Make the right decision!
For many of us those words are on loop in our minds, a terrifying high-pressure mantra. Whether you are raising kids, caring for clients, mapping out your next moves or even when just dealt an awkward favour request by a friend, decision-making is one of the most difficult challenges each of us face. But whether millions of dollars are at stake or whether it is broader, that you always want to honour yourself in all the choices you make, the good news is you can always make the right decision if you use your personal GPS.
Hunter realized his personal GPS was talking to him loud and clear just last week (though it had always been). I have been coaching him (and am using his story with permission) through an agonizing process: leaving a job he has had for his entire work life and now hates – he is in his fifties – to pursue creating a business that allows him to use his unique skills and talents every day creating a product that will make people feel really good.
What’s held him back for so long? Fear. Fear of making the wrong decision. And then more fear: what lies ahead if I don’t make the right decision?
All that changed this past week when my phone rang. It was Hunter, calling me to tell me his last day at the job he has hated for so long is next month.
I could hear the elation in his voice, and after my backflips and mandatory confetti tossing ended, I said to Hunter, “So how do you feel – you finally did it, after all this time.”
Hunter replied, “It feels really good. But the jury’s still out.”
I asked Hunter what that last bit meant and he clarified: “Did I make the right decision by quitting my job? We’ll see. Jury’s out.”
I said to him: “You have to understand something like you’ve never understood anything before: If you are feeling good that’s it. The jury is IN – you made the right decision.“
Feeling good is the call of life. >Tweet this!
Hunter’s personal GPS was already giving the great universal stamp of approval to his decision: “It feels really good,” he said. Our emotions are not just complex feelings that fly about in our minds and hearts in reaction to things we observe or experience. Our emotions are our very own, unique only to us, personal inner guidance system, our personal GPS. And your personal GPS is magnificent – no car company will ever be able to mimic the intelligence you are being given at all times as long as you pay attention to how you feel.
Hunter left his job at last and is feeling great? That’s divine intelligence telling him all is well.
When Hunter was at his job he felt miserable the better part of the last ten years (his personal GPS telling him he was not where he should be). As I have coached him he has been a hard nut to crack, he was so afraid of making the wrong decision. But then he finally too the leap and he has been flying high ever since. What’s that flying high? Not just random positive emotions because he has only days left doing a job he hated for so long, the flying high is his inner GPS jumping for joy because he’s finally turned right after years of ignoring all the calls to do so.
As we live our lives, we are searching for a feeling. Feeling frisky, feeling jazzed, feeling eager, feeling alive, feeling YES!, feeling like you can take on the world. And to the degree that you are feeling incredible as you interact with people, as you make decisions and choices, is the degree to which you know your interactions and decisions and choices are the right ones for you.
Your inner GPS never goes haywire on you. The next time you are pondering a decision, you only need to imagine yourself in the different scenarios of that decision. Does asking someone to marry you feel wonderful and exciting or does it fill you with unease? Don’t do it if it’s the latter. Does getting your child a pet suddenly make you freeze with dread or so you smile to yourself as you envision them holding their first kitten? Which feels better? Sticking to the scheduled dinner plans with your friend tonight, or the new idea you just had to reschedule dinner and be a couch potato with a tall glass of Sauvignon Blanc?
Making the right decision is easy. Do the things that make you feel alive. Say no to those that don’t. All it takes is the understanding that our emotions are our magnificent guidance systems taking us through life the way we ourselves would have us go. When I left finance my decision was made by comparing the way I felt when I thought about staying in the industry to the way I felt when I thought about re-inventing myself and pursuing my passions.
Never once has my inner GPS steered me wrong, and never once will it steer you wrong either.
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