How to make big decisions

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We all want big things in our life. We want jobs that are fulfilling, careers that are meaningful and lives that feel balanced. But when it comes to making decisions to go after those big things, that’s where women get stuck. In today’s podcast, I’m talking about why women get stuck in indecision. I’ll share about why it took me so long to make the big decision to become a coach and how I was able to overcome all the fears that came with making a big change. At the end, I will give you the one belief that is essential when making big decisions.

Topics in this episode:

  • What is HOW greed?

  • Why trying to figure out every detail is the wrong approach to making big decisions

  • How I was able to make the big decision to leave my full-time job to become a coach

  • What you need to believe about yourself when making decisions

  • The one thing it always boils down to when you feel stuck in what you want

Show Notes & References:

  • Have a topic idea? Send me an email at rebecca@rebeccaolsoncoaching.com

  • Making decisions you feel certain about – www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/50

  • Schedule a free breakthrough call if you’re ready to get out of indecision and believe that you are worthy of what you want. Click here to book your call: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book

  • Don’t forget to leave a rating and review to help spread this resource to other working moms!

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Transcript


Intro

We all want big things in our life. We want jobs that are fulfilling, careers that are meaningful, lives that feel balanced. But when it comes to making decisions to go after those big things, many women get stuck. In today’s podcast, I’m going to talk to you about why you get stuck in indecision, there’s really only one reason. I’ll talk about why it took me so long to make the big decision to become a coach and how I was able to overcome all the fears that came with making a big change. At the end, I will give you the one belief that is essential when going after big things in your life.


Welcome to the ambitious and balanced working mom podcast, the place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you’re looking to feel more confident, decisive, and productive at both work and home then this is the place for you. I’m your host Rebecca Olson, let’s get to it! 


Today on this episode we’re going to talk about what it takes to really go after big things in your life. And I want to start out with celebrating a couple of my clients that are in fact doing some big things! There is one amazing lady in my group coaching program, The Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms Collective, who recently decided to take a leave of absence from her firm. She's a lawyer, and here is the best part, she’s leaving it a little open ended. She said, I need a break for at least three months but probably longer, and they said OK! Women have such a hard time asking for what they need, but time and time again, my clients show me that when we ask there’s often a way to make it work. 


I have another client that recently quit her job because she was unhappy and it just was not in alignment with what she valued and what was most important to her, and she doesn’t have another job lined up, she just decided to let go and trust she’ll figure it out.


It’s so fun to hear from working moms that are really doing it. That are really taking ownership of the life that they want and pushing through the fear and making it happen for themselves. It makes me smile, I love it and I just wanted to share a few of those wins with you as well.


OK, so let’s start talking about making big decisions. This question came from one of my listeners that emailed me recently, because she was wanting to quit her job and I believe, start a consulting business of some kind, and she’s been thinking about it for a long time and wanted to know a bit more of my story on how I was able to navigate leaving my full-time job and becoming a coach and starting a business and so forth.


And I’ve been mulling over this question for a couple of months now, really breaking down what I need to do in order to quit my job and start my business and that got me thinking about my clients and what the process is for them to go after big things in their life.


Now real quick, I’m using the phrase big things, and likely the thing that comes to mind is things like quitting your job, or going part time, or starting a business, or changing career direction, moving, for sure these are big things. But when I talk about big things I also include things like creating work life balance, learning how to end people-pleasing and perfectionism. These are big things too! You don’t know how to balance family life and your career, you’ve never done it! Anything you haven’t done, requires undoing habits and rewiring your brain in some way, and that is a big deal.


What is a BIG change in your life right now?

And my guess is every single listener right now is either going through or thinking about a big change or in the midst of doing something big or hard. So I want you to bring that to mind right now, name that big thing that you are thinking about and keep that at the forefront of your mind as I go through this podcast. Whenever you hear me say something, I want you to go back and say, ‘how does this apply to the specific thing I’m working on, or going through or thinking about right now?’ - that’s how you’re going to get the most out of this podcast.


