Let’s face it, not everyone is comfortable making decisions – especially when it comes to those involving career and life changes. Why? Well, when was the last time you were taught HOW to make decisions? If your answer is anything like mine, it is a big fat NEVER.
We learn to make decisions through experience – which is another way of saying, we do so via trial and error – we pick something and hope it works. Sometimes it does, other times it does not. Is it little wonder why we often freeze over career and life change decisions when we simply ‘guess’ our way along?
The first step is knowing the type of decision you are trying to make.
Let’s explore the tree key…
Leaves on a tree change, grow, fall off but it causes no harm to the tree itself.
A leaf-decision may evoke a change but if you get the decision wrong, it causes no damage.
Branches can be smaller twigs or bigger boughs, but a tree can lose any sized branch and survive – it may look different for a while and may need to reform its shape – but the life of the tree goes on.
Branch-decisions vary in size and importance, but ultimately although a change of greater significance occurs, it cannot cause longer term damage (most decisions happen right here).
Trunks of trees are very important to the stability and structure of the tree. Trunks can withstand a lot of blows without longer term damage, but big cuts can seriously impair the trees’ ability to grow.
Trunk-decisions need very careful planning to understand precisely if the change has the potential to cause serious harm or if any blows can be withstood longer term.
Roots of trees are vital to the life of the tree – mess up root work, the tree will not survive.
Root-decisions are rare in life and career, but we often believe our decisions will have root level consequences when that’s not usually the case. A root-decision going wrong would result in the end of a career or business… one decision alone is rarely powerful enough to create so much destruction.
Fear of things going wrong is a major factor in career and life indecision. Yet what is key in moving forward with a decision is identifying in real terms the level of decision really being made – rarely will any consequence be trunk or root level.
This is good news. When I work with clients stuck facing career change often facing what will happen if their decision goes wrong addresses the false perspective that it’ll be catastrophic. The reality is that even in the worst-case scenario, there are ways to “fix” the decision – the reason for this is that the chances are it was a branch that may look different for a while, it causes no longer term damage.
The very best news, however, is freed from the fear causing stagnation and the inability to move forward is that getting the decision right leads to new growth – something bigger, stronger and an abundant forest of opportunities.
Want to start your new growth and plant the seeds for success?
Get in touch for a free consultation.
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