that add up to massive action over a long period of time? But in this moment, there's only one decision.
Now, sometimes the one step seems huge to tell your partner you want a divorce, to tell your boss you quit, to sell your home. Some of these decisions do feel monumental, not just a small step, but a huge leap. It's scary and it's okay.
We can feel fear. We might fail. We might regret it.
Others might judge us. It might be uncomfortable. And what if my decision hurts my family? These are all considerations that each one of us has to make for ourselves, but the fear itself isn't a problem.
It's okay that you're afraid. What if fear is the currency of your dreams? You get to decide, status quo or something different, perhaps something new, something more. What if there's no wrong answer, only what's right for you? You get to decide what you make all of it mean.
Even in the face of failure, you get to decide if the failure is a problem or simply a lesson to be learned. But the cost of telling yourself you can't decide that you're not sure how to move forward, the cost of that decision is to allow yourself to stay stuck. Moving forward, that's just a decision to take one step.
Until next time, friends. Thanks for listening to The Small Jar Podcast. Please visit us at www.thesmalljar.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram at smalljarcoach and subscribe to this podcast.
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