The Liz Moody Podcast - The Secret To Making Hard Decisions: Minimize Regret & KNOW You’re On The Right Path

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

In this episode, I sit down with one of the top, most highly sought after career and executive coaches, Megan Hellerer. We dive into exactly how to live the most authentic and fulfilling life possible. She shares key tools we can all start using today such as the four omens, the aligned action formula, “haywalts”, and an inner navigation system calibration exercise. This episode will help you tune out the noise and get clear on what’s actually right for you. Plus, we’ll share how to practice making aligned choices in small ways, how to embrace uncertainty with confidence, and how to start walking a path that feels good even if you can’t see the finish line ahead. In this episode, we get into: Decision-making frameworks Directional mindset vs. destinational thinking The scientific method for life Overcoming the fear of wasting time Warmer vs. colder test Career fulfillment Relationship decisions & so much more For more from Megan Hellerer, find her on Instagram @meganhellerer, online at www.meganhellerer.com, or check out her book called Directional Living: A Transformational Guide to Fulfillment in Work and Life. Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order Liz’s book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  Connect with Liz on Instagram @lizmoody or online at www.lizmoody.com. Subscribe to the substack by visiting https://lizmoody.substack.com/welcome. Use our discount codes from our  highly vetted and tested brand partners by visiting https://www.lizmoody.com/codes.  To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. This episode is brought to you completely free thanks to the following podcast sponsors: AG1: visit drinkag1.com/LIZMOODY and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today. Thrive Market: visit ThriveMarket.com/LIZMOODY and get a $60 FREE gift today & 30% OFF your first order The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. Formerly the Healthier Together Podcast.  This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. The Liz Moody Podcast Episode 349. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You said that there's four questions that we can ask ourselves for making decisions. Can you share what those are? Another sort of shortcut, magic-busting question that you can always ask on decision-making is how can we practice becoming more tolerant of uncertainty in our lives? Uncertainty means possibility, potential, opportunity. It means something different than what you're doing now. Are there external signs that maybe we're going down the wrong path? Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Liz Moody podcast.

I know I have a great interview to share with you when I keep referencing things that I learned in it after the interview. And this is one that I cannot stop talking about. It has one of the best decision-making frameworks that I have ever heard. And you are going to hear it today and you're going to be like, wow, that's really interesting. And then you're going to see how applicable it is as it comes up over and over and over in your life, in your friend's lives, in your family's lives, in the next few weeks and months. And then you're just going to be like, oh my gosh, this is amazing.

this is an absolutely life-changing, game-changing, decision-making framework. If you feel stuck, if you have hard decisions to make, if you have easy decisions to make, if you're struggling to find your own voice amidst all of the societal shoulds, if you cannot stop glamorizing the paths not taken, if you want to figure out the best place to live or the best career, or if you should break up with your partner, this episode is for you. Our guest today is Megan Heller. She is a Stanford graduate. She is an ex-Google executive. And she's the author of Directional Living,

a transformational guide to fulfillment in work and life. She is a world-renowned career coach who is responsible for many names that you have definitely heard of figuring out their best life path to take. And she has been featured everywhere from Vogue to Oprah to the Wall Street Journal. Megan, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. I'm so excited to have you here. we're going to dive into so many different frameworks for coping with uncertainty for making hard decisions. So I want to start off with you famously helped AOC go from bartender to Congresswoman to this incredibly influential figure, whether you agree or disagree with her. She's incredibly influential. Can you share a little bit about that story? Absolutely. And I think

she's an amazing example of what is possible for us in our lives when we can let go of the destination and let go of having certain guaranteed outcomes. And that was a key part of what we did in her process. So like many of us, she had questions of what am I going to do with my life? What is my purpose? What am I meant for? And the first thing I said to her was forget your purpose, follow your curiosity. And by that, I mean, we want to move away from this old way that we've been taught to think

that really focuses on the destination and linear trajectories to getting there. And instead, we want to shift to what I call a directional mindset, where we move in the right direction without needing to know exactly where we're heading. And so what that looked like in concrete terms for her was starting off by figuring out what was sort of the big direction where we were heading. And these are hypotheses. They're not definitive places that we must land. You can think about it as sort of the scientific method for life where we are having a hypothesis of where we want to go and then we're sort of running experiments or testing and learning along the way to iterate on the hypothesis and come to the truth of where it is that we want to be landing. For AOC, we had a few buckets that

we looked at in terms of directions that we were heading in based on her interests and experiences from the past. So the first one was entrepreneurship and publishing, which she'd had some experience in out of college. The second one was looking at hospitality, which was what she was doing at the time in ways that she could potentially advance in that bucket. And lastly, was public service, which was a burgeoning interest for her. She had already been doing some volunteering in the Bernie Sanders campaign. And she knew this was something of interest for her. And when we looked at each of those things, we looked at just where was her curiosity leading her most in these three buckets? And it was clearly for her public service. Now, we didn't define exactly what that was going to look like.

