How to make the most difficult decisions in your life

Quite often my clients come to see me because they are faced with really important, really difficult decisions; often it’s about whether to change their country, their partner, or their job.

Most of the time, the decisions they are faced with are so difficult because all the options have good and bad sides. They all have a pay-off but also a price to pay.

Tempting as it may be for me to just give them my opinion when they ask me “so what should I do?”, my role is rather to tease out what they really want, deep down. I help them by digging up the underlying motivations, both helpful and unhelpful ones. Some come from their unconscious “programming”, and some are conscious choices they want to make.

So we look together at their needs and wants, and see if some are more important for them, or more urgent, and also how the different options will play out in the short, medium and long term.

In the end though, in most cases, there isn’t just a good choice and a bad choice; so whatever their choice is, it will be “right” – though only as long as one important condition is satisfied, and this is at once the easiest to understand and the most difficult to apply:

You can decide whichever way, but then you have put 100% of your intention, energy and work behind that decision. Concretely, that means:

– If you decide to stay, stop looking at the other options, and invest all in what you have decided to stick with.
– If you decide to leave, start building your new life, don’t look back at the old one wondering what it would have held for you.

If you can satisfy that condition, whatever you choose will most likely be the “right” one for you.