[highlight]When planning a dramatic change in your location, work or daily living, how can you know it’s going to be the right move? Short answer: You can’t.[/highlight]
You truly cannot know ahead of time if your cross-country move will lead to a happier life, if your new business will succeed and grant you riches, nor can you predict if your marriage is going to last.
What you can do though is to gauge your gut feeling right now, make a move and ensure that your dream stays alive with as much concentrated action as you can muster.
Fact is, your brain fails at making decisions when there are unknowns involved- the brain needs data and when you have none it processes change the only way it knows how: The Worst Case Scenario.
Second Fact Is, your heart wouldn’t be longing for something new if what your brain had already created was satisfying you. The life you have now isn’t cutting the mustard, so you’re left to dream based on speculation and unbridled hopes. Brains are not too keen on that, and since you won’t have data until you actually do something, I suggest this approach:
[highlight]First things first: When thinking of this big life changing decision, how do you feel?[/highlight]
One way to know is to compare your big, crazy, decision to that feeling of falling in love. When you think of making your idea a reality- what do you feel first before fear, doubt and disbelief creeps in?
Take a minute to picture yourself in this new situation without the doomsday scenario, and instead put yourself in your dream shoes where everything is normal and un-scary…does your heart skip a beat? Do you get a big smile on your face or the warm fuzzies?
It’s normal to then feel a wave of doubt and even terror flood your heart and mind when you picture all the things that could come crashing down in a worst case scenario- but if feelings of elation from the heart surround your decision before you overanalyze with your brain, you have your answer.
Spoiler Alert: Even when things go to pot and the rare-case doomsday scenarios play out it’s never as bad as you pictured it in your mind. Plus, it makes for an excellent and captivating story.
[highlight]If You’re Still Not Sold: Picture Yourself NOT Taking Action, how do you feel?[/highlight]
If your first gut reaction is disappointment, regret or you instantly have a case of the Mondays, that’s also a good indicator that despite the risk of moving forward, your heart and soul are hungry for you to take the chance.
Of course, with any major decision you need to take into account how you will fund it, how it will impact your family, and what it could mean for your current connections and obligations. I’m going to go out on a limb here and give you a free-pass to care only slightly less about those obligations and fears for right now- You spend all day in your head, why not give your heart some room to talk?
[highlight]Here’s the truth of it- if you make a heart-wrenching, gut-instinct decision based on your intuition and soul stirring passions, the rest will follow. [/highlight]
Let your heart guide the way. Once the decision is made and you’re geared to go, then allow your mind to over process, chew up the decision and spit it back out with a game plan. Your mind is good at coming up with action in terms of funding, family and career only after the gut has spoken, anything prior to that is just the lizard brain speaking.
Funny thing…this is great advice. I’ve been told that if you STILL can’t decide whether to make the move or not, you flip a coin…heads you do it, tails you don’t.
You don’t actually look at the coin. Once you flip it, cover the coin and ask yourself which way you’re hoping it landed. That’s what you should do.
…and if you still can’t decide, look at the coin! 😉
LOVE that… it’s a great way to get to the heart of the issue when you can’t seem to make sense of what your head is saying.
I’m having to take a dose of my own medicine as I try to figure out how to make a possible move to NYC work. My business is just getting off the ground and so there are some serious obstacles to making it a reality but before I even got to this point I had to make a decision and that was surprisingly difficult- deciding what one truly wants as opposed to what someone should logically do based upon other factors.
Thanks for stopping by, your comments are always appreciated!
Always good to hear this approach to making big decisions. I’ve struggled with the bigger decisions throughout my life.
“Your heart wouldn’t be longing for something new if what your brain had already created was satisfying you.”
SO TRUE!!!! That makes so much sense when I think about the reasons I left my career to freelance full-time. The last few months have been rough, and people always ask if I regret leaving my job. Nope, not a bit! I was miserable in my job and I’m very happy with what I’m doing now. Every day I wake up looking forward to getting to work. And my brain never would have allowed me to make the leap by itself.