197. When You Don’t Like Your Options
Sometimes, you’re in a situation with no good options.
You’re laid off, the job market sucks, and you’re woefully unprepared to hit the ground running on landing a new role.
Or you find out your significant other has been cheating, and you don’t want to leave them, but you also don’t know how you could ever forgive them.
Or you injure yourself and don’t like any of the options you have for healing your body.
No matter what situation you find yourself in, it’s challenging to figure out what to do when you don’t like any of your options.
Luckily, this week we’re talking about what you *can* do when you’re in this situation, and how you can move forward in a way that feels good to you.
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WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
The surprising thing that’s actually the most troublesome when you don’t like your options.
Two skills that will help you immensely when you find yourself hating your options.
Why it’s so important (but also so challenging) to tap your creative thinking skills when you don’t like any of your options.
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about what to do when you don’t like your options.
The Satisfied AF podcast is the place to learn how to create a life and career that’s wildly delicious. Want a steamier sex life? We’ve got you. Want a more satisfying career? We’ll cover that too. And you can be sure we’ll spend lots of time talking about how to build connected, fun relationships that can handle life’s ups and downs. No matter what goals you’re working on, this show will help you create a one of a kind life that is just right for you. Join me, life and career coach Kori Linn and each week I’ll give you lots of practical tips, tools, and proven strategies to help you create all the satisfaction your heart desires.
Hello, hello, hello, happy Wednesday. Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of Satisfied AF. And I wanted to just take a minute to say if you like this podcast, I would be so grateful if you would follow the show, rate and review the show, and share it with your friends, your family, your professional networks, anyone you think might benefit from the lessons and conversations we have here about how to have a more delicious life and career.
This week we have a topic that I think is really important, and that’s what to do, how to handle it when you’re in a situation where you don’t like the options you have. Sometimes you’re in a situation and none of the options are particularly good ones. Maybe you’re laid off, the job market sucks, and you’re feeling woefully unprepared to hit the ground running on landing a new role.
Or you find out your significant other has been cheating, and you don’t want to leave them, but you also do not know how you’re ever going to forgive them. Or maybe you injure yourself or have some kind of health issue going on, and you don’t like any of the options for treating and healing your body.
So these are some of the things that can happen where you might be in a situation where it just doesn’t seem like any of the options are very good ones, and that is what we’re digging into today.
So first things first, I want to tell you about the surprising thing that is actually one of the most troublesome things when you don’t like your options, and that is feeling stuck. So it’s bad enough to be in a situation where you feel like none of the options are particularly good, none of them are particularly fun, none of them feel particularly aligned to your values.
But something I see happen is when people are in a situation like that, on top of not liking the situation and not liking the options, they add this layer of like, ugh, I’m stuck, I’m trapped, there’s no good option here. And that creates kind of an additional layer of suffering on top of a situation that’s already not going so great.
And I think it’s really interesting because humans are so resilient and so adaptive and so flexible and creative, but when we feel stuck, it can really shut down a lot of that. And it can make it really hard for us to find any way to move forward or to feel empowered in any way. And when we feel disempowered, we stop looking around for ways to make the situation as good as it can be.
So as much as the particular options you have may feel shitty, I think that’s not even the worst part, in my opinion. And this is what I’ve seen coaching dozens of clients, if not hundreds, over the years as well. That feeling of being trapped and being stuck, that’s what gets people into hopelessness, it gets them into helplessness, and it’s sort of self-perpetuating, right?
The more you feel like you’re stuck, the more stuck you will feel, right? The more you tell yourself, I’m stuck, there’s no good options, the more true that will feel. And the more you don’t take action and make choices and find ways to move forward and find ways to make it work for you, the more true it is literally going to be and the more true it is going to feel that you are stuck and in a really bad situation.
And let’s just be honest, the only thing worse than being in a really bad situation is not being able to get out of the really bad situation. And in most things, there are options to move forward and the blocker is that we’re not making a decision because we don’t like the options or because we feel stuck, but that just keeps us in a bad space for longer.
