“Our deepest fear is not that we are
inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our
light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to
be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?”
Marianne Williamson
Do you
have friends who seem to over think stuff, instead of making an instant
decision, they waffle to and fro, deciding on one course of action one day, and
reversing it the next?
Why does
that happen? I believe several reasons
come into play. First there is just pure
fear that you make the wrong choice and your life is changed forever. Now
certainly with major life decisions, this may be true – e.g to stay in an
unhappy marriage or to have children or not;
but most other decisions are reversible or can take you on a different
path down the road.
Take young
people and their career choices. Often they sweat bullets over the courses to
take or career paths to follow, not realizing that in all likelihood they will
have several different careers anyway. I
know have. Often one seemed like a
logical next step to my next position and there are some common threads, but my
career has evolved and progressed (as it should).
One of
the bigger challenges today is we have so many choices. So how do you decide which is the best one
for you? When I am faced with a big
decision, I still resort to the old pros and cons list, writing up what is in
favour of one direction and what is against it.
Mind you, after doing that, and weighing up the consequences of what you
decide to do, we often still go with our gut instinct. But sometimes just asking yourself ‘what’s
the worst thing that can happen?’ helps you strategize what you would do if
that occurred and helps make the decision less scary.
Talking
through your options with someone else helps too, particularly if they are
objective and have no vested interest in you going one way or the other, but
are just hearing the facts and perhaps pointing out their observations on the
situation or asking probing questions.
By the end of the conversation, quite possibly you’ve reached your own
conclusion.
Asking
around and doing your homework can help inform your decision. My daughter did that recently when she
decided to go back to school. She’s
talked to professionals in the field she was proposing to enter, only to find
that there were no jobs in what she wanted to do. Wisely she went in another direction.
Sometimes
the “universe” nudges you in the right direction. But in this instance, you have to be alert
and paying attention to the cues and clues coming your way. Starting your own business is a huge
decision, although one that perhaps some of us have just leapt into without
much fore thought.
But even
when you’ve made that leap of faith, how do you decide what aspect of your
business to pursue? I think initially
you need to pursue a range of activities, because you don’t really know which
will pay off and the bills still have to be paid. But down the road, hopefully it will come
clearer.
When I
ran newbie groups for new entrepreneurs, so often what they started off with
when they joined the group, was not what they ended up doing by the end of the
six months.
Why? Because as the time unfolded and they got
clearer on their business vision, and from a practical point of view, what the
marketplace was telling them, they would realize that they needed to fine tune
what they were doing. Yes, you do better
when you focus, but you have to be sure that where you are spending your
energies and time will in fact pay off for you – both personally and
professionally. If you don’t like or
love that aspect of your business, it may not work for you.
When I
started Company of Women I really wanted to do conferences – it was an aspect
of my previous work life that I enjoyed, and was good at too. But early on it became really clear to me
that to offer a conference out of the blue without building a solid base was
not going to happen or be successful.
It was four years in before I offered my first conference, because by
then Company of Women had a following and I had a “roster” of great speakers
from which to draw on.
In fact
my first Company of Women conference I did in partnership with someone else.
While the conference was successful, the partnership was a disaster but I
learned that I didn’t need to have a partner to bolster me and I could do it
alone, and the next year we had our first Journey 2 Success conference. Mistakes are lessons.
All of
which means you don’t give up on your dream, you just build in integral steps
to get you there.
I’ve
found that once I’ve made a major decision, it wasn’t as scary as I thought and
I start to ask myself what took me so long?
When you step outside your unhappiness, you find that there is a life
and it is there for the taking. It is
just getting over that first hurdle of making a move and once you’ve jumped
that… you can win. You can get ahead.
Indecision
in itself is a decision. It is deciding
not to change the status quo, not to rock the boat and to stay within your
existing cocoon, but like the caterpillar, you can choose to grow and evolve
and become the beautiful butterfly soaring to great heights.
