Is what you’re attempting to do the right thing? What makes pushing your idea into the forefront a challenge? Are you struggling with questions such as, “Is this the right time?”
Being unsettled causes you to have unrest, which limits your ability to have peace about your situation. Are you attempting to force a situation with unsettled thoughts or feelings?
Seek further into the reason for your reservations. Something inside could be signaling that you should wait or proceed with caution. Whatever the case is, you need to get yourself settled before moving forward.
Defining Right or Wrong
Situations are not always black and white when you make choices about life-changing decisions. For example, you can be decisive about the right time to buy a pair of shoes by checking your bank account. That may not always be the final authority on your choice if you have a budget you follow, and other circumstances that impact the bank’s money, the car payment, bills, etc.
However, it helps give you a measure to make a well-informed decision. It would definitely be questionable to buy a pair of shoes when you know your bank account is in the negative.
The gray areas of making decisions are what cause the most challenges mentally and emotionally. There is the basic question that drives how we proceed or back up, and that’s, “What if?”. The unknown is the blockade that causes you to feel unsettled. The thoughts of failure and success ruminate through your mind, and you get unwound.
All the immediate evidence proves to be right for many decisions, but there isn’t any sufficient validation of your choice until one is made. There are many costs involved in making life-changing decisions (college, marriage, divorce, changing jobs, pursuing a business, etc.). So, how do you decide what to do?
Choices and Timing
We all would like to have the magic wand appear and show us our future. The reality is there is no wishing, only hope that you are headed in the right direction. You will often not know that a choice was wrong until you make one and later discover that it wasn’t right. Some things you will not know until you try.
Just because you try an event doesn’t mean that it was wrong, but possibly means the universe did not align in your favor because of timing. You can do the right thing at the wrong time. This happens to many successful college players who get out of school early to enter a professional sport only to get an early cut or not make the team. It’s not that they were not great talent, but their timing was miscued. It’s like tasting a great batter but removing the cake too early. You have all the ingredients, but the outcome is worthless if you don’t allow the ingredients to cook thoroughly.
Before Making the Choice
1. Seek out, wise counsel. This might mean you need to pay for professional advice. If you want to know what works, you have to ask someone that has applied experience. You have no business asking a bank teller about business start-ups when they’ve never opened a business. Be careful who is advising you. Many people want to help, and they mean well, but they lack the competence to help you. It’s okay to come out of your familiar circle and ask someone that has marked your trailway.
2. Pray. If you are feeling unsettled, it’s possibly because your inner alarm is signaling you to pay attention. You have a gut (I call it the Holy Spirit) that is always guiding you based on intuition, which sometimes can’t be explained. Have you ever postponed an engagement that had been planned for quite some time because you felt some type of way? Then later, you found out something devastating happened? There were no obvious warning signs, but only the gut that was making you feel uncomfortable. Trusting God is a challenge when you are used to trusting yourself and have difficulty understanding his voice, but learning to understand who you are through your creation is the best guidance you will ever receive.
3. Plan. Write out how your decision is going to work. Map out the potential and obvious obstacles and set a course for each of them. You may need to plan how you will deal with negative family members who are unsupportive of your vision. You will need a response plan that keeps you focused on your goal without being thrown off by negativity. Plan, plan and keep planning. Many people have had unsuccessful marriages because they lacked planning. Things are going to happen to throw you off course.
4. Know your stuff. Your dreams can become a reality. You must understand what you’re dreaming about. What do you want to specifically see happen, and what are the processes to get there? If you have not prepared yourself, you will fail yourself. You see, this happens to often when celebrities made a platinum debut but didn’t prepare for what was expected afterward. The platinum debut yielded an expectation of mastery, so there was no time to go back to develop. This is what happens with one-hit wonders. You give everything you have and don’t have anything remaining.
5. Test. Take smaller steps towards your goals so you can see what happens during unexpected pivotal points. You can recover much quicker from smaller sequential steps rather than larger inoperative leaps. Let people sample what you have before you jump out into the deep. You see further when you’re on the shore rather than in the middle of the ocean.
6. Make it happen. Don’t be afraid to fail; be afraid not to succeed. Exhaust your avenues before calling your decision a dead end. Be patient and…wait for it.