So I think that’s really helpful to know, that even if you’re in a situation and you don’t like your options, like the examples we talked about before, like if you’ve just been laid off, you don’t have any prospects. You don’t have as much money saved up as you would like to to be in this position, you’re feeling like your network’s not as strong and powerful as it’s been at other times. The job market’s not going great, lots of other companies are also doing layoffs, 500 people are competing for the same one role.
And I know a lot of people are experiencing stuff like this right now. But I think the worst thing about that wouldn’t even be any of those external factors and it wouldn’t even be the options you do have, like re-skilling, rebuilding a network, taking on a part-time job of some kind to just bring some money in the door, getting a roommate, moving to somewhere less expensive to live, stuff like that.
But when we’re like, oh, I’m stuck and I’m trapped and there’s nowhere to go from here and we don’t take any action and we don’t move forward at all, I think that’s actually the thing that is going to be the clincher and feel the worst for us and be the most disempowering in the short term and make an uncomfortable situation into this symbol of pain and misery and disempowerment in the long term.
So that’s really good to know, right? Because if you’re in this kind of situation, chances are you can’t change the situation if you could. Like this podcast wouldn’t apply. If you had a good option, an option that was really sexy and fun and exciting to you, then that also wouldn’t be this situation where you don’t like your options.
But I think it’s great news that the worst thing about not liking your options isn’t the not liking your options, it’s that additional layer of feeling stuck, feeling overwhelmed. Sometimes it’s also like feeling ashamed, feeling disappointed.
And feelings are normal and they’re human and they’re going to come up. The point is we don’t get stuck in them. We don’t get trapped there, right? It’s so funny when we’re like, I’m trapped, and then we feel trapped not just in the situation, but in the trapped feeling of being trapped. It’s so important to know that that’s actually the worst part and that everything else is manageable, it’s handleable.
And yeah, it may involve doing some stuff you’d rather not do, but that is life sometimes and you are capable of that. And even if we’re doing something we’d rather not do, there are ways to do it that can feel better and ways to do it that can feel more motivating and interesting and exciting.
And we’re going to get into that right now because now we’re going to talk about two skills that you can build that are going to help you immensely if you find yourself in a situation where you’re hating your options. And skill one, maybe it’s going to make you roll your eyes, but it’s actually really powerful. So hear me on this.
Skill one is making peace with what is. Now, this is not people’s favorite. It’s, you know, kind of a bummer, right? Because sometimes we’re like, I don’t want to make peace with what is. I want to change what is. I want to have something else be what is. But before you can change anything, before you can go anywhere, you have to be honest about where you are. You have to be willing to be there.
Like if you are on a road trip from Boston to Sacramento, California, and you’re like, I don’t want to be in Boston because Boston sucks. Not that Boston sucks, Boston is great. But that might be how you feel if you’re at the beginning of a long, tedious road trip.
That’s not going to change where you are. You’re still in Boston, right? You have to make peace with being in Boston. You have to research the roads that are actually in Boston and you have to figure out how to actually go from Boston to Sacramento. You can’t be like, well, I wish I was in Iowa already. Iowa is so much closer to Sacramento, it’d be so much easier to start in Iowa. You’re not in Iowa. You’re in Boston. You got to start from Boston. You’ve got to make peace with where you are.
And this can be really hard because there’s a lot of things we don’t want to make peace with. So let me be clear on what this is and what this is not. I’m not saying condone where you are. If you’re somewhere that you were like legitimately, I shouldn’t be here, no one should be here. It is not appropriate that our world is set up that way. I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m not saying to condone what has happened.
Or if you were laid off in a way that you think is really inappropriate, disrespectful, you don’t have to love that. You don’t have to like that. You don’t have to approve of it. You just have to make peace, which is to really just say, be honest with yourself that this is where you are and this is the starting point.
