“Stop expecting your next decision to do the job of your final decision.”
Hey Rollers,
I’ve been thinking a lot about decisions lately. It’s a theme that consistently shows up in the many coaching conversations I have.
What I’ve come to realise is that people are rarely struggling to make the decision itself, they’re struggling with everything they believe the decision is going to mean.
If I leave the job, what if it doesn’t work out?
If I start the business, what if I fail?
If I have the conversation, what if it changes the relationship?
When looking at it through this lens, the decision stops being about the next step and starts carrying the weight of an entire future.
Are we expecting too much of our decisions?
I ask this because we often seem to want our next decision to tell us how the whole story ends. We get caught wanting certainty before we move and guarantees before we commit.
Now I don’t have to tell you this, but that’s not really how life works.
In fact, when I look back at many of the bigger decisions in my own life, I realise I had far less information than I thought I needed. The decision itself was what created the information.
I didn’t know exactly how things would unfold, but making the decision revealed something that couldn’t have been seen beforehand. Sometimes it was a new opportunity. Sometimes it was a challenge I hadn’t anticipated. Occasionally it was confirmation that I was on the right path and other times it was evidence that I wasn’t.
But it was information either way.
And that right there is the part that is so easy for us to overlook.
We tend to think we’re choosing between a good decision and a bad one.
What if we’re actually choosing between making no decision and making one that helps us learn something?
Even the decisions that don’t work out exactly as planned usually leave us with something valuable.
So take some pressure off and stop asking your next decision to do the job of your final decision.
Maybe the purpose of your next decision isn’t to tell you where you’ll end up. Maybe its purpose is simply to help you see what you can’t see from where you’re standing right now.
And perhaps that’s enough. Often it is.
Until next week.
Keep rolling.
Justin 👊
Take Action in 3 Minutes:
Think about a decision you’ve been carrying around for a while.
Now ask yourself a different question.
Instead of asking, “What’s the right decision?”
Ask:
👉 “What decision would help me learn something I don’t currently know?”
The answer might be smaller than you think and that’s probably a good thing.