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What if the problem isn’t your job, but the version of yourself you had to become to succeed in it? Corporate jobs don’t trap us because they’re evil. They trap us because they slowly teach us to disconnect from ourselves. If you're in corporate America and your life looks successful on paper but feels empty in practice, you’re not alone.
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This isn’t about quitting your job overnight or chasing money, but asking what feels right for you and finding clarity before making your next move. We deliver actionable strategies for complex career transitions. From managing ADHD-related overwhelm at work to overcoming the disconnect of the corporate grind.
You’re not broken. You’ve just outgrown the life you built.
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Hello, and welcome to episode 97 of Working
towards our purpose. In today's episode, we're going to talk
about being afraid of making the wrong decision.
But before we get into that, we're going to take a moment and just check
in with ourselves as we always do, and just slow down and see where
we're at today.
All right. Hopefully you got a second to check in.
For me. I'm feeling pretty good today,
feeling proud of myself, which is
a feeling that I struggle to feel.
Went to open mic last night, as I do every Wednesday, and
I felt like I did pretty good by my standards, which,
yeah, makes. Makes me feel good.
And, yeah, trying to. Trying to stay with that feeling of
being proud of myself. And.
Yeah, I don't know, just feeling like the repetitions
are paying off and like I'm seeing progress and that's a cool
feeling. And, yeah.
Yeah, I guess I'll leave it at that.
But, yeah, if you're not feeling proud of yourself, that's okay, too.
And yeah, all feelings
welcome. But let's get into today's episode.
The feeling of being afraid of making the wrong decision.
And this is certainly a feeling I'm familiar with.
I think this topic came to me from talking
to a friend who is making
a big decision, a career change,
a risk, going. Going out on the ledge and trying something, not knowing
if it's going to work out. Definitely, definitely
can empathize with that and know what that feels like. And,
yeah, it's, like, exciting for me to
talk to someone else who's not me, because when it's you, it's scary and challenging
and difficult, but from,
you know, a different perspective, it's like, yes, go do that. Like,
go. Go try it. But, yeah, we're. Let's get into
that. That feeling of, like, what it feels like to. To be
scared of making the wrong decision. Because. Because, I mean, that's plagued me for, like,
my whole life, I think, like, being just so unsure
of, like, a decision and, like, trying to
put all the pieces together and, like, get everybody's opinions and
being like, am I doing this right? And, yeah,
so this friend expressed to me, like, just,
like, it's hard to feel, like, hard to know if it's, like, the right decision
and, like, you're making this decision and
even after making it and, like, committing on it, like, feeling, like,
not regret, but. But, like, oh, no, did I make the right
decision? Was the decision that I made correct? Am I making a
mistake sort of thing? I think one.
One really big thing that happens Whenever you're making a decision
and getting other people's advice and opinions and
input, I think there's a. Like, everybody has an opinion.
Everybody tells you what's right and what's wrong. And I think, like,
especially when you're making a bigger decision, that
it brings out, like, all the opinions and everybody
will tell you something different. And yeah, it's confusing.
Like, it makes you confused because one person who maybe you trust tells you
this thing, and then another person tells you the opposite. And it
can be hard to know what's right.
And so this friend that I was talking about, it was funny because
her boss was, like, kind of swaying her to do the
opposite of what she wanted to do. And
it's just interesting because that same boss was the person that
you come in in the morning, you ask him how he is, and he's like,
I just, you know, I'm here, like, sort of thing. Like,
I don't know from the outside, from what I hear, it seems like, you know,
maybe he's not on. He's not perfectly happy with his life choices,
but yet here he is being like, you should do this because I was in
your shoes one time and, like, this is what I did and it
was good for me. And like, yeah,
so it's interesting. Like, I guess you really have to be careful of, like, who
you. Whose advice you take. And.