But making peace is also interesting because what it’s also doing is not allowing yourself to get sucked into this narrative that because you’re starting at that point, everything’s fucked, right? So if you’re like, ugh, I’m in Boston and it’s terrible because it’s so far away, but I guess this is where I am. That’s not totally 100% making peace, right? That’s still a little bit in the narrative of how terrible it is to be in Boston if what you’re trying to do is get to Sacramento.
So it might be more like, okay, Boston, I wish I was starting in Iowa, but what I’m actually doing is starting in Boston. And even if I don’t think anyone should have to start from Boston, that’s what’s true. So how do I start from Boston? And how do I start from Boston in a way that could feel yummy to me, even if this isn’t where I want to be starting from and this is not what I want the beginning of this journey to look like?
So that is the skill of making peace. And making peace is really powerful because what it’s going to do is it’s going to allow you to exit from the part where you lament endlessly about how the options suck. And I think it also can be helpful to give yourself some time to lament about how the options suck and to give yourself full permission to be angry, to be pissed, to be annoyed, to be enraged, or to be sad, to be disappointed, to be overwhelmed, to be grieving that this is where you are or this is the state of the world.
But we don’t want to stay there forever because that usually is not going to help us navigate the situation, have a better experience, get more of what we want and create more of what we want to see in the world. So that is why making peace is so important.
It’s not toxic positivity. It’s not spiritual bypassing. It’s not gaslighting yourself. It is accepting that sometimes we start journeys not from where we want to start and from a different place entirely. And that maybe the journey can still happen from there and can be enjoyable in some ways and we can be successful even if we really wish this weren’t what was happening.
And that brings us to the second skill that’s going to help you immensely if you find yourself hating your options. And that is the skill of selling. And that might sound funny. You’re like, what Kori? I’m not a salesperson. I don’t work in sales or marketing. Why would I have to sell anything? And the answer is because you’re going to need to sell yourself.
You’re going to need to sell yourself on your capability. You’re going to need to sell yourself on the fact that it’s possible. You’re going to need to sell yourself on this could be fun and enjoyable. You’re going to need to sell yourself on I can figure out the steps to take.
You’re going to need to sell yourself basically on the idea that there is an option you can take forward and be successful at and enjoy doing, even if it’s not 100,000% the ideal that you would prefer it to be.
So if we go back to the example of being laid off, the network’s not feeling powerful, the job market’s feeling sucky, not having enough money lined up, that’s not a great place to be. So making peace with that could look like, okay, I really wish this isn’t where I was starting from, but this is where I’m starting from. If I’m starting from here, is it possible that I could move forward and have a good experience?
And then you go from there into the sales skills of like, okay, now my job is to sell myself on the idea that yes, I can move forward from here and have a good experience. Yes, I can move forward from here and get to where I want to go, even if it’s a long road trip. Selling yourself on like, yes, I can learn the skills. Yes, one of these options can be good enough and maybe yes, even there’s an option I hadn’t thought of before. So like maybe there is another option.
Sometimes in situations we get stuck in thinking of like, well, what are the traditional options someone would take? And that really can limit us and hem us in to thinking about the thing in a manner that is predictable, and maybe that would work for some people or maybe some people could succeed with that. Maybe we could succeed with that.
But maybe there’s another option that’s kind of invisible to the naked eye because it’s not something people typically do. But that’s still available to us and that might be an option actually, we prefer more once we can uncover, discover, build, dream it up into being, right?
So these two skills that are going to help immensely if you find yourself hating your options are making peace with where you are and what’s available to you from there, and the skill of selling yourself on, you’re going to either sell yourself on an option, even if it’s not your favorite, you’re going to sell yourself on why it’s excellent. Or you’re going to sell yourself on your ability to do hard work. Or you’re going to sell yourself on the fact that you can have fun and an enjoyable experience as you go about this option, even though you don’t prefer it.
You get to pick what particularly you’re going to sell yourself on, but you’re going to need to sell yourself on something if you’re in a situation where you hate all of your options.
So I remember a situation that’s a good example for this, where I was being coached by someone. I was running a business. It wasn’t going well. I didn’t like any of my options. I wanted the option where that business made money. That business was not making money. I wasn’t able to figure it out. I’d been trying some things, it wasn’t working. I didn’t have as much money as I wanted to. I didn’t have health insurance.
