I have a strong viewpoint that when you are undecided about what to do with your career, your life is on hold.
I have seen people waffle for 10+ years on all kinds of career questions.
Should I quit?
Would I actually enjoy going back to school?
Have I stayed at this company for too long?
Do I want to be on this career path?
And it's crushing, exhausting, and energy-draining to be undecided.
The good news is there's immense freedom in being decided.
Here's a section from my upcoming book, “Right For YOU”:
"I truly believe that when you end your waffling, you get back to living your life. There’s an incredible peace that comes from knowing why you’re making the choice you are and exactly why it works for you. No more arguing with yourself in your head and convincing yourself not to quit each day. You get to choose where you spend your mental energy and be 100% invested in whatever role you choose. And remember when I said that the waffling leaks into the rest of your life and affects the lives of the people around you? Luckily, the opposite is true as well. When you’re able to decide and feel confident about the choice you’ve made, it starts to leak into the rest of your life in a positive way."
While I'm not dealing with career indecision at this particular moment, I've recently felt this in an incredibly visceral way for the past two years.
Home has always been a hard topic for me. As someone who was born in Australia but grew up mostly in the US, has lived many places around the world, and has three out of four immediate family members living a 15-hour plane ride away in Melbourne, Australia, it's hard to know where home is.
The pandemic raised all kinds of existential questions for me and my husband and one of those topics happened to be where we wanted to live at this phase of our lives. We thought we were moving to LA for 6 months until that fell through, we thought we were going to reinvest in SF but that wasn't possible, and it was unbelievably exhausting to have this question hanging over our heads for two years. It took so much of my mental energy to keep revisiting the question, "where do we want to live?" For me, being undecided about where I wanted to live felt like my life was on hold.
Seven days ago, we moved into our new place in Las Vegas, the place we have chosen to call home for the foreseeable future.
And all last week, I was reminded of how much freedom there is in being DECIDED. There's a calm to it where you get to choose where you put your time and energy. There's an investment you can make in the place where you choose to be.
I immediately felt excited to meet my neighbors, something I hadn't prioritized previously. I started thinking about reading the books I have on my shelf and remembering the craft projects I have in my closet. I have space for additional parts of my life to feel alive.
The experience of being undecided has been very painful, and it has also reinvigorated my desire to help others feel the freedom of being decided.
If you are feeling undecided about your career, I want you to know that it is possible to be DECIDED and feel immense freedom in that choice. And I'll be here to celebrate with you when you do.