Leading Your Career: Making Big Moves

Welcome to your worthy career. A podcast with me. Melissa. Lawrence. I’m a career and life coach with all the corporate credit and talent development and organizational psychology.

And I help women like you get extraordinary results by being more you, not less. I won’t just help you have a career experience worthy of you, but I will help you build your self-worth to shift what you think is possible and take the action that will create the career you’ve always wanted. Whether it’s more meaningful work you’re passionate about, making more money, getting to your next level, or being more effective as a leader. We are shattering the glass ceiling here, the one that exists for women at work and the one we put on ourselves with our doubt and inner prediction. Each week you will get practical teachings grounded in neuroscience and effective career development strategies.

You’ll experience deep mindset shifts and the perfect amount of woo so you can run your career with ease rather than your career running you. You were born for more, and I’m going to help you get there with maybe a few dance parties along the way. Your up-level begins now.

Hello, Cheetah family, and welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast. How are you? What are you planning this year? Do you know what you want to create for yourself? Have you started implementing the things that you said you were going to do?

This year is going by so fast. It’s like lightning speed. It feels like we were just on holiday break and now we’re already in February. And I was thinking recently about people who are massively successful and that they create massive growth for themselves. They seem to know what they want and go after it.

Everything seems to be easy for them outside looking in and those that are a little less successful that maybe have all the good things on paper, but they’re a little bit slower in implementation. They maybe spin out a little bit before creating the results that they want. And as I was thinking about this, as we’re kind of getting farther in the new year and maybe some people are starting to lose motivation on the things they set out to do, I want to talk to you about decision-making and implementation of your decisions. Now, decision-making is something that I’ve talked a bit about in the past. I hosted a workshop on this topic a couple of months ago, and I was talking to a new client recently and in her first official session, when we were going through an in-depth assessment of a variety.

Of different areas that it relates to her personal and professional development. Then we were taking that information to establish measurable goals for how we will work together. And during that time we were talking through this assessment, we were talking about decision making because a lot of people that I work with are great at making technical decisions related to their work or area of expertise, but they struggle with big decisions, personal decisions about their life or career, essentially decisions that impact other people. They fear that they will make the wrong choice or they wonder what people will think of them. And how you know this is you is if you find yourself saying, I don’t know, you delay making decisions or going after what you want because of timing.

Like it’s never the right time to make the move to do the thing. If you consider yourself someone who has analysis paralysis where you kind of never feel like you have enough information to feel sure about your decision. Maybe you wait a long time to decide or worry about the what-ifs second guess yourself, and change your mind a lot. Or maybe you make a decision and then you go back and you rethink that decision, wondering if it’s the best decision for you. Tell yourself that you don’t deserve what you want.

Ask other people what they think you should do. If any of those things resonate with you, then it’s something that you likely struggle with as well. And so this client I was talking to, she was on my waitlist for one on one coaching. So there was a gap between when she committed to coaching and when we could start our session. But while she waited, she consumed my podcast.

She signed up for the free training that I had. She started working toward her goals on her own and the commitment that she made to sign up for coaching on its own just lit a fire under her. And as we were going through her assessment, she said, decision-making used to be a big problem for me, but it’s not anymore because of the training that you did a couple of months ago. Now I make decisions quickly and I’m a lot more confident. So this client, not only consumed the content, and the wisdom that I was offering, but she implemented it.

She started using the strategies and concepts that I shared with her while she waited to start coaching me one on one. So if you’re listening to this podcast regularly, you know that I always offer tangible actions you can take, and reflect for yourself. Are you consuming and moving on with your day, thinking that was a great episode or that was a great mindset shift, or are you taking a few minutes to implement what you’re learning? Whether it’s a podcast or anything else you consume, a book, trading at work, learning to take information, make a decision about it, and implement it is life-changing and is the difference between successful and massively successful. The reason many of us don’t do this is that we’re in a society of consumption culture always seeking the right answer to read books and podcasts.