And so this woman was coaching me and the conclusion we both came to was like, I needed to get a job. And I didn’t want that option. I was fucking pissed about that option. But she said this beautiful question, which was tell me only the good things about that option. And the first thing I thought of was like, oh, if I do that option, I’ll have expendable income and I’ll be able to invest in these things I wanted to invest in, right?
I could invest in teaching and education so that I could circle back to that business that I’d been trying to run later and maybe have a more successful go of it. Or I could invest in different kinds of things. I would have health insurance, right?
So I was able, even though I didn’t really want the option of having a day job when I went into that coaching session, I was just so upset that the business wasn’t working. It wasn’t making money. Like I felt trapped and stuck, like I was talking about before.
But I left that coaching session really like sold on, okay, that option has a lot of beautiful things. I can pursue it. I can be successful at it. I can have a good experience of it, even if it’s not what I want most or what I want long term. And so I sold myself on it and that is what I’m suggesting to you to be able to do.
Okay, let’s talk about one more thing and that’s why it’s so important and also so challenging to tap your creative thinking skills when you don’t like your options. So what I was mentioning before is sometimes there’s an option that is kind of invisible at first because a lot of times the way we think about the world, the way we think about what’s possible, the way we think about what our options even are in any given moment is very informed by what we’ve seen other people do, what is culturally normalized, what we believe is even possible.
And so sometimes if you’re in a situation where you don’t like your options, you can sell yourself on one of them, like I chose to do. I chose to sell myself on a very culturally normalized option called get a job. But sometimes there are other things you could do that are not culturally normalized, so they’re not going to occur to you.
So the options that occur to you, you might not like any of them, but sometimes it’s like, well, what are a hundred ways to solve this problem? What are a thousand ways to solve this problem? If I had to solve this problem in a way that is not the culturally normalized way to solve this problem, what might that look like?
And what that’s going to allow you to do is tap into your creative thinking skills and think about the potential ways the problem could get solved. Even if some of them seem ludicrous, sometimes it can be really valuable to put all your options on the table, including options you don’t want. And sometimes when you do that, you’ll figure out like, I do want that option I thought I didn’t want. And then you can sell yourself on it, like I did with the option to get a job.
Or you might see an option you’d never seen before, right? Like if someone’s in a financial pickle, one thing to do is to be able to get more work or get more money in some manner. Another thing to do is to be able to reduce your expenses. And sometimes it’s easier and more appealing to reduce expenses than it is to get access to more capital at that specific time.
So what I kind of want you to get used to, and one of the things that I think is really beneficial for building a wildly satisfying life is just realizing all of the myriad ways problems can be solved and that they do not have to be solved in the way you’ve seen them solve before or in the way that’s culturally normalized.
So that’s what we have covered today. The surprising thing that’s actually the most troublesome when you don’t like your option, and that is feeling stuck. Two skills that will help you immensely when you find yourself hating your options. And those are making peace with what is and sales skills, baby, and why it’s so important, but also so challenging to tap your creative thinking skills when you don’t like your options. And it’s so important because it’s going to give you the widest variety of choices and options that you can choose from.
Oh, and I didn’t say this before, but why it’s so challenging is because you’re scared and you feel trapped and you feel stuck. And when we feel trapped and stuck, that can be the time that it’s actually hardest to tap our creativity. So lists are a great way to get around that. Or thinking about hypotheticals, like that question I asked of like, if there were a thousand ways to solve this and I don’t have to do any of those thousand ways, but I have to write them down, what would those be?
And then other ways that you can just like soothe and calm yourself down enough to think about like, well, what could happen? You can hire a coach, someone like me to talk through your options with. A lot of times coaches can see options for you that you can’t see for yourself because that’s part of our skill set and because we’re not you. And sometimes it’s hardest to see our own complete set of options.
