Welcome to the Stop Sabotaging Your Success podcast, episode seventeen. I’m your host, Cindy Esliger. This is the podcast focusing on what we can do today to take control of our careers and overcome the inevitable barriers to success that we encounter along the way. 

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is make a decision. We have a tendency to leave decisions unmade because that seems easier in the moment. We do a lot of thinking, pondering and discussing, but that is mostly just a lot of busy work that keeps us from deciding. Constantly changing our minds consumes so much energy that could be better used moving forward on whatever it is we’ve decided. 

In this episode, we’re going to discuss the importance of deciding what it is you truly want, and a few strategies to get past that mental block of not knowing what you want. We’ll talk about four ways to take the confusion out of making a decision and to expect that we’re not going to like everything we decide needs to be done. 

Unmade decisions come at a cost. We have this belief system that there are right and wrong decisions, and we create a lot of pressure for ourselves to make the right one. We also don’t want to make decisions because once we do, then action will be required on our part. It might be risky action, and that makes us uncomfortable. 

Surprisingly, we prefer to sit in the discomfort of indecision rather than making a choice that could be considered by others to be the wrong one. But unmade decisions get us nowhere. Living in indecision means you haven’t committed. So stop thinking about it. Stop letting it drain your energy and make the decision. Move forward with it and let the alternatives go. Start focusing on living and making things happen for yourself. 

It’s important to own the decisions you make. Your choices are neither right or wrong, good or bad, until you decide that it is. You must believe that it’s the right decision for you in this moment. Because either way, you’re going to be happy and have an amazing life because you have the power to make that happen. You will figure it out, regardless of which way you choose to go with this specific decision you’re contemplating. 

When you believe that, which one do you do? Get past needing to be right, and really tap into what it is you want. If you’re going to be happy either way, what do you really want? Not being clear about what you want and making other people’s needs and desires more important than your own is simply a habit, and you can break this habit. 

It starts by believing that you deserve to have everything in your life exactly the way you want it. It sounds simple enough, but we don’t tend to operate that way. We’ve grown accustomed to thinking that we can’t have everything we want. So maybe this is a turning point for you. Begin allowing yourself to know and act on your wants and desires. 

One way of figuring out what you want is to use your jealousy or envy to help you analyze what it is that you wish you had, based on what others have. This can be an indication of your true desires. It’s very easy to let your jealousy eat at you. So using it to make positive change in your life is far more productive. 

Another way to figure out what you want is to try something. We claim we don’t know what we want, but we have to make a decision in order to find out what it is that we want. It sounds a little counterintuitive. It’s a bit of a catch 22 situation. We have to make a decision to see if that’s what we want or not. We have to start somewhere by making that first decision. So try something, anything, and gather some data. Treat it as an experiment that will get the ball rolling, in order to rule out the things that you don’t want.

Another way to figure out what you want is to force yourself to come up with an answer. Stop saying that you don’t know what you want, because you do. Maybe it’s deep down, but it’s there. Reclaim your power. Get what you really want out of life by actually saying it out loud. To get out of the uncertainty and confusion, ask yourself, “If I did know, what would it be? If I did care, what would I prefer? And if it did matter, what would I rather do?”. It sounds a little snarky, but it can be surprisingly effective. 

Another way to figure out what you want is to give yourself a choice. Recognize that you have to make a choice in deciding how you’re going to spend your time. Sometimes when you see the opportunity cost of your actions more clearly, you’ll make better choices. 

Did you ever play the game ‘Would You Rather’ as a kid? It’s a game of choosing between two unlikely and rather unappealing situations, and forcing people to choose which they would prefer. It can also be a good game for adults to use by posing that question to ourselves. Reframe it in a way that it’s about how we’d like to spend our time. 

Time is limited so we have to make trade-offs. If we choose this, then we’re not choosing that. It’s a different approach than the typical yes or no questions. When we reframe the question for whether we’d rather do this or that, it helps us answer in a more thoughtful way.

Choosing wisely allows us to spend our time in ways that boost our happiness and add meaning to our lives. After doing some thoughtful reflection, what you choose is up to you, but it’s important to realize that you are always choosing something. Sometimes the choices we are making aren’t always obvious. So start to recognize them. It’s the choice of this or that. 

Decide what you’d really rather be doing. It could be that one option is more attractive now, in the short term, and another option has more benefit for us in the future. What we’re doing is seeing that we have choices, rather than pretending that they don’t exist. Be intentional about your choices. This will give you an opportunity to choose in a way that creates the life that you want. 

When it comes to making decisions, I struggle with analysis paralysis. I’m always wanting more information and more time in order to feel comfortable, but we can’t always have all the information. We tend to let ourselves get stuck saying we need more information, more data, and more time to think things over. 

Maybe you’re feeling a little uncertain about everything, indulging in the confusion, because that feels like a good excuse to put it off and not decide right now. Or we end up drowning in information, which also makes a decision frustratingly impossible. 

When we’re looking at all the possible scenarios in the decision, we’re looking for security and certainty, which may or may not exist. We tend to want to choose the option that avoids many of the anticipated risks, rather than trusting ourselves to handle whatever life might throw our way. 