The biggest roadblock to change.

OK, now the biggest roadblock I see in women as they go about deciding to make a change in their life, is they want to make sure their answer is right. I don’t wanna leave my job and go into another one and still be unhappy. I don’t want to go part time and still feel out of balance. I don’t wanna start a business and find I can’t make money at it. They don’t want to tell their boss that they’re going to be leaving work every day at 5 PM in an attempt to have some balance in their life, only to be completely stressed out by the work they didn’t get done.


So they spend a lot of time spinning and weighing the pros and cons and researching and talking endlessly with their partner, trying to get to a right answer that oftentimes feels very elusive. If you listened to last week's podcast on certainty, you would know that there is never a right or a wrong decision. And the need to feel certain about something, like the outcome, always keeps us spinning in indecision.


My journey to making the big decision of becoming a coach.

I remember the process for me of deciding to get a coaching certification - it was going to be a sizable investment that would require me to sell off some stock to pay for it. It would take me about a year and a half to complete, the classes were during the day, so I was going to have to ask my current employer if I could change my schedule around to accommodate these classes, I did not want to do all of that and then decide I didn’t really wanna be a coach.


So what did I do? I spent a lot of time researching schools, talking to a couple of coach friends about their experience, asking my friends what they thought and if I would make a good coach, and talking about plans with my husband. I ended up hiring a coach during that time to do more research because I wanted to have an experience of coaching to see if I really liked it. I looked up coaches online and their various business models and websites. I started making lists of things that I would need and questions I had. I started looking up what it took to start a business and how difficult that would be. I took in more and more information.


How long it took to make my decision.

From the time I first started to consider going to coaching, to the moment I paid for my coaching certification and committed, that was about nine months. Now I don’t know if that sounds short or long to you, but when you’re in a job that you don’t wanna be in, commuting to 2 1/2 hours every day, waking up not wanting to go to work, that was an agonizing nine months. Plus, I had already been on a year-long journey of trying to figure out what I wanna do next in my career and what would make me happy. So from the moment I sort of knew something needed to change to the moment that I actually made the change, that was easily a year and a half.


And the reason it took so long? I wanted to make sure it was right. And I don’t want to knock anyone that likes to mall over their decisions for a really long period of time, that is certainly one way of making decisions, but for me if I had known I could have made a much more decisive and confident decision in a shorter period of time, if I had known any other way of making decisions, like if I would’ve had a coach during that time, I probably would’ve taken it instead of wasting that time.


The thought error.

The problem was I had a thought error, and I see the thought error with a lot of the women I work with, and it causes a lot of drama and indecision and feelings of stuckness. The thought error was that if I make a plan and have all of my ducks in a row and all of my questions answered, then it will feel right and I can move forward.


Essentially I wanted to know HOW. How everything was going to work out, how I would make money, how I would start a business, how I would get clients, how I would manage my workload with my classes, how we would pay for everything, how long I would have to manage both my current work and my coaching work, how to start a website, how to run Facebook ads and market myself.


How can I do it?

If you’re thinking about changing jobs or changing careers in some way, the how of those things probably sound like: how will I manage work life balance, and a new job? How will I know my boss won’t ask too much of me? How will I prove myself in a new job and get home for dinner every day? How will I manage working from home or in a new office? How will I show that I am dedicated but put firm boundaries up? How will I manage my new workload with my family?


My coach, Stacey Boehmon calls this ‘how greed’. Needing to know the how before you take action or make a decision.


The problem is, you’re not really ever going to know how something is going to play out or how to do something until you actually do it. You don’t know how you’re going to manage a new job with a baby until you get there and figure it out. You don’t know how you’re going to leave work every day at 5 PM to prioritize being home with your family, until you commit to doing it and figure it out. I didn’t know how I was going to make money as a coach or even if I could make money as a coach until I started.


