726: (7 of 8) Decision Paralysis: How to Finally Make the Career Move You’ve Been Putting Off for Years | What Fits You

[00:00:00] Scott Anthony Barlow: "When you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen." I've come back to that quote 100 times over the years, and mostly because of what it actually asks you to do. Making the decision is the hard part, and most of us never do. We blow them so far out of proportion, treating them like life and death situations, where one wrong move means that everything else is going to fall apart.

[00:00:22] So we deliberate, we analyze, we put it off, and then finally, at the last possible second, we order the turkey club from the menu. Okay, so I'm joking, but if it sounds ridiculous for ordering food, then you should see what happens when we try to make decisions about our career. It feels like the rest of your life hinges on this one decision, this one call, and it does, just not in the way that you think.

[00:00:44] In this episode, I wanna change how you think about every career decision that you'll make from here on out. This is day seven of the What Fits You eight-day mini course. And if you're just joining us, I want you to go back in your feed and start with the episode that says introduction before you work through days one through six.

[00:01:01] Every single day builds directly on the last. And by the way, if you haven't already registered for the complete course experience, including the emails and guided exercise, then would encourage you to do that now. You can go to happentoyourcareer.com/8day, or you can, you know, go to the link in the show notes.

[00:01:18] Before we get too far in, we should first acknowledge that when you don't make a decision about your career, when you don't make a decision about something to do with your family, when you don't make a decision for something that's impacting your life, that's actually still a decision. You are deciding to defer or deciding not to decide.

[00:01:35] To be really clear, this does nothing for you. There's been a multitude of amazing research on regret. And the one thing that tends to be common is regret often comes from not taking an action, in this case, not making a decision. Rarely does it come from the other way around, where you have decided or have taken action moving forward.

[00:01:56] So in this case, when you do make a decision, and even an imperfect one, it allows you to be able to take action. One of my favorite quotes is from Ralph Waldo Emerson, and I mentioned this already at the front side of the episode. It's "When you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen."

[00:02:10] Now, I'm not just partial to this because it says, "Make it happen" in it, although, you know, that's important right there, right? This is also important because it's how it feels when you make a decision about what you want to do. It doesn't lock you into something. Instead, it actually frees you up. Now, what do I mean by that?

[00:02:29] Well, at this point, you know a lot more about your past, your strengths, what you want out of life, and then even some viable options for consideration for a next step. But this is where the rubber meets the road. It's actually time to make a decision, but I want to help you reframe what is the decision that you're making in moving forward.

[00:02:48] What do I mean by that? Well, a less than perfect decision is far better than no decision at all, for the reasons we mentioned earlier. Tony Robbins says, "It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped." Now, you spent just over a week working through this mini course. You've learned a lot about yourself and a lot about what you really want in your career, or even validated some of the things that you were already thinking.

[00:03:11] Don't let all that hard work and knowledge go to waste. Now it's time to begin shaping your destiny. So I want you to make a decision coming out of this. But you don't have to decide the entirety of the rest of your life. Instead, what I actually want you to decide is the very next step. Decide what you'll do this week, or this month, even, you know, the next minute. One thing that'll move you forward.

[00:03:35] So many people, they treat this as, "I have to decide what it is that I'm going to spend my time doing for the rest of my life." We get the idea that once I know exactly what it is that I wanna be doing, that somehow that will be easier. The hard part is that it actually doesn't happen in reality. Most of the way that people learn what is going to create fulfilling work and ultimately a fulfilling life for them is by making preliminary decisions for areas that they might be interested in, they might want to investigate, they may be interested in, you know, moving forward, and then they take the next step to investigate that.

[00:04:14] And we've found over the years of working with many thousands of clients at this point, is that that's a far better approach, a far healthier approach. Instead of deciding what it is that you want based off relatively small amount of information, yeah, doing all the work in order to run forward to that.

[00:04:31] For example, like going, you know, going to college and, you know, putting in several years' worth of work, only to come out of college and realize that you haven't necessarily considered all of the aspects. You went and focused your efforts on an occupation, but didn't necessarily investigate it really well, and then now you've put all of this effort into this one tiny, narrow direction.

[00:04:52] So instead, I would invite you to think much bigger and then turn it completely upside down. So what we're gonna do here is I just want you to create one simple next step. One simple next step for how you can investigate any of the options that you've already created. Now, if you've listened to this podcast before for any length of time, you probably know that we call this designing career experiments.

[00:05:13] How do we validate that you're heading the right direction or validate that you're heading the wrong direction based on what it is that you know that you want in your life? Okay. Again, I just wanna go back to this simple concept. We do need to make a decision. That is what moves us forward. And simultaneously, the decision doesn't need to be absolutely everything that we're gonna do for the rest of our life.

[00:05:34] It can simply be the next step. So here's one clear prompt to be able to move you forward. What is one thing that you can do to investigate the direction that you have said you might be interested in? When you've made your decision, I would love to hear about it. If you've opted into any of the email versions of this course, then, you know, hit reply on one of those emails, or even better, what I would say is whatever podcast player you're using to watch this, leave us a comment below.

[00:06:01] Here's the other thing I would invite you to do, too. If you're at the point where you are struggling to figure out what is the next viable step, what is the next step forward, what is the next, you know, logical piece of the path, then I would encourage you to make your decision, and next step be reaching out to us.

[00:06:19] Reach out to our team. You can simply email me, scott@happentoyourcareer.com, put 'Conversation' in the subject line, and our team will help you schedule a conversation. We'll ask you about your goals and what you've already figured out through this course, and then help you chart a plan to be able to get where it is that you wanna go.

[00:06:35] That one single decision can literally change the rest of your life. And if you've already listened to other episodes of Happen To Your Career, on this particular podcast, many of them are the stories of our clients coming on and sharing how they made their transitions.

[00:06:50] The one thing we don't often talk about as a part of their stories is a lot of the times it happened by them beginning the eight-day mini course, them listening to episodes of the podcast, and then making that one decision that changed everything else by reaching out to get support so that everything else becomes easier to create the life and work that fits you. Look out for day eight in your feed. Until then, I'm Scott Anthony Barlow. Adios.