Okay, that’s what I have for y’all today. Like I said, at the beginning of the podcast, if you appreciated what you learned today, I would love it if you would follow, rate, review, and share the show. If you have questions for me, please email them in Kori@KoriLinn.com. Thank you so much for listening. And I’ll talk to you next time. Bye bye.
Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode of Satisfied AF. If you are ready to create a wildly delicious life and have way more fun than you ever thought possible, visit www.korilinn.com to see how I can help. See you next week.
The Satisfied AF podcast is the place to learn how to create a life and career that’s wildly delicious. Want a steamier sex life? We’ve got you. Want a more satisfying career? We’ll cover that too. And you can be sure we’ll spend lots of time talking about how to build connected, fun relationships that can handle life’s ups and downs. No matter what goals you’re working on, this show will help you create a one of a kind life that is just right for you. Join me, life and career coach Kori Linn and each week I’ll give you lots of practical tips, tools, and proven strategies to help you create all the satisfaction your heart desires.
Hello, hello, hello, happy Wednesday. Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of Satisfied AF. And I wanted to just take a minute to say if you like this podcast, I would be so grateful if you would follow the show, rate and review the show, and share it with your friends, your family, your professional networks, anyone you think might benefit from the lessons and conversations we have here about how to have a more delicious life and career.
This week we have a topic that I think is really important, and that’s what to do, how to handle it when you’re in a situation where you don’t like the options you have. Sometimes you’re in a situation and none of the options are particularly good ones. Maybe you’re laid off, the job market sucks, and you’re feeling woefully unprepared to hit the ground running on landing a new role.
Or you find out your significant other has been cheating, and you don’t want to leave them, but you also do not know how you’re ever going to forgive them. Or maybe you injure yourself or have some kind of health issue going on, and you don’t like any of the options for treating and healing your body.
So these are some of the things that can happen where you might be in a situation where it just doesn’t seem like any of the options are very good ones, and that is what we’re digging into today.
So first things first, I want to tell you about the surprising thing that is actually one of the most troublesome things when you don’t like your options, and that is feeling stuck. So it’s bad enough to be in a situation where you feel like none of the options are particularly good, none of them are particularly fun, none of them feel particularly aligned to your values.
But something I see happen is when people are in a situation like that, on top of not liking the situation and not liking the options, they add this layer of like, ugh, I’m stuck, I’m trapped, there’s no good option here. And that creates kind of an additional layer of suffering on top of a situation that’s already not going so great.
And I think it’s really interesting because humans are so resilient and so adaptive and so flexible and creative, but when we feel stuck, it can really shut down a lot of that. And it can make it really hard for us to find any way to move forward or to feel empowered in any way. And when we feel disempowered, we stop looking around for ways to make the situation as good as it can be.
So as much as the particular options you have may feel shitty, I think that’s not even the worst part, in my opinion. And this is what I’ve seen coaching dozens of clients, if not hundreds, over the years as well. That feeling of being trapped and being stuck, that’s what gets people into hopelessness, it gets them into helplessness, and it’s sort of self-perpetuating, right?
The more you feel like you’re stuck, the more stuck you will feel, right? The more you tell yourself, I’m stuck, there’s no good options, the more true that will feel. And the more you don’t take action and make choices and find ways to move forward and find ways to make it work for you, the more true it is literally going to be and the more true it is going to feel that you are stuck and in a really bad situation.
And let’s just be honest, the only thing worse than being in a really bad situation is not being able to get out of the really bad situation. And in most things, there are options to move forward and the blocker is that we’re not making a decision because we don’t like the options or because we feel stuck, but that just keeps us in a bad space for longer.
So I think that’s really helpful to know, that even if you’re in a situation and you don’t like your options, like the examples we talked about before, like if you’ve just been laid off, you don’t have any prospects. You don’t have as much money saved up as you would like to to be in this position, you’re feeling like your network’s not as strong and powerful as it’s been at other times. The job market’s not going great, lots of other companies are also doing layoffs, 500 people are competing for the same one role.
