90. How to Make Decisions
If you’re struggling to make a decision about something (or to make decisions in general), it’s essential to understand the difference between the decision itself and everything you will make that decision mean.
For instance, if you’re thinking about quitting your job, there’s the decision to quit or not, and then there’s everything you’d make it mean about you if you left and everything you’d make it mean about you if you stayed.
If you leave and then hate your next job, you might make that mean you are impulsive and unwise.
If you stay and things get worse at your job, you might make that mean you should have known better and that you let fear get the better of you.
When you want to make a decision, but can’t commit, it might be because you’re getting stuck in what you’d make the potential outcomes of the decision mean.
And it will feel like you’re being smart and thoughtful when you do this, like you’re considering all the possibilities, but really, all that meaning-making adds so much weight to the decision and makes it harder to simply choose.
Instead of figuring out what you want to do and doing it, you will see danger everywhere and shut down.
Instead, you need to learn to separate decisions from meaning-making. This will help you figure out what you really want to do. And it will set you up to do it more successfully vs spending all your time worrying about what could go wrong.
Tune in this week to discover how to make decisions, why you never have to beat yourself up for a decision regardless of the outcome, and how to choose a decision-making perspective that works for you.
If you want to supercharge your capacity to create a life that blows your mind, I have some one-on-one coaching slots opening up soon. Send me an email and let's talk about it or click here to schedule a call with me and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to start working together!
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WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
How we layer meaning on top of decisions that we make or want to make.
Where our socialization adds more complicated layers to our decision-making.
Why these layers of meaning and socialization make decision-making even harder.
How to see what you’re afraid will happen if your decision doesn’t have the outcome you hope it will.
What you can do to see all of the options available to you, even the ones you think you don’t want right now.
Questions to ask yourself to discover how you want to make your decisions.
What it means to have your own back and support yourself as you make decisions and live your satisfying AF life and career.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
The Humans by Matt Haig
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about how to make decisions.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y'all, how are you? Happy Wednesday. I have been reading some great books lately. I'm pretty much always reading some great books, but I think I haven't mentioned any for a while on the podcast, so I'll tell you about a few of them.
I read The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, and then I just read The Humans also by Matt Haig. And I heard about The Midnight Library because in a coaching group that I'm part of, Kara Loewentheil's group, The Clutch, someone had started a thread in there about novels that are sort of related to thought work.
And one of the ones that someone talked about was The Midnight Library. And part of that is because part of what the book is about is kind of about like how you think and your perspective on things and how much of a difference having a different perspective makes. And I'm not going to tell you too much about it because I don't want to spoil the book for you.
So I checked that book out from the library because I'd heard about it in that thread. And when I started listening to it, like the first, I don't know, hour, hour, and a half, I was kind of like, I don't know about this book. I was kind of like, I'm not sure. And I'm so glad that I made the decision to keep reading it and to see where it went because I actually really ended up liking it.
And I ended up liking it so much that I went to the library to see what other books I could find by the same author. And when I say I went to the library, I really mean I went to the library app on my phone. Because as much as I love actual physical libraries, I mostly listen to audio books or read eBooks.
So I mostly interface with the public library on my phone. But I still get most of my books from the public library because that's what I did as a kid and I fucking love libraries and they bring me so much pleasure and so much delight.
And even when I have to like wait for books, or when the book is due after three weeks, it's not always the most convenient thing, but there's something even about that inconvenience that I treasure. I just love libraries as just something that exists. And so I'm so happy they do, they were totally my happy place as a kid.
Anyways, those are some of the books I've been reading. Oh, and The Humans, which again, also by Matt Haig, was super fun because it's written from the point of view of an alien. So the observations that the narrator makes about humans in our world are like silly, and funny, and absurd. And sometimes we would say they're wrong, but then they just also really make you think like, oh yeah, I could see how someone would see us that way.
And there's something really magical about kind of just shaking up the day to day viewpoints that we have on ourselves, our lives, the world, et cetera. So those are some books I've been reading. Have y'all been reading anything fun? Anything delightful? Any yummy books? If so and you think I would like them, send me an Instagram message, or email me about it because I am always looking for more excellent books to read.
I'm on BookTok now, which is TikToks about books. So I'm getting so many recommendations there all the time as well. So I actually have so many books on hold at the library that there was a point where they were like, no, no more books on hold. You have so many books on hold, you have to read some and then you can have some more holds. Because I can't, I'm kind of a slow reader and so I like have to sort of like balance and juggle all the books I want to read.