This comes from just our time in school. In the school system, you would learn and consume, but you often didn’t apply what you learned in the real world and you were studying for a test. Now, when we take that into the real world, it keeps us spinning in confusion, overanalyzing, and being passive in our own growth, not leading our career, not owning it, we’re outsourcing it. We’re waiting for a boss to tell us what to do, for a company to tell us what our options are. Now, I just wrapped up a live coaching event with my coach.

Every six months or so, we get together and I focus on building my skills as an entrepreneur and my overall skills and coaching. And I love learning and always up-leveling myself to be the best coach for my clients. So I attended this event virtually this time, and I just reflected on just how far my decision-making has come. I used to be a lot like my clients and struggled with what other people would think, with fear of failure, wanting to do things the right way, being seen as the best, and always not wanting to make the wrong choice. And when I started my business three years ago, I had to learn to be a better decision-maker, to make quick decisions, and have my own back no matter what.

When I attend the event with my coach, I always create three essentials that I’m going to focus on for the following six months. There are so many things to learn and I can master areas of growth. But if I’m taking one step in 100 different directions, I will have less growth than if I narrow my focus on three areas and then take consistent action in those three areas. Now I also commit. If I invest in my coach, I commit to getting results.

I take ownership of my experience. When I choose three essentials, I commit to them, I don’t rethink them or change my mind and decide that I should focus on something else. And that is what creates massive success. You want to make a decision, implement it, take that action, and have your own back. No going back and rethinking because that is just slowing you down.

And this is how you reach your goals faster, is when you make that decision and then you implement it. Now, when you stay stuck thinking and overthinking analyzing options, do you know what you’re not doing? You’re not taking action, you’re not getting any closer to your goal. So it’s better to decide and go, gag and go, as a colleague of mine says, so you can recover from anything and you will 100% get your goals faster. And you might be thinking, but what if I blow up my career and make this massively wrong decision or a huge mistake?

And part of decision-making is trusting yourself to make a good decision. This is also why coaching is so beneficial because I help you know what you want in your career, but I also help you make the best decision, build the self-confidence to always trust yourself, and have a safety net while you learn this new skill. So whether it’s figuring out what you want or being a more effective leader, you have a safe space and the accountability to implement what you learn. Now, I have a step that is built into my career discovery process, for example, where you don’t make decisions that you will regret. So it’s kind of fail proof.

So if something comes out of that process that is very different, we make sure it is the best path before you go and make that big jump. Same with the standout leader incubator that is coming. There is a safe space and a way for you to identify the best path for dealing with a certain employee or dealing with a certain leadership challenge that you can test out and ensure is going to be effective ahead of time. It’s just another benefit of working with me and coaching. So if you want to get into a career you love, this year, I invite you to schedule a consultation.

Call me and I’ll put that link in the show notes. So deciding to make decisions so it’s a little bit of a trigger. Deciding to make decisions and implement them is the foundation of the changes you want to make. And I’ve talked about this before and I’m going to walk you through this framework to just help you make good and quick decisions without overthinking or fear of making the wrong choice. So this is an episode you’re going to want to bookmark and hold onto because I am going to walk you exactly through it.

So let’s talk about what we tell ourselves about decision-making that makes it so freaking hard sometimes. So we tell ourselves that there’s a right answer that someone else knows better. But here’s the problem. When you tell yourself there is a right answer, you overthink and you do the one thing that won’t get you the results you want. You stay undecided.

You don’t go all in on yourself when you tell yourself someone else knows better. You are outsourcing your life or your career, even if it’s just what to have for dinner to someone else. They don’t know better, you do. If you want Sushi tonight, say you want Sushi. Overthinking is a problem.

It drains your energy and it causes anxiety and wasted time. It makes you more tired, you’re less productive, and you lose time and money. Being undecided makes you unhappy, and distracts you from your life. It creates what I call decision fatigue, where you are laboring to make the decision and you exhaust yourself just trying to figure out the right answer. But here’s the thing.

The struggle you have with making decisions is not your fault. It’s coming from a lived experience that you had and you might not be aware of it. And there are three reasons that we struggle with making confident decisions. And I’ve already alluded to this a little bit in this episode. So the first is social conditioning.

