Decision Drama

Ever since the pandemic began, here’s what happens at our house on Friday nights. David brings home pizza. And then he says, “What movie should we watch?”

Then we all spend the next two hours scrolling through Netflix and Amazon Prime and Disney+ trying to find the right movie. Suggestions are made. And shot down. Trailers are watched. And abandoned. Google is consulted. And disparaged. Complaints are lodged. And seconded.

It’s a lot of drama about a little decision.

Cause none of us want to waste our time watching the wrong movie or watching a dumb movie or watching a movie we don’t like or watching a movie we’ve already seen. And so instead, we waste our time deciding.

Or rather, we waste our time not deciding.

And it’s painful.

Notice how we’re trying to make our Friday night “better” by choosing “right,” but it only makes things worse. We want to pick the best movie so we can avoid negative emotions like boredom or disappointment or annoyance, but in trying to do so, we feel a whole lot of boredom and disappointment and annoyance along the way.

Interesting, right?

As a coach, I see people deciding about coaching. And just like other decisions, they spend time not deciding because it feels safer to their brain. They’re trying to avoid a possible negative emotion in the future—maybe shame or disappointment or frustration? They don’t want to waste their time or their money on something their brain thinks might not work. Or maybe they don’t want to “fail again” and let themselves down in one more way. Like what if they’re expecting It’s a Wonderful Life and instead they get the live motion Cats movie.

But our fear of choosing wrong and possibly feeling bad ends up making us feel pretty bad anyway.

Because not deciding is deciding. Not deciding is always a decision to keep things the way they are. (Which is less scary to the brain—but also makes us feel stuck and powerless, and ends up creating the shame and disappointment and frustration and let down we were trying to avoid in the first place.)

Worse, the time we spend not deciding to get coached is time we aren’t creating the movie of our life that we really want to be watching.

I love watching my life unfold in ways I never thought were possible just because I decided that the way the story was going was not the way it would end. I changed the entire plot with my decision to get coached. If you’re ready for your own plot twist, you can sign up to get coached here.

xo,

April