But still, if you have more recommendations, I will take them. So get in touch with me with your questions and your comments and your book recommendations. All right. That's enough about that.
Let's talk about how to make decisions. So before we can actually make a decision, we need to see what we're adding to the actual decision itself. So when it comes to making decisions there's the decision itself and then there's everything we would be making that decision mean, right?
So for instance, if I was thinking about quitting my job, which I'm not because now I'm happily a coach. But back when I was in corporate if I was thinking about quitting my job there would be the decision to quit my job or not. And the decision about whatever I would be doing next, whether I would be getting a different job, taking a break, whatever, starting a business, which is what I did.
And then there's what I make that decision mean about me. So for something like work a lot of us are adding a lot of layers of meaning there. We're making work mean whether or not we're successful. We make work mean whether or not we're worthy. Sometimes we make work mean whether or not we're a good person.
We may make work mean whether or not we're intelligent. Whether or not we're doing a good job at running our lives. Whether or not we're allowed to be happy, right? So a lot of people have the idea that they'll be happy when, right?
I'll be happy when I make 150 grand a year. I'll be happy when I have the job title like director. Or I'll be happy when, and I mean there's a lot of stuff where people do this outside of work, right? I'll be happy when I have a relationship. Or I'll be happy when I'm married. Or I'll be happy when my body looks a certain way.
So there's the decision itself and then there's all the shit we're layering on top of the decision. All of the things that we're going to make the decision mean about us and all the things we're going to make the outcomes of the decision mean about us, right?
So for instance, if you have a job and you decide to quit the job and start a business, there's the part where you quit the job and start the business. And then there's like the outcomes of that, right? It's like a year or two years down the road, is the business making money? Is it making as much money as you thought it would?
And so it's like, what do we make it mean about us that we quit the job? What do we make it mean about us that we started the business? What do we make it mean about us whatever the business revenue is?
And within this there's, of course, a lot of socialization. Most of us have been socialized from a pretty young age that being successful means certain things. Like being successful means having a job that we like, or being successful means being partnered, or being successful means having a 401K and planning for retirement.
For different ones of us, like uniquely, we're going to have different things. There's like the general socialization we receive that’s pretty similar about what it means to be successful. And then within our own specific families and other identities we belong to there's going to be probably additional messaging about that.
For some of us being successful means having a lot of money. But for other people being successful means having sort of a medium amount of money because if you have too much money then that's also bad, in some contexts, in some narratives about what it means to be successful or what it means to be a good person.
For a lot of people, being a good person and being successful overlap, right? That's a Venn diagram. But not for everybody, right? For some people being successful, they think they have to be a certain kind of person that they think is a bad person, or for some people they think being a good person means not being too successful because that would be like having too many resources or something like that.
So it's important to know when you're trying to make a decision, especially if it's a decision you're struggling to make that you're not making easily, because if you were making it easily you probably don't need this podcast. So if it's a decision you're struggling with, part of the reason you're probably struggling with it is all of those layers of meaning that you're adding on top of the decision.
It's like we take the decision itself and then we load it, we put all this weight onto it, we put all this meaning onto it. And when we do that, it can make it very difficult to make the decision, right? Because if I want to be successful but I think quitting my job could mean that then I'm not going to be successful, then that makes that a very loaded decision, a very difficult decision to make because ultimately I need to know the future and know how starting that business will turn out in order for me to feel okay about quitting the job.
Whereas if I just decide to believe I'm successful either way, I take that weight, I take that load off of the decision and then I'm just able to make the decision like, do I want to go try running this business? Or do I want to stay in the job I'm in? Okay, so that's layer one.
Layer two is what are we afraid that we’ll do if we make the decision and then we're not happy with the decision later? So I think we have a whole other podcast episode on regret, so I'm not going to super get into that here. But what I am going to say is for a lot of us, if we make a decision and it doesn't go the way we want it to, a lot of people are going to beat themselves up about that.
And so a lot of times when people are struggling to make a decision, what they're actually struggling against is I don't want to be beaten up later. And that's actually really good to know because guess what? It's always optional.
Even if you make a decision and it doesn't turn out the way you want it to, you don't actually ever have to beat yourself up later. If you know that, if you see that that's a pattern that your brain applies sometimes, probably something you learned in childhood, you can learn how to stop doing that shit.