The second is negative feelings, and the third is safety. So we’re going to dig into each of these reasons: number one social conditioning. We are taught from a young age not to go into the unknown when we make decisions. Most people I talk to are more comfortable spending $50 to $100,000 on their college education than spending a fraction of that on personalized development to solve their problems. Why?

Because education is a sure thing. If you learn nothing, if it’s stressful and you don’t even make more money because of it, at the end of the day, you can throw your money at it and you can put it on your resume for sure. You’ll have a tangible item at the end and that becomes safe for you. That becomes your comfort zone. Why?

When people are unhappy at work, they look for a certification they can do something they can learn and achieve to make them more marketable instead of working with a coach who can get them clear. On what? They want and walk them into their next higher-paid role because the latter requires you to go to the uncertain to invest in something that if you fear won’t work for you, you end up paying for something without the credential. Or that new line on your resume. Many of us have had a negative childhood experience where we were told we were wrong, where we were corrected, or when we made our own decisions, something bad would happen to us as a result.

And all of this social conditioning keeps us stuck and wanting to find the right answer instead of just making a decision. And that leads me to number two. There are negative feelings associated with decision-making. Feeling confused, worried, uncertain, scared. Fear of making the wrong decision.

Regretful, deprived, torn, or anxious because you worry you may feel another emotion that isn’t listed right. Like I’m feeling anxious because if I make the wrong choice, I could feel embarrassed. Now, this could be coming from reliving something that didn’t go well in the past, a model you saw from your parents or caretakers. It could come from trauma. But what do feelings have to do with it?

Let’s talk about your brain. It’s one of my favorite topics. Number three when we don’t make decisions, it is a coping mechanism to keep our brain safe, but it creates pain and discomfort in the now, you don’t decide, so you don’t have to deal with the consequences of the decision and how you might feel, so you take on the discomfort. Right now, the pain is associated with the outcome of the decision. Potentially not being right feels bigger than the pain of staying stuck and being in your pattern.

Right now. When you don’t decide, you stay stuck and in pain. When you make decisions, you at a minimum are making progress and building confidence. And when you don’t make a decision, know that you are making a decision. Indecision is something you’re doing that is preventing you from what you want now.

So questions you can consider to dig deeper into your thoughts about decision-making are one, what lessons were you taught growing up about what is right and wrong when trusting yourself or making decisions? For example, were you taught not to spend money but to save as much as you can? Were you taught to do a lot of research and get a lot of opinions before you go and make a decision? Were you taught that you need to talk to three people before deciding on a contractor? Were you taught or was it modeled for you that if you think or feel something you need someone else to agree with you, right, that needs to validate you?

Number two, what feelings do you associate with decision-making? When you think of making decisions, how does that make you feel? And number three, how is not making decisions protecting you? When you think about staying stock, it, as I said, can feel painful and uncomfortable. But when you think about what it offers you, right?

It offers you the comfort of that pattern you’re used to. It offers you the comfort of not making changes. It offers you the comfort of always getting accepted by others and not rubbing anyone the wrong way, right? So it’s protecting you and helping you in some way. So dig into what that might be so that you can better understand your patterns and why you do some of the things that you do.

And then you can decide if you want to keep doing that or not. So let’s think about the benefits of making decisions. I mentioned some already, but when you make decisions and get out of that cycle, you save time. You increase your action. You reduce numbing yourself to avoid the emotions.

Sometimes when we have a decision to make, then we can feel stressed or anxious about it. And then instead of focusing on the decision, we distract ourselves, right? Like, I’m going to scroll on Amazon and see what new books came out this week. Or let’s get some DoorDash and get some take out and let’s just Netflix and chill tonight, right? You do something that’s distracting you, and that feels good.

It’s usually indulging in something, shopping, eating, having some wine, something that’s going to distract you from feeling what you feel and thinking what you think about that decision. Now you also so you’ll stop doing that when you make the decision. You’ll stop distracting or numbing yourself. You’ll learn by doing, right? You take that action, you evaluate, you learn, and you grow more quickly.