And I know a lot of people are experiencing stuff like this right now. But I think the worst thing about that wouldn’t even be any of those external factors and it wouldn’t even be the options you do have, like re-skilling, rebuilding a network, taking on a part-time job of some kind to just bring some money in the door, getting a roommate, moving to somewhere less expensive to live, stuff like that.
But when we’re like, oh, I’m stuck and I’m trapped and there’s nowhere to go from here and we don’t take any action and we don’t move forward at all, I think that’s actually the thing that is going to be the clincher and feel the worst for us and be the most disempowering in the short term and make an uncomfortable situation into this symbol of pain and misery and disempowerment in the long term.
So that’s really good to know, right? Because if you’re in this kind of situation, chances are you can’t change the situation if you could. Like this podcast wouldn’t apply. If you had a good option, an option that was really sexy and fun and exciting to you, then that also wouldn’t be this situation where you don’t like your options.
But I think it’s great news that the worst thing about not liking your options isn’t the not liking your options, it’s that additional layer of feeling stuck, feeling overwhelmed. Sometimes it’s also like feeling ashamed, feeling disappointed.
And feelings are normal and they’re human and they’re going to come up. The point is we don’t get stuck in them. We don’t get trapped there, right? It’s so funny when we’re like, I’m trapped, and then we feel trapped not just in the situation, but in the trapped feeling of being trapped. It’s so important to know that that’s actually the worst part and that everything else is manageable, it’s handleable.
And yeah, it may involve doing some stuff you’d rather not do, but that is life sometimes and you are capable of that. And even if we’re doing something we’d rather not do, there are ways to do it that can feel better and ways to do it that can feel more motivating and interesting and exciting.
And we’re going to get into that right now because now we’re going to talk about two skills that you can build that are going to help you immensely if you find yourself in a situation where you’re hating your options. And skill one, maybe it’s going to make you roll your eyes, but it’s actually really powerful. So hear me on this.
Skill one is making peace with what is. Now, this is not people’s favorite. It’s, you know, kind of a bummer, right? Because sometimes we’re like, I don’t want to make peace with what is. I want to change what is. I want to have something else be what is. But before you can change anything, before you can go anywhere, you have to be honest about where you are. You have to be willing to be there.
Like if you are on a road trip from Boston to Sacramento, California, and you’re like, I don’t want to be in Boston because Boston sucks. Not that Boston sucks, Boston is great. But that might be how you feel if you’re at the beginning of a long, tedious road trip.
That’s not going to change where you are. You’re still in Boston, right? You have to make peace with being in Boston. You have to research the roads that are actually in Boston and you have to figure out how to actually go from Boston to Sacramento. You can’t be like, well, I wish I was in Iowa already. Iowa is so much closer to Sacramento, it’d be so much easier to start in Iowa. You’re not in Iowa. You’re in Boston. You got to start from Boston. You’ve got to make peace with where you are.
And this can be really hard because there’s a lot of things we don’t want to make peace with. So let me be clear on what this is and what this is not. I’m not saying condone where you are. If you’re somewhere that you were like legitimately, I shouldn’t be here, no one should be here. It is not appropriate that our world is set up that way. I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m not saying to condone what has happened.
Or if you were laid off in a way that you think is really inappropriate, disrespectful, you don’t have to love that. You don’t have to like that. You don’t have to approve of it. You just have to make peace, which is to really just say, be honest with yourself that this is where you are and this is the starting point.
But making peace is also interesting because what it’s also doing is not allowing yourself to get sucked into this narrative that because you’re starting at that point, everything’s fucked, right? So if you’re like, ugh, I’m in Boston and it’s terrible because it’s so far away, but I guess this is where I am. That’s not totally 100% making peace, right? That’s still a little bit in the narrative of how terrible it is to be in Boston if what you’re trying to do is get to Sacramento.
So it might be more like, okay, Boston, I wish I was starting in Iowa, but what I’m actually doing is starting in Boston. And even if I don’t think anyone should have to start from Boston, that’s what’s true. So how do I start from Boston? And how do I start from Boston in a way that could feel yummy to me, even if this isn’t where I want to be starting from and this is not what I want the beginning of this journey to look like?