It's not like we said, okay, public service, now you're going to be the chief of staff of someone, or now you're going to go to a think tank, or now you're going to run for office, which wasn't even in the realm of possibility or on our mind at all. Instead, we just said, what can you do to get more information about your interest in this topic, in this bucket, and what feels like the single most directionally right step to advancing in this area of your life? And so for her, that looked like a few different things. And we wanted to keep them low stakes. This wasn't about like quitting her job and starting something new. This was about exploring and getting more information and doing research about what was really filling her up. And each of these things is sort of a clue towards where she

wanted to end up. So these things were things like going to local community meetings and town halls, doing community activism, continuing to be involved in Bernie Sanders campaigns. And eventually this was deciding to take a road trip to Flint, Michigan and to Standing Rock with a friend. And what was so important about this was she didn't do it because she knew or even thought or had an inkling that this was going to lead her somewhere good in terms of her career. She had no idea what was leading her. It was just following her curiosity. She just went just because this was a big decision because she had to take time off work where she wasn't being paid. This was something she couldn't not do. And so she went on this road trip and it was on the way back. And it was on the way

back from that that she got the first call from Brand New Congress, which is the organization that ended up sponsoring her run. And when she received that call, it wasn't like a sure thing. She wasn't like, oh, yes, this was my dream. I'd always been thinking about this, not at all. And also to put this in context, this was not, potentially would not have been an opportunity even six months prior, right? There was like a timing element of this and why it's so important for us to remain open to and responsive to what is happening in the world around us because nobody or many people did not anticipate the 2016 election going in the way that it did. And the beginning of our work was before that. And so I don't think we could have even anticipated how this would have evolved or the context in which

she would have been running. But she got the call from brand new Congress. And again, it was just a question of, I'm probably not going to win this election, but is this directionally right? Am I curious about this? Does this feel like something I want to learn more about? And so she said yes to getting more information, right? So that involved having just another phone call, showing up to the first organizing event where they gave you more information and at every point allowing herself to say, oops, nope, wrong direction. And then it was getting signatures, et cetera, et cetera. And again, at no point did she think that there was a guarantee, that there was certainty around her winning the election. It just felt like the next directionally right step and that

there was information in it and whatever connection she was going to make through that process. And obviously she ended up winning the election, which was, I think, you know, surprised to her, certainly, and she's continued to operate in this way of not needing to know the destination. You know, she gets asked frequently, like, are you running for Senate? Are you going to be president? And I truly believe what she says, which is like, I'm not thinking about the future. I'm thinking about what I need to do now and what is important to my constituents now. And it's so hard to predict how any of those other things are going to unfold or where she's going to be needed and what's going to feel aligned to her in the future. There is a lot to unpack there. One of the things,

though that you said is that even if she hadn't won the election, that felt like the right direction for her to go in. I have a real fear of wasting time. I know a lot of listeners have a real fear of wasting time. So it doesn't feel like we want to go all in on these things if they're going to not have the results that we want to have, especially as we get older and time feels and more and more limited. So how do we grapple with that? I love this question because it makes me wonder if we are wasting time by not exploring and following our curiosity and our joy and the things that may actually lead us to what we really want to be doing in our life. So set another way. In my experience and my work, the way that we get to the place of maximum fulfillment,

maximum joy, doing the work and living the life that we are uniquely well-suited to do and to live is by consistently taking directionally right or aligned steps in our life. If all of the steps you take are directionally right and aligned for you, wherever you end up is going to be directionally right and aligned for you. So there isn't actually the risk of not ending up, where you want to be if you continue to take directionally right and align steps. It may not look like what you thought it was going to look like, but it's still leading you in the right direction. And that is the thing that is important about this. And I think we miss opportunities when we

only think about what we can imagine the best results are going to be. So I would argue you're never wasting time if it is directionally right and aligned for you. If you feel excited and curious about it, even if it doesn't work out or work out in the way you thought it was going to, it's going to lead you somewhere good and positive. If we go back to thinking about the scientific method for life, right, if you have a hypothesis that you start testing with experiments and the experiment proves your hypothesis wrong, that doesn't mean it was a wasted experiment. That gave you more information that allows you to construct another experiment that is better and getting you closer. to the truth. When we have a hypothesis, the goal isn't to confirm our original hypothesis. It's to find out what is true. And so I think if we look at it as more of an exploration, that is never wasting time. Does that make sense? It does make sense. And I still shafe at it a little bit.