You develop a growth mindset. You build confidence and you make progress faster. Now, I also want to share some brain traps with you because you know me, I love some neuroscience and peeling back the layers of your brain and your subconscious and getting in there so that you can create some lasting results. So I want to get a little bit deeper in this episode about this because I have another episode called Competent Decision Making that is a little bit lighter episode, and this is really like the master class. Okay, so let’s talk about some brain traps.

Now, these traps were taught through our social conditioning. They are things we believe to be true, but they are not, and they prevent us from making the decisions that we want to. All right, so the first trap is that there is a right decision. The truth is, there is no wrong decision. You are always learning and growing.

You have to think of the big picture, right? There are no right decisions. Anything you think is right is because of something that society, your family, and the influences around you have taught you, and it’s just not true. You always get to decide, and you can always rebound from anything that you decide. Another trap.

Decisions are hard to make, something your brain tells you. The truth is, decisions are very easy. They’re made in an instant. They’re just not comfortable. You could decide right now you’re having sushi for dinner, and then you may have some obstacles to implementing that, but you could decide right now that it doesn’t take long at all.

You could decide right now that you’re going to go walk into your boss’s office or call them up on Zoom or call them up on Skype and ask for a promotion. You don’t have to think about it for a long time. You could do it right now if you wanted to. Okay, let’s keep going. Another trap.

I need more time to think. The truth is like I said, decisions are made in an instant. You just take a long time. You just want to feel more certain. And you think that time creates certainty, but it doesn’t.

[00:19:21.560] – Speaker 1

Certainty is something you can decide to have. It doesn’t come to you. You go to it. Your brain is trying to prevent you from making changes, and again, being uncomfortable. That is your brain’s job.

Nothing has gone wrong. But if you take certainty off the table as something you don’t want to indulge in, that alone will make it easier to make decisions. So if you don’t believe that you can choose certainty, you could just take it off the table and say, I’m going to make decisions without certainty. And that will automatically get you into taking more action. Another trap.

It will require a lot of change. Whatever that decision is, it’s going to require a lot of change. And the truth is, it will require change. But that’s okay. You want to change.

Change is good. Change is what is going to solve your problems, right? Like, if you’re not happy with something in your life, change is what is going to create that change, that difference, that results that you want, right? You have to do new things to get new results. These traps introduce yourself.

Fun, aren’t they? Let’s do another one. Trap if it was the right decision, it would feel good. Truth, the opposite is true. Discomfort is a sign of growth.

If you haven’t been uncomfortable, you haven’t been growing. Trap someone else might know better. Truth no one knows what is best for you more than you. Your central nervous system is really interesting because it has all of these layers of your values and your beliefs and your social conditioning, but it also has in your subconscious, it is attuned to who you are. And so if you learn to pay attention to your intuition, to your feelings, you know when things are right for you and when they’re not.

And you can use that when you can learn to understand your central nervous system and your brain, you can learn how to make decisions that are right for you and to stop leaning on other people to validate that that is coming from your conscious mind, from your social conditioning. All right, let’s keep going. Here’s another trap. Got two more. I could make a mistake.

The truth is you can always recreate what you have right now. And my second point is, so what? You made a mistake, right? Isn’t there a saying the road to success is built on bricks of failure? Or did I just make that up?

Maybe I made that up. But it’s true, right? Like, we always compare ourselves to external people, to the people that have the things that we want, and we don’t see the work that went into that, that happened behind closed doors. There are a lot of failures and a lot of mistakes that happen along the way. That’s how we learn, that’s how we grow, right?

Okay. And finally, someone will be mad, angry, sad, and disappointed in me, right? Insert the emotion that’s most relevant to you. Someone will insert that emotion. And the truth is, you cannot control other people’s feelings.

Other people’s feelings are coming from their thoughts or their trauma, or something that triggered them, or something in their subconscious. You cannot control other people’s thoughts and feelings as much as you might like to. So definitely there is an element of talking to your stakeholders, to your partner, to collaborating, right? But you shouldn’t be operating in your life and making decisions like you’re in a mind trying to avoid stepping on something that is going to blow up in other people’s emotions. Okay?