So that is the skill of making peace. And making peace is really powerful because what it’s going to do is it’s going to allow you to exit from the part where you lament endlessly about how the options suck. And I think it also can be helpful to give yourself some time to lament about how the options suck and to give yourself full permission to be angry, to be pissed, to be annoyed, to be enraged, or to be sad, to be disappointed, to be overwhelmed, to be grieving that this is where you are or this is the state of the world.
But we don’t want to stay there forever because that usually is not going to help us navigate the situation, have a better experience, get more of what we want and create more of what we want to see in the world. So that is why making peace is so important.
It’s not toxic positivity. It’s not spiritual bypassing. It’s not gaslighting yourself. It is accepting that sometimes we start journeys not from where we want to start and from a different place entirely. And that maybe the journey can still happen from there and can be enjoyable in some ways and we can be successful even if we really wish this weren’t what was happening.
And that brings us to the second skill that’s going to help you immensely if you find yourself hating your options. And that is the skill of selling. And that might sound funny. You’re like, what Kori? I’m not a salesperson. I don’t work in sales or marketing. Why would I have to sell anything? And the answer is because you’re going to need to sell yourself.
You’re going to need to sell yourself on your capability. You’re going to need to sell yourself on the fact that it’s possible. You’re going to need to sell yourself on this could be fun and enjoyable. You’re going to need to sell yourself on I can figure out the steps to take.
You’re going to need to sell yourself basically on the idea that there is an option you can take forward and be successful at and enjoy doing, even if it’s not 100,000% the ideal that you would prefer it to be.
So if we go back to the example of being laid off, the network’s not feeling powerful, the job market’s feeling sucky, not having enough money lined up, that’s not a great place to be. So making peace with that could look like, okay, I really wish this isn’t where I was starting from, but this is where I’m starting from. If I’m starting from here, is it possible that I could move forward and have a good experience?
And then you go from there into the sales skills of like, okay, now my job is to sell myself on the idea that yes, I can move forward from here and have a good experience. Yes, I can move forward from here and get to where I want to go, even if it’s a long road trip. Selling yourself on like, yes, I can learn the skills. Yes, one of these options can be good enough and maybe yes, even there’s an option I hadn’t thought of before. So like maybe there is another option.
Sometimes in situations we get stuck in thinking of like, well, what are the traditional options someone would take? And that really can limit us and hem us in to thinking about the thing in a manner that is predictable, and maybe that would work for some people or maybe some people could succeed with that. Maybe we could succeed with that.
But maybe there’s another option that’s kind of invisible to the naked eye because it’s not something people typically do. But that’s still available to us and that might be an option actually, we prefer more once we can uncover, discover, build, dream it up into being, right?
So these two skills that are going to help immensely if you find yourself hating your options are making peace with where you are and what’s available to you from there, and the skill of selling yourself on, you’re going to either sell yourself on an option, even if it’s not your favorite, you’re going to sell yourself on why it’s excellent. Or you’re going to sell yourself on your ability to do hard work. Or you’re going to sell yourself on the fact that you can have fun and an enjoyable experience as you go about this option, even though you don’t prefer it.
You get to pick what particularly you’re going to sell yourself on, but you’re going to need to sell yourself on something if you’re in a situation where you hate all of your options.
So I remember a situation that’s a good example for this, where I was being coached by someone. I was running a business. It wasn’t going well. I didn’t like any of my options. I wanted the option where that business made money. That business was not making money. I wasn’t able to figure it out. I’d been trying some things, it wasn’t working. I didn’t have as much money as I wanted to. I didn’t have health insurance.
And so this woman was coaching me and the conclusion we both came to was like, I needed to get a job. And I didn’t want that option. I was fucking pissed about that option. But she said this beautiful question, which was tell me only the good things about that option. And the first thing I thought of was like, oh, if I do that option, I’ll have expendable income and I’ll be able to invest in these things I wanted to invest in, right?