And I think there's this sense of like, how do we fight off this? Well, by this age, I should be here. I should be this successful. I should have these kind of status symbols or I should have these signs of success in my life. So I would say that all of those ways of thinking are what I would call the old paradigm, which is the destinational mindset. And that includes things like the shoulds, right? These things that actually are externally driven and not internally driven. They're not coming from your own internal navigation system or internal clock. They're coming from external sources of convention or should. So anytime you have shoulds in your language, that's a sure sign that you're not making an aligned directionally right decision and you're probably heading in the wrong direction.

And when I say wrong direction, I mean something that isn't going to end up being fulfilling for you. And you're probably going to end up wanting to reroute. And that's one of the ways we can tell when we're making good aligned decisions or bad aligned decisions for us and we can get into more of that later too. But it is hard because that is how we've been conditioned. We have been taught that the best best way to make decisions and the best way to lead a fulfilling life is to know exactly where you're heading, know the destination, know the outcome before you begin, and determine, pre-determine a linear path exactly how to get there. And that gives you some sort of guarantee or some sort of certainty that you are on the right track and it is going to work out. The problem with that is that there

actually isn't certainty. You could pick a job that you think is a sure thing, and then you blind ambition brute force your way to that job, you make it happen, you climb the ladder, and you get there. One, it doesn't feel like what you thought it was going to feel like. Two, it may not even exist by the time you get there with so many things that are changing, and it doesn't allow for that kind of change. And so we really need to be more flexible in terms of thinking about our timeline. But this is how you've been taught. This is what's been ingrained in you and conditioned in you forever. So it's not your fault that you have this way of thinking. What we do want to do is switch the paradigm to directional thinking and this directional mindset where we realize we actually don't need to know where we're going

in order to get there safely and on time. Okay. So if we're not thinking about that, the big goal, how do we know what the little next steps are? It's okay to imagine where you might want to end up as a direction. Goals are useful directions. They are not useful in terms of destinations. So in terms of something that you're getting attached to and needing certainty and guarantees, they are good as kind of a lamppost or a beacon. And then what we want to do when we're making our single next directionally right step is listen to what feels warmer and what feels colder. It's kind of all a child game of warmer and colder where this involves getting connected to your body and your own desires, basically. But we don't need to be able to articulate the

answer, what is it that I want in life, which I think is where a lot of people get stuck, is that they think they need to be able to know, here's what I want in life, or here's the timeline, here's the 10-year plan, whether that's in work or in life or children or family or houses or whatever the thing is. We think we need a plan before we can begin. But really, all we need to know is that single next step, which we judge by what feels warmer for us or colder for us. So you don't need to know this is perfect. You just need to know, do I feel more compelled in this direction or less compelled in this direction? And then you take that step and you see, okay, now that I'm here, does this fear warmer or does this feel colder? And if so, which parts feel warmer and colder? And then you move towards the next. step from there. And if you continue to take those warmer steps as you go and recalibrate each time, you will end up at the warmest place possible. Okay, so let's ground this in a real world example. I'm trying to decide where to live right now, and I've been trying to decide this for a very long time, and I'll try out different places. I don't know. So like certain places, L.A. is much

better for my career. The Bay Area is much better for my husband's career. Both places are insanely expensive. New York, we have a ton of friends here, but we don't like the weather. Like, there's all of these different factors and moving to a place and trying it out is a very expensive and logistically hard next right step. So what would I do there? It's funny. I've thought of this example for you that I feel like you've done an amazing job so far of doing it directionally, of experimenting and taking the sort of launch and iterate approach, which is, let's see what feels warmer and what feels colder in each of those capacities. So, I guess my question for you is if I would start trying it on in your head to see what feels warm or colder.