And that's great because beating ourselves up actually doesn't really help us do better. It usually just makes us scared of making decisions. It makes us scared to take chances because if we take a chance, there's a chance we could have to be beaten up later. But when we realize we're the one being beaten but we're also the one doing the beating, then we can opt out of that cycle and that pattern.
Okay, so to recap, there's what's the decision versus what will we make the decision mean? And there's what are we afraid would happen if things don't go the way we think, like we'd like them to? That's like our risk factor.
Okay, and then another thing I want you all to consider is what would be my reasons for whichever decision, right? So if you're in a decision where you think there's two main things, like leave my job or stay in my job. First of all, let's just pause and always ask what other options are there?
A lot of times the brain likes to think in binaries, in dichotomies, in this or that. It's actually a pattern, a thought pattern called black and white thinking or either or thinking. So if you're at a decision point, your brain might be collapsing the myriad options available to you into two main options. So it can be a useful thing to say to yourself, what other options are available?
My girlfriend has an aunt who we love, and she has the thing that she says that my girlfriend says to me now, which is like put all the options on the table, even the ones you think you don't want. So thank you, Aunt Carol, for this amazing way of thinking through options.
And I've done this multiple times. And there have been so many times when I'm like, oh, actually, I'm going to pick the exact one that I thought I didn't want. So originally I wouldn't have even included that in the option set, I would have been thinking between two other, that binary, these two other options that seem like the more likely ones.
So putting all the options on the table and asking yourself what other choices are possible just to get yourself to think outside of that box, outside of the binary. Put all those options on the table and then kind of think through each one. What would be the reasons for? What would be the reasons against?
Now let's also pause and have a moment here where I say we live in a highly rational culture, or I do. And if you live in the United States this is a culture that highly orients to the rational and to the logical. And I use a lot of logic and rationality in my coaching when I walk my clients through certain thought patterns and what those thought patterns are creating for them. And so that is a valuable framework, but it's not the only framework.
Sometimes we walk through our decisions and we're like, well, this is the logical choice, but I don't fucking want to do that. And maybe there's another choice that logically doesn't make sense, but it feels really good to you for some other reason. You're allowed to pick that other thing.
So basically, what I want to lay out for you is that I want you to consider what would be my reasons? Do I like those reasons? And also what kind of reasons are these? And what kind of reasons do I want to use to make the decision?
So again, it doesn't have to be like that high rational logic. It could be like this one seems fun. It could be like this seems like an adventure, or it could be like I've got a feeling about it. Now, do we know what your feeling is? Like do we know if that's true intuition? We don't know. Or at least I don't know. Maybe you know, I don't know. But what I want to circle you back to here is like what I talk about on the podcast about when to leave your job.
You get to do whatever you want for whatever reason you want because you have freewill and you're an adult. And if you're not an adult, listen to this, I love you so much, but this podcast is directed for adults. And so I'm going to speak to adults. And you can talk to your parents about the difference between what applies for adults and what applies for you.
Okay, so as adults you get to do whatever you want for whatever reason you want. And so you don't have to choose the rational thing. And you don't have to choose the irrational thing. You don't have to choose one of the binary. You can say what other options are there here and which one could be interesting for me? Okay.
I also want to talk a little bit about indecision. So you're also allowed to not make a decision yet, but I want you to be really aware that that actually is a decision. Choosing to wait is choosing. And I want to point that out because I think sometimes when we want to make a decision but we're struggling to make that decision, we don't like that feeling of like the internal pressure to choose and we don't want to choose.
And again, maybe we're like loading a lot of stuff onto it or we're afraid what we'll say if we choose and then things don't work out the way we want to. And we may want to wait. And you're always, always allowed to do that. Again, any choice you want for whatever reason you want. But I just want you to be aware that that is also a choice, and it also has costs and benefits just like any other choice.
So for instance, if you want to quit your job but you also don't want to quit your job or you're scared what you'll say to yourself if you launch your business and it doesn't get the revenue you want in two years, and so you choose to not make a decision yet. Okay, you're totally allowed to do that. But you're making the decision to stay where you are. You're making the decision to keep the status quo.
So just be honest with yourself about that. There is really no not making a decision, because even the decision to keep things the same is a decision. So there's this quote that goes, “Whatever you're not changing, you're choosing.” I'm not sure, and I've Googled, and I can't seem to find who the quote originally comes from but it's probably a motivational speaker. And I think that's where I've heard it from.