I could invest in teaching and education so that I could circle back to that business that I’d been trying to run later and maybe have a more successful go of it. Or I could invest in different kinds of things. I would have health insurance, right?
So I was able, even though I didn’t really want the option of having a day job when I went into that coaching session, I was just so upset that the business wasn’t working. It wasn’t making money. Like I felt trapped and stuck, like I was talking about before.
But I left that coaching session really like sold on, okay, that option has a lot of beautiful things. I can pursue it. I can be successful at it. I can have a good experience of it, even if it’s not what I want most or what I want long term. And so I sold myself on it and that is what I’m suggesting to you to be able to do.
Okay, let’s talk about one more thing and that’s why it’s so important and also so challenging to tap your creative thinking skills when you don’t like your options. So what I was mentioning before is sometimes there’s an option that is kind of invisible at first because a lot of times the way we think about the world, the way we think about what’s possible, the way we think about what our options even are in any given moment is very informed by what we’ve seen other people do, what is culturally normalized, what we believe is even possible.
And so sometimes if you’re in a situation where you don’t like your options, you can sell yourself on one of them, like I chose to do. I chose to sell myself on a very culturally normalized option called get a job. But sometimes there are other things you could do that are not culturally normalized, so they’re not going to occur to you.
So the options that occur to you, you might not like any of them, but sometimes it’s like, well, what are a hundred ways to solve this problem? What are a thousand ways to solve this problem? If I had to solve this problem in a way that is not the culturally normalized way to solve this problem, what might that look like?
And what that’s going to allow you to do is tap into your creative thinking skills and think about the potential ways the problem could get solved. Even if some of them seem ludicrous, sometimes it can be really valuable to put all your options on the table, including options you don’t want. And sometimes when you do that, you’ll figure out like, I do want that option I thought I didn’t want. And then you can sell yourself on it, like I did with the option to get a job.
Or you might see an option you’d never seen before, right? Like if someone’s in a financial pickle, one thing to do is to be able to get more work or get more money in some manner. Another thing to do is to be able to reduce your expenses. And sometimes it’s easier and more appealing to reduce expenses than it is to get access to more capital at that specific time.
So what I kind of want you to get used to, and one of the things that I think is really beneficial for building a wildly satisfying life is just realizing all of the myriad ways problems can be solved and that they do not have to be solved in the way you’ve seen them solve before or in the way that’s culturally normalized.
So that’s what we have covered today. The surprising thing that’s actually the most troublesome when you don’t like your option, and that is feeling stuck. Two skills that will help you immensely when you find yourself hating your options. And those are making peace with what is and sales skills, baby, and why it’s so important, but also so challenging to tap your creative thinking skills when you don’t like your options. And it’s so important because it’s going to give you the widest variety of choices and options that you can choose from.
Oh, and I didn’t say this before, but why it’s so challenging is because you’re scared and you feel trapped and you feel stuck. And when we feel trapped and stuck, that can be the time that it’s actually hardest to tap our creativity. So lists are a great way to get around that. Or thinking about hypotheticals, like that question I asked of like, if there were a thousand ways to solve this and I don’t have to do any of those thousand ways, but I have to write them down, what would those be?
And then other ways that you can just like soothe and calm yourself down enough to think about like, well, what could happen? You can hire a coach, someone like me to talk through your options with. A lot of times coaches can see options for you that you can’t see for yourself because that’s part of our skill set and because we’re not you. And sometimes it’s hardest to see our own complete set of options.
Okay, that’s what I have for y’all today. Like I said, at the beginning of the podcast, if you appreciated what you learned today, I would love it if you would follow, rate, review, and share the show. If you have questions for me, please email them in Kori@KoriLinn.com. Thank you so much for listening. And I’ll talk to you next time. Bye bye.
Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode of Satisfied AF. If you are ready to create a wildly delicious life and have way more fun than you ever thought possible, visit www.korilinn.com to see how I can help. See you next week.
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