One Decision Can Change Everything

Why are they so difficult for us? Why can that fear keep us stuck? And how to recognize when the safer choice may actually be the riskier one? The reason life-changing decisions feel so different from those other ordinary decisions is that you are not simply choosing what you're going to do.

In many cases, you're choosing who you're going to become.

That's a much bigger deal in life.

Choosing what you want for dinner might affect the next three hours of your life, especially if you made a bad choice at the gas station.

But choosing whether to change careers, get married, get a divorce, move across the country, start a business, retire, or walk away from something that you've spent 20 years building can change those next 20 years or even more.

Researchers who studied major life decisions have looked at what makes these choices so psychologically difficult for us.

One useful way that you can understand them is to look at several dimensions that show up in what we might call transformative decisions.

These are choices where there's conflicting values, where the decision can change your identity dramatically.

where you cannot really know what the experience will feel like until you're in that experience and then living it.

And you can also where there will be risk because reversing that decision is probably going to be difficult and maybe even a possible.

So let me put that in the Southeast Missouri terms for you.

You're standing at a fork in a road, and both roads have something you want and something that you're afraid of losing.

So suppose somebody offers you the job of a lifetime, but it requires moving your family halfway across the country.

Now you have these competing values.

Career opportunity is pulling you in one direction.

Family, friends, familiarity, schools, communities, and everything you built where you currently live are pulling you in another direction.

There's no calculator where you punch in those numbers and it spits out, move to Dallas, confidence level 94%.

If there were, somebody would sell that calculator for $19.95 on these late-night television infomercials, and I'd probably own two of them.

Then there's what researchers describe as a change of self.

Some decisions do more than just change your circumstances.

They change how you see yourself.

Retiring after 40 years is not simply just quitting work.

You may have spent four decades saying, I'm a teacher, I'm a police officer, I'm a psychologist, or I own and run this business.

Then one Friday afternoon, somebody gives you a cake, everybody shakes your hand, and Monday morning you wake up thinking, Okay, who am I now? That's an important question because we build part of our identity around the roles that we play in life.

So when a major decision threatens one of those roles, you may feel resistant even when you know the change could be good for you.

Why are they so difficult for us? Why can that fear keep us stuck? And how to recognize when the safer choice may actually be the riskier one? The reason life-changing decisions feel so different from those other ordinary decisions is that you are not simply choosing what you're going to do.

In many cases, you're choosing who you're going to become.

That's a much bigger deal in life.

Choosing what you want for dinner might affect the next three hours of your life, especially if you made a bad choice at the gas station.

But choosing whether to change careers, get married, get a divorce, move across the country, start a business, retire, or walk away from something that you've spent 20 years building can change those next 20 years or even more.

Researchers who studied major life decisions have looked at what makes these choices so psychologically difficult for us.

One useful way that you can understand them is to look at several dimensions that show up in what we might call transformative decisions.

These are choices where there's conflicting values, where the decision can change your identity dramatically.

where you cannot really know what the experience will feel like until you're in that experience and then living it.

And you can also where there will be risk because reversing that decision is probably going to be difficult and maybe even a possible.

So let me put that in the Southeast Missouri terms for you.

You're standing at a fork in a road, and both roads have something you want and something that you're afraid of losing.

So suppose somebody offers you the job of a lifetime, but it requires moving your family halfway across the country.

Now you have these competing values.

Career opportunity is pulling you in one direction.

Family, friends, familiarity, schools, communities, and everything you built where you currently live are pulling you in another direction.

There's no calculator where you punch in those numbers and it spits out, move to Dallas, confidence level 94%.

If there were, somebody would sell that calculator for $19.95 on these late-night television infomercials, and I'd probably own two of them.

Then there's what researchers describe as a change of self.

Some decisions do more than just change your circumstances.

They change how you see yourself.

Retiring after 40 years is not simply just quitting work.

You may have spent four decades saying, I'm a teacher, I'm a police officer, I'm a psychologist, or I own and run this business.

Then one Friday afternoon, somebody gives you a cake, everybody shakes your hand, and Monday morning you wake up thinking, Okay, who am I now? That's an important question because we build part of our identity around the roles that we play in life.

So when a major decision threatens one of those roles, you may feel resistant even when you know the change could be good for you.