So now that you've done it in person. So if I said to you, you have to live in San Francisco. That's the only option for some reason. You have to live there or you have to live in the Bay Area. How do you feel? I feel excited about some parts and unexcited about other parts. And I think that's like part of my struggle with decision making and why decision making feels so hard right now is because we have more options than we ever have before ever in history.

and we have more exposure to all of the different lives that we're not living. And so I'm just like, I can picture my life in San Francisco. I can picture everything I'm gaining, everything I'm giving up, and I can picture this life I'm not living simultaneously happening in L.A., in New York, and Europe. Totally. So there's a couple of things I would say. The first one is usually when we're having trouble making a decision,

especially when we have options laid out, it's because we need more information. So is there any more information you feel like you need? You've lived in all these places. But is there any more information that you feel like you need to be able to be able to, to make a decision. Are there any questions that are still lingering? Or is there something that would make the decision clear for you? Like if my friend, if this friend lived in this place, then it would feel clear to me. I think if I felt like I had a really strong community in any of the places, I have friends in all the places, but they all live like 30, 45 minutes away from each other

in each place. So there's not like a neighborhood that I could move to and move into this strong sense of community. There are like four big questions to ask to know if you're making the decision on wrong criteria that can really help, I think, to get us out of this perfection paralysis. The other question I want to ask is, and again, one way of thinking about perfectionism, and I'm curious if this is showing up for you, is that we believe that there is an objectively right, aka perfect decision to make. And until we know what that decision is, we are afraid to make the decision. So you're like, I know one of these places is the right decision, and I just don't know which one it is.

And the thing to remember is that there's only a right decision for you right now. There's not an objectively universally right decision. So I'm wondering, is there any part of you if you knew you're only making this decision for the next year or three years? Again, I don't know that that's true, but let's imagine it in a shorter term time frame. Would that shift anything? It might. And it's interesting when you put it that way, because I'm immediately with, my husband's career versus my career, which makes me want to ask you, how do we make decisions

when we're weighing our needs and our desires with other people that we're living our lives with? Yeah. And so I think the key to that is to first figure out what it is that you most want so you can articulate that. That doesn't mean, and I'm not willing to make any compromises on that. But it changes in different scenarios. I think the first thing is to get clear on what it is that you want, be able to articulate that, hope the other person can get clear on. that. And then I do believe that there's like an aligned thing for the couple that you can find whatever the agreement is that feels directionally right for both of you, even if it wasn't what you would do on your own. That changes, you know, based on the circumstances. One way to

think about it is like I feel, I don't know, 70% that I really, like this feels 70% important to me versus this feels 30% important to me. And you like consider it from that perspective, which can be helpful, like, who feels the most strongly about this decision? There may be other decisions you feel differently about. But one thing that is interesting, what you said is that, like, it's better for your husband's career to be in the Bay Area. And if career wasn't a factor for you, if there's a should, it's about L.A. It seems like the Bay Area would, you know, sort of fulfill both of those things. Like, it's kind of what you actually want if you weren't afraid of the opportunities you were turning down. And it is maybe what your husband wants to. But I think overall, it's to ask yourself

the questions of what is warm or colder and how can I try on these things, right? Like visit the places, which you did, right? So you've done a lot of the things already. And then ask yourself these questions of like, are there outside factors? Is there fear coming into this? You said that there's four questions that we can ask ourselves for making decisions. Can you share what those are? I came up with these because, you know, Gottman's four horsemen, so the four things that if they're observing someone in relationships or a couple in relationships, there are four things that if they see them, then it's a pretty good, like something like 95% or 90% accuracy. They can predict that that couple will end in divorce or splitting up, if not corrected. When I heard that, I thought, wouldn't that be awesome if we could have that for our own decisions? Because this was one of the biggest pain points for me personally was getting so mired down in. how to make decisions or how to know I was making the right one or worse, how do I know I'm not making the wrong decision. And so I spent years sort of observing and looking at what are the things that I know lead to decisions that people end up not being fulfilled with or not happy with for whatever

reason. And so I call them the four omens or the four O's because they all start with O. The first one is obligation or shoulds. So anytime you have anything I should be on this podcast, I shouldn't be on this podcast. I should have this guest on. I should move to L.A. I should move to New York. I should take this job. I shouldn't take this job. Whatever those things are, if there shoulds involved as your primary rationalization or a big part of your decision making, that is a sure sign that that is not going to be something that leads to fulfillment for you. So that's the first question. Is there obligation or is there shoulds? Those things are all sort of external reasoning and rationales to make decisions, they're not about what it is that is actually aligned for you and what it is that

you want in your life. The second one is objectivity or logic. So we talked about this a little bit, but this idea that there's an objectively right decision to be made. So if you notice that you're saying, oh, objectively the right decision would be to take the job with more pay, or objectively the right decision is to go into this industry or to choose this major, anytime you are convinced that the reason you're doing something is because you think that it's like the most logical or most strategic decision to make. That's, again, another flag that in surefire way to get yourself on a path of unfulfillment. The next one is optics.