Yeah, I mean, it reminded me of, like, so many of my own
choices and decisions and, you know, my choice to leave
corporate and make that
huge career change and life decision and,
yeah, just so many different people giving you their input and
just leading to confusion and being afraid. And I've shared this before,
but I remember when I was leaving corporate,
one person that I felt like I aligned
with a lot told me that making
this feels like a big jump, but something will catch you. And maybe
you don't know what it is now, but it'll work out. And
I always go back to that piece of advice because it worked very well for
me and it made me confident in
making a decision even if I didn't know what the outcome was going to be,
because I knew it was more in the right direction.
And so, yeah, I like to share that whenever I can. That if
you're afraid of making a decision and not sure if it's the right one, not
sure if it's going to lead to a good outcome, know that, like, something will
catch you. And if it's a decision that's made
for you, then nothing,
I believe nothing truly bad can come from It. And if it is bad, it's
a learning experience. But we'll get into that in a second.
But, yeah, reminding me of, like, the decisions that I've made. And this one comes
to mind. Back in 2023, I
recorded my first album and, like, fucking finally finished something for once.
Because I've always been recording stuff my whole life since
learning how to play guitar and never finishing things,
never ever sharing anything, never putting it out there. But I just had this
conviction that I needed to post it online and
put it on Spotify and all the streaming sites and stuff
under my own name. And I was really afraid to make that decision.
And I went back and forth and
I was like, is this even good? I don't even know. I never showed anybody.
It could be terrible. It's cringy, maybe
just thinking of all the bad things that could come
of putting yourself out there. And I eventually came
to the decision to just do it and not tell anybody, because that felt easier.
And I did, and I. A lot of things
came from that, I think. And do I like it now?
I don't know. Maybe. But it was a
piece in time. I feel like all music is that.
But what it did for me was it made me feel.
It made me take my music more seriously. Because I was like, okay, I
finished this thing, and now I can improve upon that, and now
I can go and do more things that I want to do.
And ever since doing that, a decision that was really hard for me, I've been
regularly releasing music and writing music, and it's been
such a positive change for my music
career, I guess if you want to call it that, that feels weird, but,
yeah. And so how did I know that decision
was a good decision? And I think maybe that was one of the first
decisions where I thought of it in this way. So getting to the point of
how do you know that you're making the right decision? And that's sort of a
clickbaity title, I guess. But what I found
for me is that when you're making
decisions and you're getting everybody's input and you're confused and everything,
the way to tell if you're making the right decision is
to look inward. And it's probably no
shock, it's no big secret or anything, but if you can check
in with your own self and
make sure that you're doing something, you're making a decision because
it's something that's internal, it's something that you
desire or something that you feel like you have to do. Or
that voice in your head, that quiet voice in your head.
That's how, for me, I can tell if I'm making a right decision. And I
think if I go back to thinking about releasing that album,
I thought about all the people that know me and
what is it going to look like? And every time I did that, I didn't
want to do it. But when I went on walks and I was by
myself and I was in a good place and
happy and, you know, full of energy,
I thought to myself, like, yes, that's easy. Just do it. This is what you
want to do. You want to do music. And I relied on
that. And I think, like I said, it was the first time that I
trusted myself. And I think that that was so
important and pivotal because I've always struggled with trusting my
own voice and trusting my decisions and what I think about
things. And maybe if you're somebody like that,
you can relate. But it's taken a lot of practice to
trust my own intuition and trust my own feelings about
things and listening to that and doing it. And when
I've done that, the decisions have always been good decisions. And
right or wrong is such a cliche almost.
A decision doesn't have to be right or wrong, but when you're making a decision
for yourself, then it's going to
be the right decision. Because even if it leads to a bad thing, it's going
to teach you something. It's going to let you feel like you have
authority in your life and you can trust yourself
more. And I think that's kind of the biggest thing
is for me, trusting my own self. And when I released
that album, it gave me more
confidence in my own decision making, because
at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if I put it out or
didn't put it out to anybody else. But for me, it was huge. And it
was this huge stepping stone of, okay, I write
singer, songwriter music now, and this is something I do,
and this is something I can do. And the permission,
the seeing myself through that lens, all
that happened because I made the decision that I was feeling
within myself, and I didn't ask for outside permission. And
I probably did it too much where I didn't tell anybody that I did it.
