Feeling stuck making a difficult decision is one of the few things in life that we all experience and can universally agree sucks. Regardless of what it is that has you feeling that way— too few options, too many options, fear, etc.— that feeling that you get at the pit of your stomach is never a welcome emotion. So how to break the cycle of dread associated with making a tough call and finally commit to something when the proverbial pro and con list falls short and you have no clarity?
Fortunately, there are 3 things most people ignore that you can do to make moving forward with any decision a bit easier:
1. Play, Then Ask. As I mentioned in last week’s post, Go Play, play is a great way to connect with our higher selves and intuition. When we play we temporarily drop the limiting beliefs and fears that are usually responsible for making us feel stuck in the first place. Our minds and hearts are able to disassociate from the negative feelings attached with the decision at hand and we’re able to connect with our joyful selves.
I don’t know about you but in my book, my joyful self also happens to be my most successful self and I love the feeling of success. Because of this, I firmly believe that revisiting a decision making process right after you’ve found your happy will give you the best opportunity to allow your higher self to do the thinking for you and move you towards better alignment with what you want at your core. Trick is, go with whatever pops into your head first. No ifs, ands, or buts.
2. Find the Gold and Drop The Fear. If you’re reading this, it’s pretty clear that you have survived even your worst decisions. Scarred from them? Maybe. But alive. Alive and hopefully a bit wiser from it. Many of the most valuable lessons that we learn in life come from making bad decisions. In coaching land, many people refer to those lessons as gold because of the value they bring to our lives. While dealing with the consequences of them is never easy, they provide us invaluable opportunities for growth.
If we’re being real with ourselves we must acknowledge that we’re going to keep screwing up. That’s life. Fortunately for us as the conscious humans that we are, we’re also going to keep growing from it too.
Why then, if mistakes are such valuable sources of wealth for our soul do we allow ourselves to be so afraid of making them?
3. When in doubt… do. Whenever you find yourself with a decision that requires a choice you aren’t 100% clear on, sometimes the easiest thing to do to get clarity on that very issue is to commit to either option with action by random choice. Flip a coin, ask a stranger, do whatever you can do to end your analysis paralysis by taking the decision out of your hands. The key to success is in this particular scenario is a total and judgement-free commitment to the answer you get.
Remember, it’s only by actually doing something that we ever get any indication of whether it was the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ choice for us. We can analyze the bejeezus out of anything without ever trying it and only have hours of stress to show as a result.
An error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it… And if you can’t, re-read the previous point and let it really sink in. At the end of the day it all boils down to the same win-win scenario:
Either things went your way, (yay!) or darlin’, your soul is singing all the way to the bank.
Doesn’t seeing it that way feel so much more empowering?
Namasme.