A certain amount of insecurity is part of life. So we can make careful, thoughtful decisions that will have the most effective long-term outcomes. And we can become skilled at assessing risks with the information available, looking for the potential roadblocks and obstacles, and then giving ourselves time to strategize ahead of time for how we’d handle these roadblocks or obstacles, if they actually happened. 

Instead, we tend to choose the safest course of action, which sometimes means we stay stuck in our comfort zone, missing out on an opportunity to learn and grow and discover new possibilities. So examine the possibilities in depth with the information that you have and make that decision, knowing that we can always make the best of any situation. And if necessary, any decision can be changed. 

All of this should make us feel less anxiety about pulling the trigger on one option or another. It’s not necessarily final. And we can always figure out a way to handle it, if it doesn’t turn out the way we planned, but it’s important to take time to check in with ourselves and see if the decision matches up with our values and our goals in life. 

So with all of that, how do you then decide? There’s four ways to take the confusion out of making a decision. 

First, consider everything. Consider all your options without bias for what you’ve already been doing or any sunk costs. Is there a third alternative where it’s not an either/or, but rather a yes/and? 

Number two, anticipate your success. Imagine any option will turn out amazingly, then which one would you choose, without anticipating failure or succumbing to your own doubt? 

Number three, what would you do if you couldn’t fail? Try to see failure as no big deal. It’s either you winning or you learning. 

And number four, what would your future self tell you to do? And why? When we spend some time thinking about what we’d like to do, and when we’d like to do it, we end up with more options for ourselves than if we wait to see what we feel like in the moment.

We tend to have a lot of activities on our calendars and it’s more likely to happen if we plan for it and schedule it. More often than not it won’t happen if we just decide in the moment. We won’t have had time to fit it in, or we’ve missed the window of opportunity to make it happen. Making plans creates a possibility that might not have been there otherwise. 

People resist making plans because they want to leave things open for possibility. But by failing to plan, we cut ourselves off from potential options. So many things in life won’t happen if you don’t plan them, especially as our lives become busier. If you have things that you’ve been thinking you’d like to do, don’t wait to see what you’ll feel like doing in the moment. Plans create possibilities. They don’t eliminate them. 

So decide that it’s the best decision and move on. Knowing that you can change your mind, just make the decision. Then it’s a choice to decide that it’s the best option. 

Decisions are made in an instant. So make that choice and stop considering all other options. Honor your decision no matter what, and follow through on whatever you’ve decided and make it happen. 

The only time that you should change your mind is once you’ve taken action and you’ve gotten more information that now allows you to make a better choice. What tends to happen is that we make a choice, take a little bit of action, get scared and doubtful, and then we want to go back into confusion because that feels safer and more comfortable. And that’s not the same as making a decision, taking some action, and realizing it wasn’t what you wanted, and then making another decision. 

We can get lost thinking about what we should do, rather than what we want to do. Try to take in the available information and find the most practical solution. Consider your own values in the process. 

But in the end, it’s not necessarily about responsibility, obligations, common sense, or even issues of right or wrong. Sometimes we just want it. But we tend to put our own needs and desires on the back burner. We worry about how other people will feel about our decision. 

But we can’t get so wrapped up in what other people want or how others will perceive our decisions, that we ignore our own needs in the process and wind up just resenting them later. So trust your gut. You know what you want. 

You can do whatever you decide is worth doing, whether you particularly enjoy it or not. Getting over this one mental hurdle can open all sorts of possibilities. You want the result, but you may not like all the steps involved in making it happen. It doesn’t matter. You can still do it anyway.

Maybe there are things that you can do to make it more enjoyable, but even if you do, you still may never actually enjoy the process of doing it, and that’s okay. Tell your whiny inner voice to be quiet because the ordeal will be over shortly. Allow yourself to think, “I don’t want to”, but then just do it anyway. 

You can do it and not be liking it, but you’re still doing it. Because it’s what’s at the end of all that doing that you’re wanting. So just decide to do it. Instead of using all your mental energy to come up with reasons why you don’t want to do it, just get going. 

Not all of life has to be fun. With our mindset, we have the ability to make a lot of life pretty enjoyable. Even in your work life, with some strategic job crafting, you can make it so that you get to spend a lot of your working hours doing some pretty cool things. And with some planning in your personal life, you can have time for interesting adventures and time to pursue your own goals. 

Be the sort of person who still gets it done, even when you don’t like it, because you don’t have to like everything. It’s about what you want, when that part is all over that’s important. Perhaps you’re facing down a particularly unpleasant or challenging task. 

We all have things we dread doing, but if we’ve decided we are going to do them, then it’s worth asking the question, “Is there any way to make this more enjoyable for me?”. Maybe it’s pairing it with something you do enjoy, or maybe it’s who you can do it with, or maybe you can get it done quickly and use that free time for something you do particularly enjoy. Or maybe you can use bribery. When all else fails, reward yourself for making it through it. 

Life is all about our mindset. So if there’s a way to make something feel better, why not try it?

And that’s it for this episode of Stop Sabotaging Your Success. Remember to download your Guide for Deciding What You Want at cindyesliger.com/podcast, episode seventeen. 

Thank you to our producer, Alex Hochhausen and everyone at Astronomic Audio. Get in touch. I’m on Instagram @cindyesliger and my email address is info@cindyesliger.com. And if you liked the show, please tell a friend, subscribe, rate, and review. 

Until next week, I’m Cindy Esliger. Thank you for joining me.