Decisions of the big and scary kind

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This month is a big deal in my world.

Applications to choose a primary school for my daughter are opening, and we’re trying to decide which school to send her to.

We’d always thought that she’d go to the one opposite our house, kinda makes sense doesn’t it? For nine years that’s what we’ve thought. But now it’s deciding time, well, all kinds of doubt is creeping in.

  • What if she hates it?
  • What if the children are mean?
  • How do I know how good the teachers are?
  • What if we make her go somewhere and she hates it and it destroys her love of education and she ends up destitute and alone as an adult?!

Talk about drama

Wow, when we’re making big decisions we can really tie ourselves up in knots, can’t we? Like in my example, I’ve been catastrophising massively about how our decision in the here and now might affect her as a grown up. I mean, there are plenty of years to screw her up before she gets to being an adult right? 

In all seriousness, this is a big decision, but there are lots of factors that go into the quality of her life as an adult, so worrying about all of that in the here and now is futile really. But we still do it. 

Sometimes it is really big

This week I’ve seen a few posts around people deciding whether they still want to be in HR or not, whether they should stay or go, so it seems pretty pertinent to me that we tap into this a bit, because that’s a huge decision isn’t it? You know I’ve been there myself – completely disillusioned with the profession but just so unsure of well, what else am I going to do? How will I pay the bills? What will people think of me? How could I think about letting my team down? All this stuff that’s just external to me that impacted on my decision to keep staying somewhere where I wasn’t really happy. 

And I know that some of you may be feeling that too. Not happy about where you are but not sure what on earth to do about it, and getting in this cycle of hope it’ll get better and convincing yourself to carry on / realising it’s not getting any better and thinking you need to do something and round and round it goes. 

What do you really, really want?

The biggest tip I have is to get focused on your big vision for the world. For your world. This is without doubt one of the most powerful exercises I do with my coaching clients, we actually sit and visualise the kind of world we want to be in. And it might not even be the world in our lifetime, it might be a few generations down the line. But it’s inspiring, and it’s emotive – it creates something in you whether it’s a tingle or a tear, or just taps into your knowing that this is how it’s meant to be. 

Choose the right kind of motivation

Why is this so important? Well, if you’re in a place of “I need to get out of this” then your motivation is going to be simply about moving away from the thing that’s causing you dissatisfaction right now. It won’t matter which direction you move in, as long as you move away from the thing that’s causing you discomfort. Then, once you’ve moved, you’ll be OK again until the next thing comes along that you want to move away from, and so on and so on. So we’re moving, but it’s not particularly directional and it’s only motivating for a little while. Each time you move, you stop doing the thing that created momentum in the first place. 

But, when you’re driven by intention, towards something, it’s easier to keep momentum. It takes the pressure away from the here and now. You can make your decisions based on whether it moves you nearer to your intention or not. It’s not about getting away from something, it’s about moving forwards, even if forwards in the moment looks like going backwards. It takes all the pressure off from letting people down or not, because when you have the big vision in mind you know that those opinions aren’t as important a consequence as doing the right thing towards that vision. And the really exciting thing is that your people, well they’re going to understand your vision and be there cheering you on instead of holding you back.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Mary Oliver

From personal experience, I know it works

The first time I left a job it was because I knew it’s what I needed to do for our last and final IVF treatment to work. The second time I left a job it was because I knew I wanted the freedom to parent without having to ask for permission, but also because I knew I couldn’t achieve my vision within the environments I was in.

  What if I don’t have the vision?

If you don’t have that big vision then I’d encourage you to tune into your intuition. Your gut response, that voice deep down that speaks really loudly and clearly when you drown out the noise that’s created by the fear and the “should’s” and the “responsibility” and all of that. Your intuition is the thing that’s guiding you towards your biggest impact, it really is. And if there’s one thing I’ve learnt and I’m still getting reminded of, it’s that when you are on the right path, stuff comes up to help you get there.

If you’d like to explore your big vision then get in touch, I offer a completely complimentary call where we can begin to tap into your vision for your world, just send me a message and we can book it in. 

Interested in finding out more?

Book a free call with me today

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