So anytime you are concerned with how something is going to look to other people, that is, again, another surefire way to see that you're not making decisions based on what you want. You're making decisions based on perception. So this could be things like, I would have a. baby except I don't want people to think that it's too soon or I would get married in this place but people might think blah, blah, blah, or I would move to that city or I would buy that car or whatever the things are. Anytime you find yourself thinking about how other people are going to perceive your actions, that, again, surefire way to know that you're not making a decision based on

good criteria for you. And the last one is outcomes. So anytime you are making a decision where you are making it because you anticipate a certain outcome, then that's another way to know that it's not a great decision for you. You could anticipate an outcome and hope that that's going to be the outcome. But if you're the only reason you're making it is because you want that desired outcome, then that is not going to be a great decision. So, for example, if the only reason I'm writing a book is to have a bestseller and if I don't have a bestseller, then I think the whole thing was not worth my time, or if I'm writing a book because I think it's going to, like, I don't know, get me more clients or something like that. And then it doesn't do that. That is how you waste your

time, right? Is doing things only for an outcome that you can't guarantee? So when you're focused on the outcome instead of the process or the direction, that's another way to be pretty sure that you're on the wrong track. So those are all things to look out for that we might be making a bad decision. how do we ensure we're making a good decision? Like in the absence of that, what are we putting in instead? The first thing is let's talk about the mindset that we have to have when we're making decisions. And some of those things factor into this, but the biggest thing is that we need to shift out of this destinational thinking and into the directional thinking.

So that means thinking about, am I thinking about the direction I want to head in instead of the destination? Am I making decisions based on what I want instead of what other people want? and those four omens screen for this. And then the last one is launching and iterating. So this idea that we don't actually have to know where we're going, we only have to know our next step, right? The best way I know how to articulate this concept

is this quote from E.L. Doctor-O. It's like driving in a car at night, you can only see as far as the headlights in front of you, but you can make the whole trip that way. So we're focusing on the headlights. Start by making sure you're in that frame of mind. Like, I only need to see the headlights. I don't need to make some final decision.

Okay. So then we get into this decision-making process. of warmer or colder. So look at your decisions that are on the table if you're making a choice between a couple of things and see what is warmer for you and what is colder for you. And just follow that. Now, this involves some practice of getting familiar with what that feels like for you. A lot of us have spent so long making decisions based on external criteria that we have sort of stifled that part of ourselves that we can't even hear it. That was certainly the case for me. I had no idea what it was that I wanted. But with practice, you can start to feel into like,

what does this feel like in my body? And that's the second thing. We want to be making decisions, these warmer, colder decisions based on how it feels in your body or your sensing mind instead of your thinking mind. And the reason for that is our thinking mind is where our fear self is. All of the fear and anxiety and the outcomes and the shoulds and the optics, all of that is in our thinking mind. Our sensing mind skips all of that. And this is one of the things that I think we have been sort of sold a false bill of goods on because we've been taught that making decisions based on our thinking mind on logic is the like responsible way to make decisions. And in fact, that is not usually a good representation of what is actually

aligned for you. So if you have this like robust criteria or rationale for why you're making a decision. So if you're like, okay, well, I'm moving to LA because it's good for my career and because of this and because I should do this and that's a pretty good way to know that you're actually not making a decision based on what is uniquely aligned for you and true for you. Because we can always do pros and cons to everything, right? You can do all the pros and cons for San Francisco. You can do all the pros and cons for LA. You're going to be able to rationalize in either direction. And the crucial thing is to figure out what is most aligned for you. And so even if you don't know the decision, whatever, you just want to be moving towards something in the right direction. And I guess the last thing I

would say, another question to ask is, where is my joy and where's my curiosity? Where are those things leading me? And these are things we tend to think are for like hobbies or like on my free time that doesn't have to do with like real serious life and work. But what I've found is that joy and curiosity are actually the building blocks of fulfillment. They're like the amino acids of fulfillment. You actually can't have fulfillment if you don't have joy and curiosity. So those are encapsulated in what feels warmer for you,

but that's another way we can sort of access it is like, what am I curious about learning more about or what do I want to explore more? And those are the ways that we can think about making these decisions. If it feels warmer, it's the right decision for you. If you have headaches, allergies, brain fog, skin irritation, or you've been dealing with hormone issues, you are especially going to want to listen to this ad.

