Waiting For Discernment Is a Fool’s Errand
Why it took me five years to make the decision I knew I needed to make
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Let me tell you a divorce story.
Longtime readers of my blog know that I got a divorce in the early part of the 2020s. It’s hard to pin down the exact date, because the gap between our separation and our divorce was nearly five years. Part of that was the court systems getting gummed up by Covid—and part of it was because it took us a long time even to be sure that that was the path we wanted to take.
This blog is about the second part.
As someone who does decisions for a living—and who daily coaches people through their most consequential ones—I’ve become super fascinated by the times decision-making just grinds to a halt. And I’ve noticed two characteristics of these situations: They’re (almost) always the biggest of big decisions, and they almost always happen to really thoughtful people.
Here’s what happens: people face a consequential crossroads, and then they freeze. Not because they’re somehow bad at decisions, but because they recognize the gravity of the choice they’re making and they want to make it right.
My divorce was one of these, as was the decision one of my clients made to move to a new country to start a new job. Let me tell you about hers first.
Higher salary, better job—and decision paralysis
This happened before the pandemic. My client had been in a good job for about 10 years prior to the big decision. A good…but a stagnant job. There wasn’t anything particularly wrong with her work; she wasn’t deeply unsatisfied. She wasn’t burnt out.
At the same time, she also felt like she had hit the ceiling of what she could do at the university she worked at. She knew she could happily coast for the rest of her career—and, at the same time, she couldn’t see a lot of potential for growth.
A job announcement had been forwarded to her, which she initially ignored because it was outside the US. One night, though, at 2am (when all good decisions happen), she decided to put in an application. Why not? There were so many other, more qualified candidates; she probably wouldn’t ever hear from the foreign university anyway.
One question in the application surprised her. The university wanted to know what salary each applicant wanted.
“That’s not how you’re supposed to negotiate,” she thought. Initially, she wrote down the salary she was already making. And then—because, 2am—she deleted it. “Why the heck not,” she said, and put in something she was sure they’d never offer.
She was wrong, on both counts. They offered. At the salary she wanted.
And then the paralysis hit. Objectively? This was perfect. She was single, no kids, a good group of friends but nothing else tying her to where she’d been living. It should have been a no-brainer, she told me, in retrospect.
It still took her an entire year to accept the position.
My client did what a lot of us do. She wanted to make this big decision right. She did not want to get something so consequential wrong. It was already insane to move countries for a job, she thought, so it had to be the right job.
She kept waiting for a sign, for the universe to make it clear, for the right answer to come to her—and for her to be able to discern which of the “right answers” was actually right.
Decision paralysis in relationships
My divorce was the same way—except it took us five years.
We had been married for fourteen years when we separated. Without dissecting the relationship itself (at least, not in a public forum like this one), I’ll simply say that, on at least one level, the separation wasn’t a surprise.
And it was also devastating. For both of us. Over the two decades we’d known each other, we had grown one of those odd relationships in which we truly, deeply loved each other—and it also wasn’t working.
So, there wasn’t a clear right answer to our relationship. Splitting up was not the obvious option, but neither was staying together.
It truly could have gone either way.
The next three years were spent in the same way my client spent her year: agonizing over what the right decision was. We talked to friends over and over and over and over again (I’m surprised some of these folks are still friends!). We prayed. We had long, deep, tearful, and sometimes angry conversations with each other.
All of that, in search of the right answer.
All in search of some black-on-white clarity about the single biggest decision we would make in a decade. Divorce is hugely consequential. We didn’t want to make the wrong decision.
We kept waiting for discernment—we wanted God, the universe, anyone to tell us what to do, and the ability to tease out which of those tells was actually right.
In the end, we did get a divorce—something each of our friends knew, years before, was in our future. Something even we, probably, knew was in our future.
So why did we wait so long for discernment? Why did my client?
Tell me your story
That’s this month’s theme. Next week we’ll do two things. First, we’ll talk about the research behind unconscious “knowing”—what one of my friends calls “the woo of decision-making”—and then we’ll cover how to incorporate this unconscious knowing, this gut feeling, into your decisions in a way that guides you to the right answer.
In the meantime, I want to hear your stories of choices that took you ages to make!
Have you ever taken a long time to make a choice, and then ended up making the one you knew you’d be making anyway?
How do you receive discernment?
What was a time your gut led you astray? What about a time when it was spot-on?
Hit me in the comments with these stories! I’ll see you next week
Discernment IS possible. Are you looking facing a consequential life decision? Are you stuck and not sure how to move forward?
You aren’t alone. Let’s talk about getting you to a life you’re not trying to quit every day.
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