There's this motivational speaker that Alex loves, but I can't remember his name. And I thought I could find it by Googling, but no luck there. So I don't always love that frame for everything, and I think it's not always something I would choose to think about. But in terms of this conversation about making decisions, I think it's actually really powerful. So whatever you're not changing, you're choosing.
So you're choosing something no matter what. And you're allowed to choose the status quo of whatever you already have. And you're allowed to choose to quit your job and start a business. And you're allowed to choose to quit your job and get a different job or keep your job for two years and then start whatever. Like these are all just examples.
Again, you get to choose whatever you want for whatever reason you want because you have freewill and total sovereignty over your life and you're in charge and you're the boss. Do you have a bunch of socialization that's going to try to push you to show up in a certain way? Yeah, do you have a human brain that's going to have a bunch of biases? Yeah, but you also have freewill, and you also get to decide what you want to do.
My role is to help you navigate that and help you be kind to yourself because I just think being kind to ourselves and being self-compassionate while also continuing to encourage ourselves allows us to achieve so many amazing things in life, and so much more than beating ourselves up when things don't work out the way we want them to.
And then the final thing I want to offer you for how to make decisions is the idea of having your own back. And I learned this idea first from Kara Loewentheil, and I also learned about it in my coach training with the Life Coach School. And it used to confuse me a little bit when I first heard about it, but now it makes so much sense to me. And I think it's such an incredible concept.
Basically it's like you know how people say like she has my back, or she doesn't have my back. That's something we say in relation to friendships and it's like if someone has your back they're going to be there for you, they're going to support you, they're going to love you, they're going to say kind things about you and to you whether you're in the room or not.
And so that's what having your own back is about. It's about being there for yourself, no matter what happens. Because if you want to live a spectacular, satisfying as fuck life, some of the stuff you try is probably not going to work out, or it's not going to work out on the first time, or it's not going to work out on the 50th time.
And it's essential to be able to have your own back, to love yourself, to support yourself, to be compassionate to yourself, to cheer yourself on when it goes well and also when it doesn't go well. And I think that is actually the number one thing that makes it easier to make decisions.
Like I was saying before, if you're making a decision mean a bunch of things and you're going to beat yourself up about it if it doesn't go the way you want it to and you also can't 100% predict the future, even if you can like have a plan of action to do the thing you want to do, then making a decision is really scary.
And I think so many people get stuck in a status quo of just repeating all the shit they've done before because the idea of branching out and trying something new, especially something that seems risky to them, which let's be honest, is anything we haven't done before and even some of the stuff we have done before. Like that's going to feel so scary and so hard to do if you know that yourself is not going to have your back.
So having your own back just makes every decision easier to make. And it makes every future easier to navigate. As we talk about sometimes on the podcast, things don't always go according to plan. You might have a really incredible business plan and you might quit your job and launch that business. And then something might happen, and it might not work out the way you want it to.
And I'm not saying that to say you shouldn't take risks. I took a huge risk quitting my job and launching this business. I'm a big fan, well, I'm actually kind of risk averse, as we've talked about before. But I'm a big fan of creating the life you want to live even when that involves doing some scary shit.
And it's not all going to work perfectly. And that's okay because when you have your own back, when you're willing to pick up the pieces with yourself, when you're willing to love yourself through it, then you can do anything. Anything's possible, anything's available to you.
And that's also going to give you the emotional fuel to keep going when things don't work out because I did quit my job and do have this incredible business now. And let me tell you it didn't happen the way I thought it would and it required so much more effort from me than I realized when I quit my job.
If I had known how much effort this was going to be and how much like laying on the floor crying I was going to do, it might have taken me longer to quit my corporate job. And there were times when I definitely did regret it And also now I'm in this incredible place.
And listen, it's also not about being a perfectionist. I did not have my own back perfectly. I had my own back sometimes and I learned to have my own back more. And I learned to navigate disappointment, and I learned to keep going. And you can do that too.
And when you make decisions and practice those things, they all get much easier. It's so much easier for me to do that stuff now than it was four years ago when I first started my business. And it's all available to you too.
So let's recap, in order to make decisions you have to see everything you're weighting the decision down with and you have to take all that shit off. So if you want the decision to tell you if you're successful, if you want the decision to tell you if you're a good person, you need to do that work. You need to decide you're successful. You need to decide you're a good person or decide what those things mean and figure out a way to be them.
Take that weight off of the decision. It's so much easier to make the decision when you're not weighing it down with all that meaning making. Second, decide now you're not going to beat yourself up. Decide now what kind and supportive things you're going to say to yourself whether this thing works out or doesn't.
