Choosing What Is Right for You
One of the side effects of my old Type-A ways was the inability to know, ask for, and receive what I wanted. I viewed the world as black and white, right and wrong. Because of this, I assumed there was one right answer for what should be chosen; a right answer which was common knowledge and societally acceptable. Considering my personal preferences was not an option. In fact it took me many years to undercover my preferences. Next I learned to ask for what I needed. And finally I learned to accept and receive what I desired. Things were running smoothly for quite some time. However now I am learning the more subtle forms of choice.
In the past as I started to learn what was right for me, I was looking at the big picture twenty-thousand-foot choices. Do I want to be an accountant or a doctor? Do I want to live in Chicago or Mexico? Now this new level of choice helps me draw conclusions about more nuanced decisions. For instance, being a coach was an easy high level choice for me. I knew it was right. However, how I go about coaching was not. I have learned that one on one or small group coaching is much more preferable to me than presenting or teaching to large groups.
However, in my early years of coaching, I was confused. I knew coaching was right for me, but all the “experts” said I need to speak to large groups and hold webinars to be successful which did not feel good to me. So did that mean I shouldn’t be a coach? No. Instead what it meant was I needed to release the aspects of coaching that did not bring me joy and focus on those that did.
I now recognize when I am dealing with a more nuanced decision when I feel frustrated, tired, and burnt out. I think I should be doing something but it does not motivate me and actually makes me feel bad. For me, many times the confusion revolves around logic and obligation. Logically as a marketer in a previous life, I understood that I should hold webinars for my practice. But the process of running a webinar does not make me happy. Early on I thought I had to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I couldn’t be a coach because I didn’t want to do webinars. Now I am learning how to break apart my decisions into smaller and smaller choices until I remove just that part of the choice that is making me unhappy. Keep coaching, just remove the webinars.
What choice is currently causing you issues? Does the thought of saying no to it all feel frustrating? Does looking at the problem from the twenty thousand foot level make you feel stuck because there is no one single right black or white answer? Try breaking apart all the components of your dilemma. Then one by one make the right choice for each component. You may be able to create a whole new solution when you look at the individual aspects instead of the whole. And once you do let go of what is not right you will feel a sense of release and peace.
