Making a Big
Decision When You’re Not Sure Which Choice Is Right
Lynn Reilly
“When we can no longer change a situation, we are
challenged to change ourselves.” ~Viktor Franklmake changes,
Over the last two and a half years I have made some big
changes in my life.
And by big, I mean enormous.
First, I moved with my husband and our children from a
home I loved for ten years.
Shortly after, my husband and I ended a twenty-year
relationship and marriage.
With that separation, I made the decision to buy the
house we had moved to,
which on paper, I shouldn’t have been able to buy.
Apparently ending a long commitment and beginning a large
financial one on my own
wasn’t enough for me though. The following year I
resigned from a secure job
to pursue a dream I hadn’t fully envisioned and started a
business without projected goals.
When I list out all the changes, I start to question my
own sanity.
I have never been one to make quick decisions, especially
ones that I hadn’t thought through.
I was raised by my father, a self-proclaimed workaholic,
who spent his career as a high powered executive for a
high risk industrial insurance company.
I was not bred to believe in taking chances, to live on
instinct alone,
and to leave anything that resembled security. You just
don’t do that.
But something was
stirring in me that kept me unsettled.
I knew it was time to make changes, and I knew those
changes were absolutely not guaranteed
to work in my favor. I was scared—no, terrified—to alter
the course of my life,
but standing still gave me even more anxiety.
How do you make the decision to change your entire life
and know it’s truly right for you?
I have a secret, one that I’ve used consistently in
recent years
when making decisions that weighed heavily on me.
It’s a technique that simplifies the agonizing back and
forths of “should I or shouldn’t I?”
One I wished I learned when I was younger to ward off
some major bouts of indecisiveness and internal torment.
Although in retrospect, I would not have been ready to
use it until I was actually ready to hear it.
When I was agonizing over the idea of ending my marriage,
I reached out to a friend who had recently undergone some
of his own major life changes.
I didn’t tell him what I was debating, but I told him it
was big.
He gave me the most valuable advice I had ever received.
“To make the decision, take the fear out, then you’ll
know.”
What? How on Earth do you take the fear out? I had lived
in fear for the majority of my existence. How do you keep yourself safe if you
don’t live in the fear? In fact, fear is safe.
It kept me securely in the life I felt like I was
suffocating in. I knew exactly what to expect.
Why step outside for fresh air if there is no guarantee
that that air is not poisonous?
Who does that? Maybe I do. Or at least maybe I could ask.
So I asked the question to myself out loud and then I
took the fear out. Completely out.
No worries in the world, fairy tale ending out.
I had to conceptualize what the fears looked like and
what they actually were.
My biggest fear was that I couldn’t manage life on my
own,
including running a household financially and physically.
What if I tried and I failed? What would I do?
To discard the fear, I had to “what if” the opposite.
“What if I tried and succeeded?
How would I feel if managed on my own and figured out
each step of the way?”
I also worried about the lack of emotional support and
wondered if I would come home from work each day crumbling and crying and not
be able to parent my children effectively.
I had always had a partner, someone to rely on and to
pick me back up when I fell.
I knew the feeling of being alone and I knew how awful it
felt to think that I couldn’t handle it.
I felt like a failure even before I tried.
Then I asked myself, “What if I used my resources for
emotional support?
What if I relied on my friends and family—and what if I
relied on myself?”
The reversal of the what if’s felt powerful and
motivating.
And I knew it was possible they could be true.
When we tell ourselves lies, it feels awful; when we
speak the truth, it is light and freeing.
Each truth I spoke felt closer to answering my own
question.
Not only did I have to identify each fearful “what if,”
I had to remove them.
This can be done by listing them on paper and crossing
them out or simply calling them by name
and removing them from the equation like they don’t
exist.
I saw them each, one by one, stand up to me. There were
so many.
And then, one by one, I asked them to leave the room.
And there came my answer: it was time to let go.
It was not an answer I particularly liked, nor was it
easy.
In fact, it was one of the hardest answers I’ve ever had
to accept.
But it was honest and it was accurate.
Our heart always knows the answer when we gain the
courage to even ask.
Since that day, I have been faced with a multitude of
opportunities to use and teach this technique. It has never steered me wrong.
And throughout making the changes,
I had to walk through those fears with each step.
They appear over and over again and need to be confronted
on a regular basis.
It is not an easy task, but it’s no more challenging than
living with them.
Living in fear is not far from not living at all. It is
intermittently debilitating and paralyzing,
yet always extraordinarily painful, even when it’s safe.
Whenever I hit the wall of self-doubt after following
through with the decisions I’ve made,
I look back at who
I was a few years ago and ask what she would think of me.
The answer is consistent. I am the woman I would have
envied from afar.
A woman strong enough to live a life she didn’t know she
wanted at first glance,
but one that allowed her to be her authentic self.
I chose to take the fear out and in turn, chose to live
as myself.
Making a big decision? Go ahead, take the fear out
and then you will know exactly what it is your heart
wants you to know.
Making a Big
Decision When You’re Not Sure Which Choice Is Right
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