Now you can get a good idea about how to do something before doing it. I researched a lot on what it takes to make money as a Life Coach and start a business before I decided to do it. I had some ideas, but I didn’t really know how it would all work for me and I had to let it go. 


You don’t need to know how everything is going to work out. 

Needing to know how to do something before you decide to do it will always make you feel stuck in indecision. Asking how, before you’ve decided and committed and are in the process of making it happen, is never useful. You don’t need to know how everything is going to work out. 


What you do need, is to believe you can figure it out. 


You have to believe in your capability more than anything else. 


You have to believe you make good decisions, that you are smart, that you can persevere when things don’t work out exactly the way you want. You have to BELIEVE that you are good at what you do and you will carry that into the next job. You have to believe that you are an asset to any company you work for, even if you decide to take a 6-month break. 


You need to believe that if things don’t work out the way you hoped you’re still a good decision-maker, capable, loveable, adequate, good at what you do…


Think about motherhood. You decide to become a mom and have NO IDEA how it’s all going to work. You have no idea how to be a good mom or how to even keep your tiny human alive and safe. I remember looking at the nurse in the hospital after my first, saying, “um…you’re coming with me, right?” I didn’t know how to be a mom. But literally, millions of women have gone before me and figured out motherhood. I knew I could do it too. BUT NOT BECAUSE I HAD ALREADY DONE IT or had a perfect plan. Every day in motherhood feels like trial and error and I never question my decision to be a mom, now I know some do…and that’s ok…our brains naturally question us (it’s a safety mechanism built into our brain) and that is why we have to put effort into believing in ourself and believing in our capability…because it isn’t the natural place for our brain to go. 


OK so when you stop overthinking about HOW everything is going to work out, and you focus on believing you can figure it out…when it comes to actually committing to a decision, going all in… what you’re left with is the question: what do I want?


What do you desire?

You’re left with simply getting in touch with what you desire. I would say that the majority of women that come to me, that are trying to navigate some big decision, already sort of know what they want, and when we start coaching together we spend time confirming why they want that, so we build up a bit of certainty around what it is they want and why, and when to start overcoming fears and questions that come up with the decision.


Most of you probably have a hunch around what we really want. To start a dream business, to leave your industry and do something different, to work part time, we want to start a side business and grow it, we want to move closer to our family, we want to be home with her family at 5 PM every single day…


When you let yourself off the hook of trying to figure out how to make something happen or how it will all work out, and trust yourself and believe you can figure it out, you are able to get down to your true desire. 


Simply trust you can figure it out.

And this my friends is where the actual journey begins, because up till now you’ve thought you needed a plan and you needed all your questions answered, and you needed to cross every T and dot every I and you needed to mitigate all risk…you need to make sure that people will still like you…but when you strip all that away and you simply trust you can figure it out…and be honest with what you want…there is only one thing that truly stands in your way: your worthiness. You have to believe that you are worthy of what you want. 


That you can have something simply because you want it. That you’re worth selling stock to pay for something. That you’re worth leaving the security of your current job to do something else. That you’re worthy of the time and effort and energy it takes to start that business. That you’re worthy of a pay cut, if you have to take it. 


You have to believe you’re worth it.


This was the turning point for me. When I looked at my husband and I said, I don’t know where this coaching certification is going to take me. I don’t know if I want a business or could even create a successful business. I don’t even know if coaching will become my career. Getting the certification might be the most expensive personal development journey I have ever been on and I am worth it, regardless of how it turns out.


And that was it, I sold the stock and I went all in for certification believing that my desire to do it was enough of a reason.


Conclusion

And I believe the same for you. You don’t need any other reason to go after a dream or have the life you want, to create the balanced life you desire, or to make changes in your career, or to go back to school - you don’t need any other reason except that you want it. And that’s enough.


You deserve all you desire.

Working moms live in the truth that you deserve whatever it is you want and if you need help believing that, schedule a time for us to chat, I’ll put a link in the show notes.

Rebecca Olson