How do you make big life and career decisions?
Are you a pros and cons list kinda gal?
Do you prefer to talk it out with someone else?
Or do you research, seek, wonder, question and wait for the answer to come to you?
We’ve all developed our own ways of processing information and designed strategies to make life’s hard decisions.
But what about when we are at a crossroads and those decisions are harder than usual?
At some point in our life, we will all find ourselves here. There’s no getting out of life’s hard moments. These times can be distressing, confusing and overwhelming. We often wish ourselves on the other side of them. But they are also moments of insights and growth. Times in our lives where our shadows, our wounds and our unresolved issues surface providing us with the opportunity to see what lies beneath them.
Encouraging us to ask:
What can I heal?
What we can I let go of? and
What can I surrender to?
I have found myself in these moment multiple times.
In the past my default has been to leave and run away (as far and as fast) as I can!
Like when my first babe was born, and I quit my job to everyone’s horror, so I didn’t have to go back to a job I was no good at.
Or when I found out my then husband was cheating on me, and I moved my three youngster’s interstate with no job and no home, unable to handle the shame and embarrassment of being so publicly rejected.
Or when I left the APS when a contract position ended because I felt like I’d been targeted and isolated and didn’t know how to come back from it. Every part of my being was screaming at me to run and hide. So, I did by quitting a career I loved.
You see, these moments (as where mine) are often shrouded in guilt, shame and fear. Default positions we learnt when we were young. Self-protection measure to ensure we act in ways that kept us safe and part of the tribe. Afterall, that’s what we need when we are young to survive.
However these feelings also set off triggers sending our central nervous system into a state of fight or flight. A state where our physiology changes. Where our blood rushes to our hands and feet so we can physically deal with the danger, leaving our mind foggy, unable to think in its usual ways and unable to problem solve in the ways it has before.
No wonder we can’t think our way through this problem!
No wonder we feel so disorientated.
No wonder we find ourselves in a procrastination loop we can’t seem to get out of.
No wonder we can revert to childlike behaviour (like running away…..ouch!!).
When we are in this physiological state there is more at stake than the oppressing problem itself. There is always an underlying trigger that if unresolved will return time and time again. For me, my sense of worth was caught up in achievement and other peoples approval of me. When I felt I couldn’t do something well or someone didn’t like me I processed this as rejection with my default being to run away before they could tell me I had to leave.
I needed a new strategy. Maybe you do too for the times you find yourself at a crossroad, making a hard decision while your central nervous system is shot.
A new strategy that encourages a new perspective, a different way of looking things and a fresh approach. A way to resolve the underlying issue from a place of curiosity and compassion, not fear and self-blame.
So, next time you’re making a hard decision and you notice when you try to resolve it your heart rate increases and your palms get sweaty - ask yourself, what’s really going on here? What’s the unresolved hurt that’s sending me into a spin?
PS. If you would like some tips on how to move from confusion to clarity AND get the exact 5 questions, I use to help my clients through difficult decisions then grab a copy of my latest FREE publication from Confusion to Clarity. In it I explain how to prepare yourself (and your nervous system) to make a hard decision and then I walk you through the 5 questions I use to do this with my clients. I’ve even thrown in a bonus tip! You can get your copy from my homepage here.
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