Have you ever felt caught deciding between two good options?
I see this a lot with clients when there are several great opportunities before them. This can feel really stressful, even though it’s all good stuff! But saying yes to everything is the quickest path to working not just Friday, but Saturdays too, so a decision must be made.
But how do you do decide when all the options feel equally good? One isn’t obviously the one you want most?
Not long ago a friend of mine told me a story about her grown child who was struggling with this type of choice.
Her daughter (we’ll call her Jan, not her real name) worked in Africa doing development work and loved it. When the pandemic started, Jan returned home to the US, not knowing what would happen next.
Once she was home, she felt constantly torn between the decision to return to Africa and the work she loved, or stay in the U.S near family and friends in a place she felt equally drawn to and at home.
She kept waiting for one choice or the other to jump up and say “ME! I’m the one you want!”, but it wasn’t happening and she was becoming increasingly grumpy and frustrated.
Finally my friend asked her “which one can you not NOT do?”.
Jan paused for a moment. Her expression changed. Suddenly, she knew. She was going back to Africa.
When she considered the idea of not going, it suddenly became clear that was the choice she couldn’t live with. And therein lie the answer.
Sometimes when you’re feeling really unsure what you want, ask yourself “What do I NOT want?”. You might even brain dump all the things you don’t want into a journal and ask yourself “what’s the opposite of all this stuff I don’t want?”.
My husband and I used this method to make the final decision about traveling for a year. We kept going back and forth with all the things that might not work out, all the things we were worried about, and all the things that were scary or unknown.
But when it came down to it and we thought about not doing it, we realized that was the thing we couldn’t live with. Which meant the answer was GO! More on this in the coming weeks. ????
Cheers,
Raina