The third thing was put all the options on the table and make sure you have more than two so you can ensure you're not stuck in that binary thinking. So even if you have to come up with like a third option that's completely absurd and random, make a third option and put it on the table.
Then when you have your options, think about like what are my reasons for and what would be my reasons against? And which reasons do I want to choose? And remember you don't have to choose like pristine called logic, you get to make whatever choice you want for whatever reason you want to.
And then no matter what you choose whether you choose to do something, or you choose to keep what you already have, have your own back. Love yourself. Keep going. And keep making decisions this way and you will create a satisfying a fuck life and a satisfying as fuck career.
And if you want extra support with that, come sign up for a consult call with me. Let's take 50 minutes and dig in deep and find out what's going on in your life and career and figure out how you can get to the satisfying as fuck life and career of your dreams. And then if you want to learn how to work with me, I'll also tell you about that.
All right, y'all have a splendid day and I will talk to you next week. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y'all, how are you? Happy Wednesday. I have been reading some great books lately. I'm pretty much always reading some great books, but I think I haven't mentioned any for a while on the podcast, so I'll tell you about a few of them.
I read The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, and then I just read The Humans also by Matt Haig. And I heard about The Midnight Library because in a coaching group that I'm part of, Kara Loewentheil's group, The Clutch, someone had started a thread in there about novels that are sort of related to thought work.
And one of the ones that someone talked about was The Midnight Library. And part of that is because part of what the book is about is kind of about like how you think and your perspective on things and how much of a difference having a different perspective makes. And I'm not going to tell you too much about it because I don't want to spoil the book for you.
So I checked that book out from the library because I'd heard about it in that thread. And when I started listening to it, like the first, I don't know, hour, hour, and a half, I was kind of like, I don't know about this book. I was kind of like, I'm not sure. And I'm so glad that I made the decision to keep reading it and to see where it went because I actually really ended up liking it.
And I ended up liking it so much that I went to the library to see what other books I could find by the same author. And when I say I went to the library, I really mean I went to the library app on my phone. Because as much as I love actual physical libraries, I mostly listen to audio books or read eBooks.
So I mostly interface with the public library on my phone. But I still get most of my books from the public library because that's what I did as a kid and I fucking love libraries and they bring me so much pleasure and so much delight.
And even when I have to like wait for books, or when the book is due after three weeks, it's not always the most convenient thing, but there's something even about that inconvenience that I treasure. I just love libraries as just something that exists. And so I'm so happy they do, they were totally my happy place as a kid.
Anyways, those are some of the books I've been reading. Oh, and The Humans, which again, also by Matt Haig, was super fun because it's written from the point of view of an alien. So the observations that the narrator makes about humans in our world are like silly, and funny, and absurd. And sometimes we would say they're wrong, but then they just also really make you think like, oh yeah, I could see how someone would see us that way.
And there's something really magical about kind of just shaking up the day to day viewpoints that we have on ourselves, our lives, the world, et cetera. So those are some books I've been reading. Have y'all been reading anything fun? Anything delightful? Any yummy books? If so and you think I would like them, send me an Instagram message, or email me about it because I am always looking for more excellent books to read.
I'm on BookTok now, which is TikToks about books. So I'm getting so many recommendations there all the time as well. So I actually have so many books on hold at the library that there was a point where they were like, no, no more books on hold. You have so many books on hold, you have to read some and then you can have some more holds. Because I can't, I'm kind of a slow reader and so I like have to sort of like balance and juggle all the books I want to read.
But still, if you have more recommendations, I will take them. So get in touch with me with your questions and your comments and your book recommendations. All right. That's enough about that.
Let's talk about how to make decisions. So before we can actually make a decision, we need to see what we're adding to the actual decision itself. So when it comes to making decisions there's the decision itself and then there's everything we would be making that decision mean, right?
So for instance, if I was thinking about quitting my job, which I'm not because now I'm happily a coach. But back when I was in corporate if I was thinking about quitting my job there would be the decision to quit my job or not. And the decision about whatever I would be doing next, whether I would be getting a different job, taking a break, whatever, starting a business, which is what I did.
And then there's what I make that decision mean about me. So for something like work a lot of us are adding a lot of layers of meaning there. We're making work mean whether or not we're successful. We make work mean whether or not we're worthy. Sometimes we make work mean whether or not we're a good person.
