When it's Scary to Take the Next Step, Try This...

I was chatting with a friend recently.

They were feeling stuck in their current situation… paralyzed with all the options and not wanting to mess up the next move. 

I can totally relate. 

How often do we (maybe she and I are alone in this but I have a feeling we aren’t) put so much pressure on ourselves to have it all figured out that we don’t even entertain the next step?

As we were talking about it, inevitably the beat up started come out… you know, the mental berating that we hear when we are hesitating to make a next move. 

Whether it’s the next career move, leaving or starting a relationship, getting “back on the wagon” with our diet there seems to be a natural tendency for us to drift back to what we know… even if we don’t actually enjoy being there. 

It’s as though we haven’t kept ourselves alive for X amount of years but there’s not way we can trust that our next move won’t kill us (it sounds a little outlandish to think that way but we do). 

When we are faced with a decision, it’s almost easier to blow up the possible outcomes until we are paralyzed in fear, sitting across from this giant. 

But what if, instead we took away the pressure. 

Yeah yeah, easier said than done sometimes.

What I mean is, we have to be able to reframe the situation so that the decision in front of us is simply an obvious next step. 

In this situation, all it took was saying, “what if that was the healthiest option to have done?” instead of adding fuel to the shame fire. 

The vibe totally shifted when she was able to think about taking a break from some otherwise healthy habits that were beginning to rule her as an action that she could trust. 

Isn’t that the name of the game? 

Trust. 

We stop trusting ourselves when we can’t give ourselves the benefit of the doubt for why we decided to do or not do something. 

This is different than denial.

This is giving yourself the opportunity to be curious- and gain clarity- about yourself… quite the opposite of denial.

Maybe we were feeling overly restricted with that diet and needed to look at it differently. 

Or possibly that job was encouraging us to grow into some new skills and it felt uncomfortable. 

So often, we are left with two options- keep things as they are or go back to what we know.

But what if, there’s a third option…

What if, on a really deep level (and sometimes this is a stretch) we knew the right way to go? 

What if we removed the filters that are currently causing us to react with self-judgement and saw the decision as the best possible one with the information you had at that moment. 

What if, like speaking with a friend, we didn’t assume we knew everything we now know as an outsider looking in and just trusted that that step needed to happen so we could know what we know now. 

How would that shift things?

I find that it’s rarely that we make “wrong” moves, they may require more courage when they don’t line up with what other people may think but the less we judge them, the more we will begin to trust ourselves. 

And at the end of the day, this is the person we need to be most trusting of... (we never get to leave this relationship, only transform it).

In this space, we will clearly see the next obvious move to make.
The trick is, based on how we look at our previous decisions, do we trust ourselves enough to take the step when it appears? 

The “work” in the meantime is to learn to see your previous choices as the set up for the next one instead of mistakes along the way. 

All those diets you tried: you know what works and doesn’t work for you, you learned how much discipline you have and where your challenges lie. 

All those dates you went on: you know how you want to feel and what personality type you work well with and what you can walk away from. 

All the applications you’ve filled out: you’ve been gathering your skills into a bouquet to see how exquisitely gifted you are to fill the right position. 

The point is, it’s done. 

It’s easy to look back at all the moments leading up to this one with the information we now have but did you know that then?

Could you really have predicted the future?

You can’t move forward if you’re dragging things with you but you can let your experiences be your muse.  

And who couldn’t use a little musing every now and then?

I love helping people reframe what feels like failure.

It can sometimes be tricky to do on your own, I’d love to help. Let’s set up some time to connect.