And that's kind of crazy, but
that was my way of doing it. That was my way of not getting the
outside influence, basically not asking anybody, except
I think I maybe told my therapist, and I think that was
pretty much it. And
so, yeah, the point that I'm getting to is like, how do you know that
you're making a good decision? Ask yourself, is it aligned
with you? Is it. That's like the number one thing.
Does it feel true to you? Does it feel like something that you truly desire?
Or is it something that you think you should do based off of
somebody else's opinion or based off of societal expectations?
And yeah, like, internally versus externally. I think when you can make a
decision and you know that it's coming from you, coming internally,
then you know it can't be a wrong decision. Because if
you didn't do that thing, then, you know, maybe you'll still keep thinking about it.
But, like, at least you can rely on the fact that,
like, you thought it was right and you thought that it was the best
move for you. And
somebody said something one time recently that I thought was pretty funny. And
I don't even remember the context of it, but they
were saying it was their. I forget what it was.
Dang, I forget. But he said something like,
I don't know, this is my first time living life.
And I thought that was such a comical way of putting it.
Because, yeah, none of us know what the right decision is. None of us.
None of us know what the right decision is or how to do life, because
we've never done life before. We're doing it now for the first time. But
if you can rely, if you can
call on yourself and listen to
what's within you, then that's the
best option. You know what I mean? That's the best way of trying
to figure out what's going to make you happy and where you should be
going with your life and that sort of thing, because that's all you
got, just your own inner voice and
you can do things for other people. And I found
that that does not lead to happiness for me.
You know, going to college for something I didn't want to do,
going into a career that I didn't want to do. I found it just led
to emptiness and frustration,
anger. Like, all those feelings, like, angry. I was
angry at myself for not letting myself be who I wanted to
be. And I think that that's kind of what this boils down to.
And it's like, if you can make a decision
for you, for the person that you are, then it
can't be a wrong decision. And, yeah,
it's that simple. And I hope I'm making sense here, but I feel like
I'm rambling a bit. But, yeah, that's the main point. Just
super simple. If it's simple to Say, and
it's simple to talk
about, but to actually do it, it's much harder and it takes a lot
of practice and starting with small decisions,
taking ownership over things. I don't know, we live in a world
that you can get by with having no ownership of your
decisions and just by making no decisions. And we even
talked about this in, I think, the last episode about decisions. Maybe,
maybe I shouldn't have done two episodes with decisions in the title, but
that's okay. So, yeah, I just want to talk
about that. I just wanted to sort of share that. That you can't
make a wrong decision when it's coming from within you. And
hopefully that was helpful to anybody listening. Hopefully that
made sense. I know it's super simple, but it's a super
complex feeling. But it's a super simple answer. So I
tried my best to distill it down and
yeah, just put my thoughts out there.
Yeah, I think that's all I wanted to say.
Yeah, just trust your own voice
and yeah, if you have a hard time
being hard on yourself, if you are hard on yourself, I have a free
guide, Softening your inner critic in seven days. It's
sort of walks you through, like less
than 30 minutes a day. These little exercises that can help you
after seven days be hopefully a little more kinder to yourself. So
you can download that for free. It's in the link of every episode, every YouTube
video. It also gets you on my newsletter so that
you get reminded of these episodes. And no
spam or anything. And it's completely free. And let me know if you download it.
Let me know if it's helpful for you or if it's not. And I'd like
to know. So that's all I got for you today. Hopefully this
was helpful and I will see you on another episode real
soon. We're coming really close to episode 100. I'm gonna
do something a little different for episode 100 and maybe recap
the whole. The whole podcast existence and like, what I've learned over the
past three years on purpose and working and
everything. So look forward to that. We got
a couple more episodes towards that, so can look forward
to that in the future. But thanks for listening, appreciate your time and
hopefully you can have a great rest of your day.
Sa.