We may make work mean whether or not we're intelligent. Whether or not we're doing a good job at running our lives. Whether or not we're allowed to be happy, right? So a lot of people have the idea that they'll be happy when, right?
I'll be happy when I make 150 grand a year. I'll be happy when I have the job title like director. Or I'll be happy when, and I mean there's a lot of stuff where people do this outside of work, right? I'll be happy when I have a relationship. Or I'll be happy when I'm married. Or I'll be happy when my body looks a certain way.
So there's the decision itself and then there's all the shit we're layering on top of the decision. All of the things that we're going to make the decision mean about us and all the things we're going to make the outcomes of the decision mean about us, right?
So for instance, if you have a job and you decide to quit the job and start a business, there's the part where you quit the job and start the business. And then there's like the outcomes of that, right? It's like a year or two years down the road, is the business making money? Is it making as much money as you thought it would?
And so it's like, what do we make it mean about us that we quit the job? What do we make it mean about us that we started the business? What do we make it mean about us whatever the business revenue is?
And within this there's, of course, a lot of socialization. Most of us have been socialized from a pretty young age that being successful means certain things. Like being successful means having a job that we like, or being successful means being partnered, or being successful means having a 401K and planning for retirement.
For different ones of us, like uniquely, we're going to have different things. There's like the general socialization we receive that’s pretty similar about what it means to be successful. And then within our own specific families and other identities we belong to there's going to be probably additional messaging about that.
For some of us being successful means having a lot of money. But for other people being successful means having sort of a medium amount of money because if you have too much money then that's also bad, in some contexts, in some narratives about what it means to be successful or what it means to be a good person.
For a lot of people, being a good person and being successful overlap, right? That's a Venn diagram. But not for everybody, right? For some people being successful, they think they have to be a certain kind of person that they think is a bad person, or for some people they think being a good person means not being too successful because that would be like having too many resources or something like that.
So it's important to know when you're trying to make a decision, especially if it's a decision you're struggling to make that you're not making easily, because if you were making it easily you probably don't need this podcast. So if it's a decision you're struggling with, part of the reason you're probably struggling with it is all of those layers of meaning that you're adding on top of the decision.
It's like we take the decision itself and then we load it, we put all this weight onto it, we put all this meaning onto it. And when we do that, it can make it very difficult to make the decision, right? Because if I want to be successful but I think quitting my job could mean that then I'm not going to be successful, then that makes that a very loaded decision, a very difficult decision to make because ultimately I need to know the future and know how starting that business will turn out in order for me to feel okay about quitting the job.
Whereas if I just decide to believe I'm successful either way, I take that weight, I take that load off of the decision and then I'm just able to make the decision like, do I want to go try running this business? Or do I want to stay in the job I'm in? Okay, so that's layer one.
Layer two is what are we afraid that we’ll do if we make the decision and then we're not happy with the decision later? So I think we have a whole other podcast episode on regret, so I'm not going to super get into that here. But what I am going to say is for a lot of us, if we make a decision and it doesn't go the way we want it to, a lot of people are going to beat themselves up about that.
And so a lot of times when people are struggling to make a decision, what they're actually struggling against is I don't want to be beaten up later. And that's actually really good to know because guess what? It's always optional.
Even if you make a decision and it doesn't turn out the way you want it to, you don't actually ever have to beat yourself up later. If you know that, if you see that that's a pattern that your brain applies sometimes, probably something you learned in childhood, you can learn how to stop doing that shit.
And that's great because beating ourselves up actually doesn't really help us do better. It usually just makes us scared of making decisions. It makes us scared to take chances because if we take a chance, there's a chance we could have to be beaten up later. But when we realize we're the one being beaten but we're also the one doing the beating, then we can opt out of that cycle and that pattern.
Okay, so to recap, there's what's the decision versus what will we make the decision mean? And there's what are we afraid would happen if things don't go the way we think, like we'd like them to? That's like our risk factor.
Okay, and then another thing I want you all to consider is what would be my reasons for whichever decision, right? So if you're in a decision where you think there's two main things, like leave my job or stay in my job. First of all, let's just pause and always ask what other options are there?
A lot of times the brain likes to think in binaries, in dichotomies, in this or that. It's actually a pattern, a thought pattern called black and white thinking or either or thinking. So if you're at a decision point, your brain might be collapsing the myriad options available to you into two main options. So it can be a useful thing to say to yourself, what other options are available?
My girlfriend has an aunt who we love, and she has the thing that she says that my girlfriend says to me now, which is like put all the options on the table, even the ones you think you don't want. So thank you, Aunt Carol, for this amazing way of thinking through options.