So you get it. Decision-making is critical to your growth. And the faster you make decisions, the more growth you will have. And the reason you struggle comes from a prior lived experience, but you can 100% overcome it. This is in your control.

And so I’m going to give you some strategies to try. Think about some decisions that you need to make. Here’s a strategy you can use. Set a timer. Give yourself an allotted time to do research and make your decision.

So if you’re someone, and I know I work with a lot of scientists, a lot of PhDs, if you were like, I really need to do my research. So give yourself 30 minutes, an hour, whatever you feel comfortable with, nothing too crazy, and then do your research. And then make the decision. Make the decision. Decide what you’re going to do.

Another strategy is to use the ten 1010 method. So the 1010 method is you look at something you want to decide, and then you say, okay, for this decision, what is the benefit of this decision ten minutes from now, ten months from now, and ten years from now? So prompt your brain to answer those questions. And then the third strategy is to ask better questions, right? Instead of asking what’s right, what’s wrong?

What will I think? Here are some questions you can ask yourself when you’re looking to make a decision. What moves you closer to your desired result? What is aligned with who you want to be? If you weren’t afraid of making the wrong choice, what would you do?

What are the best and worst scenarios that will happen as a result of this decision, and how would you handle it the worst? What would you love to do? What would you do if it was easy, what would you tell a friend to do? What would be the value or the ROI return on investment for each side of the decision? And then put your fear in the passenger seat of your car, but don’t let it drive.

You are driving the car. Know that your decision is the best decision for this time, and whatever the outcome is, you can handle it. Your greatest growth and potential are just on the other side of the decision that you’re not making now. Some best practices are to trust yourself. Give yourself a deadline if you feel uncomfortable.

That is a good thing. Make decisions often. Never let guilt be the reason that you do or don’t do something. And don’t indulge in the what-ifs. Focus on the value of making a decision now.

Your brain will always offer you reasons to stay stuck, reasons to spin, reasons to overthink, and reasons to stay in the same pattern. That is what it is built to do. It is going to stay in that pattern unless you decide to disrupt it. If you decide to be a decisive person, you will become one. The more decisions you make and see that you can handle them, the more confident you will be.

This is a win-win. Then decide what are your next steps. What is the action you want to take listening to this podcast today, what do you want to start to do differently? What decisions do you want to make right now? Decide, take action, evaluate, and keep going.

All right, the cheetah family goes out there, and makes decisions. Let me say that again. All right, the Cheetah family go out there and make decisions this week. Whether it’s what you are having for dinner if you should apply for that job, or talk to your boss, just decide using the strategies I provided you today. And I’m going to allow you to practice making a decision right now.

If you have been wanting to work with me one on one or wondering what career and leadership coaching is all about, schedule a consultation call with me. It is my gift to you and is no obligation. We talk about what you want to be different and how I can help, and I will give you a roadmap to achieve what you want. You will get to practice deciding on the call. If you want to work together, don’t worry.

I can help you make a decision that you feel good about. Whether it’s a heck yes or a nope, this isn’t a good fit right now. The link to Schedule a consultation is in the show. Note now, if you’re a people manager, either new or experienced, I want to invite you to join the waitlist for my new small group coaching program, the Standout Leader Incubator. Enrollment opens on February 20.

And here’s the thing when you are on the waitlist, you get weekly leadership development tips to help you be a more effective leader right now. You also get first access to apply for the group when it is open. Joining the Waitlist doesn’t obligate you to apply. It’s just my way to help you grow as a leader for free, just like this podcast. After developing leaders in the industry for years and then within my practice, I know what works.

So the link to join the Waitlist will also be in the comments. I will talk to you next week. Have an amazing week.

Thank you for listening to this episode of your worthy career. Visit yourworthycareer.com for full show notes and additional resources to help you on your career journey. Speaking of resources, if you enjoy today’s show, you will love being an email VIP insider where I share training tools and behind-the-scenes content with my VIP list. Become a VIP and join us at yourworthycareer.com. See you next week.