Making Hard Decisions: 5 Tools for Transforming Fear into Clarity
It’s pretty normal to get stuck or sidetracked when faced with a difficult decision. Both options have value for you—or it wouldn’t be a choice. Understanding what’s truly motivating either choice will help you make the best one.
Here are five key steps to diminish anxiety and second-guessing so you can make your decision with trust, clarity and confidence.
1) FIRST THINGS FIRST - WEED OUT FEAR
When you’re making a big decision, there are practical downsides to consider.
And then there are ego-fuelled, imaginary downsides.
What I’ve learned helping hundreds of clients make empowered decisions is that almost everyone falls into catasrophizing along the way. There’s an idea that if you don’t get the decision right you’ll wake up in a ditch somewhere down the road, hauling your ass out and kicking yourself for making the wrong choice.
You’d have to be sleepwalking through countless unconscious moves to find yourself in that ditch, so just decide now to stay awake and present. You get to keep choosing what’s most true for you moment to moment as you move forward with whatever decision you make.
Make the ‘con’ list, go crazy. Then look for the fear-based reasons. They’ll show up as the ‘(irrevocably) bad things that could happen.’
What if I leave a high paying job to pursue what I love and I’m broke (all the time)?
What if I leave a relationship that’s ‘not awful’ and wind up alone (forever)?
What if I put myself out there in a bigger way and fail publicly (and never live it down)?
If worst case scenarios appear on the list ask yourself, “Hey Awesome Self, how will you navigate that if it happens?”
Here’s the real issue: if fear is what’s holding things up and you don’t identify it, decision avoidance can go on for YEARS. Because when this is the case, ego is voting. And ego doesn’t vote in service of your best life, it votes for “protection at all costs”.
What’s worse, if fear is messing with you and there’s a deadline on the decision, it’s an anxiety storm in the making.
Be willing to see fear for the illusion it is—a seduction to trust the false promise of control, safety and ‘guarantees’ that distracts you from trusting in your creativity, resourcefulness and inherent well-being.
2) PRESENCE BEATS A PLAN
We think decisions are about what we will do later (once we make them) but they’re really about what’s most true now. Our body is directly connected to and grounded in the creative field of possibility, and it’s constantly giving us feedback that we can use.
Past and future projections are mental abstractions that generate doubt and worry and have zero substance. We can’t create from them.
Our body, on the other hand, is attuned to the present. When you consider choice A or B, are you noticing a sense of constriction or expansion? That’s a clue. Truth never feels constricting. Uncomfortable, difficult, challenging at times—but never constricting.
If you’re going back and forth with a decision, your brain is likely on overdrive and starting to smoke. You need to move some of that powerful life-force down into your body.
When we get in touch with our bodies we slow down, and as a good friend of mine likes to say: “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.”
3) STACKED INSPIRATION EMBODIMENT EXERCISE
Here’s a mindfulness tool to get you connected with your calm, trusting, wise self and support you in accessing clarity:
Sit in a comfortable position. As you take a deep breath in, stack your inhale like this:
Inhale, pause. Inhale, pause. Inhale, pause.
Then slowly exhale through your mouth. Long exhales open up space and settle energy down.
Repeat the three-stage stacked inhale, and this time as you do, lengthen your spine and let your shoulders relax. Then as you exhale, breathe out through your throat… your heart… your belly… and finally your pelvic floor.
Repeat these steps for a few breaths, lengthening and relaxing shoulders on the inhale, and drawing your breath down on the exhale, releasing it through your throat, heart, belly, and pelvic floor.
As you begin to feel calm and centred, allow your essential self to fill the space you’ve created in your body, settling and resting in your pelvic bowl.
Feel the substance of your being land and integrate here, fully at home in your body. Relax into this present moment.
This is the place to make decisions from.
4) STOP RESISTING AND START RESPONDING
Now that you’re in right relationship with your wise, resourceful, embodied self it’s helpful to reframe how you’re holding each choice.
Let’s say, just for a moment, that you’re completely unattached to which decision to make, that you believed you could create powerfully from either. What would that open up?
Shift the focus of your looking from “What could go wrong?” to the opportunities that are available for you in either choice:
How will either decision grow me in terms of who and how I’m being in my life?
What strengths, talents or shifts in belief will support me, whichever move I make?
What intriguing possibilities might these options open up in my experience?
Bonus exercise: It can be super illuminating to run your fear-based list through these questions. If x happens…
Stay curious and listen for unexpected answers; life is calling you into something.
5) TRUST YOURSELF
When we’re faced with a difficult decision we want to know it will all turn out well, but that certainty doesn’t live in some future place. The awareness that you will be okay—no matter what decision you make—lives right here. In you. Now.
The most important decision you can make is that you will ensure either choice grows you and opens up your world.
You really can’t go wrong. Make the decision, and then make it the right decision—by continuing to create powerfully from whatever happens next.
"Every decision you make—every decision—is not a decision about what to do. It's a decision about who you are. When you see this, when you understand it, everything changes. You begin to see life in a new way. All events, occurrences, and situations turn into opportunities to do what you came here to do, and to become more of who you truly are." - Neale Donald Walsch