And I've done this multiple times. And there have been so many times when I'm like, oh, actually, I'm going to pick the exact one that I thought I didn't want. So originally I wouldn't have even included that in the option set, I would have been thinking between two other, that binary, these two other options that seem like the more likely ones.
So putting all the options on the table and asking yourself what other choices are possible just to get yourself to think outside of that box, outside of the binary. Put all those options on the table and then kind of think through each one. What would be the reasons for? What would be the reasons against?
Now let's also pause and have a moment here where I say we live in a highly rational culture, or I do. And if you live in the United States this is a culture that highly orients to the rational and to the logical. And I use a lot of logic and rationality in my coaching when I walk my clients through certain thought patterns and what those thought patterns are creating for them. And so that is a valuable framework, but it's not the only framework.
Sometimes we walk through our decisions and we're like, well, this is the logical choice, but I don't fucking want to do that. And maybe there's another choice that logically doesn't make sense, but it feels really good to you for some other reason. You're allowed to pick that other thing.
So basically, what I want to lay out for you is that I want you to consider what would be my reasons? Do I like those reasons? And also what kind of reasons are these? And what kind of reasons do I want to use to make the decision?
So again, it doesn't have to be like that high rational logic. It could be like this one seems fun. It could be like this seems like an adventure, or it could be like I've got a feeling about it. Now, do we know what your feeling is? Like do we know if that's true intuition? We don't know. Or at least I don't know. Maybe you know, I don't know. But what I want to circle you back to here is like what I talk about on the podcast about when to leave your job.
You get to do whatever you want for whatever reason you want because you have freewill and you're an adult. And if you're not an adult, listen to this, I love you so much, but this podcast is directed for adults. And so I'm going to speak to adults. And you can talk to your parents about the difference between what applies for adults and what applies for you.
Okay, so as adults you get to do whatever you want for whatever reason you want. And so you don't have to choose the rational thing. And you don't have to choose the irrational thing. You don't have to choose one of the binary. You can say what other options are there here and which one could be interesting for me? Okay.
I also want to talk a little bit about indecision. So you're also allowed to not make a decision yet, but I want you to be really aware that that actually is a decision. Choosing to wait is choosing. And I want to point that out because I think sometimes when we want to make a decision but we're struggling to make that decision, we don't like that feeling of like the internal pressure to choose and we don't want to choose.
And again, maybe we're like loading a lot of stuff onto it or we're afraid what we'll say if we choose and then things don't work out the way we want to. And we may want to wait. And you're always, always allowed to do that. Again, any choice you want for whatever reason you want. But I just want you to be aware that that is also a choice, and it also has costs and benefits just like any other choice.
So for instance, if you want to quit your job but you also don't want to quit your job or you're scared what you'll say to yourself if you launch your business and it doesn't get the revenue you want in two years, and so you choose to not make a decision yet. Okay, you're totally allowed to do that. But you're making the decision to stay where you are. You're making the decision to keep the status quo.
So just be honest with yourself about that. There is really no not making a decision, because even the decision to keep things the same is a decision. So there's this quote that goes, “Whatever you're not changing, you're choosing.” I'm not sure, and I've Googled, and I can't seem to find who the quote originally comes from but it's probably a motivational speaker. And I think that's where I've heard it from.
There's this motivational speaker that Alex loves, but I can't remember his name. And I thought I could find it by Googling, but no luck there. So I don't always love that frame for everything, and I think it's not always something I would choose to think about. But in terms of this conversation about making decisions, I think it's actually really powerful. So whatever you're not changing, you're choosing.
So you're choosing something no matter what. And you're allowed to choose the status quo of whatever you already have. And you're allowed to choose to quit your job and start a business. And you're allowed to choose to quit your job and get a different job or keep your job for two years and then start whatever. Like these are all just examples.
Again, you get to choose whatever you want for whatever reason you want because you have freewill and total sovereignty over your life and you're in charge and you're the boss. Do you have a bunch of socialization that's going to try to push you to show up in a certain way? Yeah, do you have a human brain that's going to have a bunch of biases? Yeah, but you also have freewill, and you also get to decide what you want to do.
My role is to help you navigate that and help you be kind to yourself because I just think being kind to ourselves and being self-compassionate while also continuing to encourage ourselves allows us to achieve so many amazing things in life, and so much more than beating ourselves up when things don't work out the way we want them to.
And then the final thing I want to offer you for how to make decisions is the idea of having your own back. And I learned this idea first from Kara Loewentheil, and I also learned about it in my coach training with the Life Coach School. And it used to confuse me a little bit when I first heard about it, but now it makes so much sense to me. And I think it's such an incredible concept.
Basically it's like you know how people say like she has my back, or she doesn't have my back. That's something we say in relation to friendships and it's like if someone has your back they're going to be there for you, they're going to support you, they're going to love you, they're going to say kind things about you and to you whether you're in the room or not.
And so that's what having your own back is about. It's about being there for yourself, no matter what happens. Because if you want to live a spectacular, satisfying as fuck life, some of the stuff you try is probably not going to work out, or it's not going to work out on the first time, or it's not going to work out on the 50th time.
And it's essential to be able to have your own back, to love yourself, to support yourself, to be compassionate to yourself, to cheer yourself on when it goes well and also when it doesn't go well. And I think that is actually the number one thing that makes it easier to make decisions.
Like I was saying before, if you're making a decision mean a bunch of things and you're going to beat yourself up about it if it doesn't go the way you want it to and you also can't 100% predict the future, even if you can like have a plan of action to do the thing you want to do, then making a decision is really scary.
And I think so many people get stuck in a status quo of just repeating all the shit they've done before because the idea of branching out and trying something new, especially something that seems risky to them, which let's be honest, is anything we haven't done before and even some of the stuff we have done before. Like that's going to feel so scary and so hard to do if you know that yourself is not going to have your back.
So having your own back just makes every decision easier to make. And it makes every future easier to navigate. As we talk about sometimes on the podcast, things don't always go according to plan. You might have a really incredible business plan and you might quit your job and launch that business. And then something might happen, and it might not work out the way you want it to.
And I'm not saying that to say you shouldn't take risks. I took a huge risk quitting my job and launching this business. I'm a big fan, well, I'm actually kind of risk averse, as we've talked about before. But I'm a big fan of creating the life you want to live even when that involves doing some scary shit.
And it's not all going to work perfectly. And that's okay because when you have your own back, when you're willing to pick up the pieces with yourself, when you're willing to love yourself through it, then you can do anything. Anything's possible, anything's available to you.
And that's also going to give you the emotional fuel to keep going when things don't work out because I did quit my job and do have this incredible business now. And let me tell you it didn't happen the way I thought it would and it required so much more effort from me than I realized when I quit my job.
If I had known how much effort this was going to be and how much like laying on the floor crying I was going to do, it might have taken me longer to quit my corporate job. And there were times when I definitely did regret it And also now I'm in this incredible place.
And listen, it's also not about being a perfectionist. I did not have my own back perfectly. I had my own back sometimes and I learned to have my own back more. And I learned to navigate disappointment, and I learned to keep going. And you can do that too.
And when you make decisions and practice those things, they all get much easier. It's so much easier for me to do that stuff now than it was four years ago when I first started my business. And it's all available to you too.
So let's recap, in order to make decisions you have to see everything you're weighting the decision down with and you have to take all that shit off. So if you want the decision to tell you if you're successful, if you want the decision to tell you if you're a good person, you need to do that work. You need to decide you're successful. You need to decide you're a good person or decide what those things mean and figure out a way to be them.
Take that weight off of the decision. It's so much easier to make the decision when you're not weighing it down with all that meaning making. Second, decide now you're not going to beat yourself up. Decide now what kind and supportive things you're going to say to yourself whether this thing works out or doesn't.
The third thing was put all the options on the table and make sure you have more than two so you can ensure you're not stuck in that binary thinking. So even if you have to come up with like a third option that's completely absurd and random, make a third option and put it on the table.
Then when you have your options, think about like what are my reasons for and what would be my reasons against? And which reasons do I want to choose? And remember you don't have to choose like pristine called logic, you get to make whatever choice you want for whatever reason you want to.
And then no matter what you choose whether you choose to do something, or you choose to keep what you already have, have your own back. Love yourself. Keep going. And keep making decisions this way and you will create a satisfying a fuck life and a satisfying as fuck career.
And if you want extra support with that, come sign up for a consult call with me. Let's take 50 minutes and dig in deep and find out what's going on in your life and career and figure out how you can get to the satisfying as fuck life and career of your dreams. And then if you want to learn how to work with me, I'll also tell you about that.
All right, y'all have a splendid day and I will talk to you next week. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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