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That's 15% off at Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody, Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody, masterclass. Liz Moody. You said that we're out of practice with knowing what's warmer and what's colder for us. Are there pragmatic things we could do on a regular basis to begin to become more in touch with that? Definitely. So the first thing I do with any client, any workshop is to calibrate your inner navigation system into this warmer, colder. So the first thing I would do and any listener can do this right now is to think of someone or a decision or a place that you know was the right, decision for you or feels like a true aligned decision somewhere that you feel safe that you trust

completely. For shorthand for me, we can do coaching. So for me, coaching feels so aligned and this body of work in comparison, which we'll get to later, in comparison to other things I've done with my life. So for me, coaching is this. Whenever I think of coaching, I notice how I feel in my body. And so this is sort of like a legend that I can check in with quickly. So I notice how I feel in my body. And then also think of a place or a decision you made that you know is wrong for you. So for me, that was working at Google. I know that was misaligned for me. And this could be, I don't know, an ex-boyfriend than your current partner or, you know, whatever you're thinking of two things that you want to compare. It could be a place. It could be two jobs, as in my case. But then you want

to try on each of these decisions. So think of each of these places or decisions or people. And for me, when I think of working at Google, if I thought I'm going to go back to work at Google right now, I immediately, like, I feel it in my body. I feel it in my stomach. I feel like nauseous. My throat feels like it's closing up. I feel like I want to talk faster. I get anxious. I feel like I lose my breath. Like it's very clear to me what that feels like. And so this was the first way that I could notice, okay, that's colder. And then warmer is when I switch over to my coaching hat and what I'm doing now with my work, I immediately feel more relaxed. I feel like I can slow down. I'm at peace. I don't feel tension in my body. And so when I'm stuck on a decision, I immediately come back to this as shorthand. Does this feel closer to Google or does this feel closer to coaching? And almost always it's very obvious to me. It's like, oh, it's closer to this. It might not be this extreme, but it's a good way to sort of get into that again and remember the sensing mind that felt experience that you have of each of these decisions. So that's the first thing I would recommend. Think of like two things that you can quickly

pick up on that's sort of like your calibration metric. And then I suggest that people go through the world in their low stakes decisions and start practicing this. So don't start with should I get divorced or not or like should I quit my job. Start with. Start with. with what do I want to have for dinner and see what feels warmer and what feels colder. Often we are making many decisions based on what's something that's actually not aligned for us. So I'm going out to dinner, oh, I should have the salad because that's healthier, whatever it is versus what I really want, which is the pasta at an Italian restaurant. And so feeling into like what actually feels warmer and colder or what books should I read,

what movie should I watch, what podcast should I listen to, what way should I walk home? What should I wear today? Like all of those decisions and starting to really experiment and practice with that, it comes online surprisingly quickly. And you'll start to notice for most of us how out of alignment we are in so many parts of our lives. Again, I know that was the case for me. I tell a story about having a like breakdown in the aisle of CVS trying to figure out what the right design of a tissue box was for me because I had no sense of how to even ask myself that like to feel into what that answer. was. I only knew like what other people in my life would like. So even things as basic as that can be a really great place to start. And then the mechanism is exactly the same when you start making much bigger decisions. But the idea is that if all of the decisions you're making are on the small side and are sort of low stakes, I talk about it as the next tolerable right step. So the next step you can make without freaking out or like having an anxiety attack, when the big decision comes, like running for office or like actually accepting that position, it doesn't feel so big because

you've taken all of these steps leading up to that. It just feels like the single next right decision. I have a question about the shoulds because the salad pasta example made me think. Sometimes the things that we should do are because they're healthy for us. They make us feel good in the long term and our brains want to default to this short term pleasure. So how can we tell whether this discomfort is actually something good for us and there's something good on the other side of it or whether that's us not aligning to our true needs and beliefs and desires. Yeah, it's a great comment and a great question because we do run into those situations in our lives, right? I guess in that case, I would think of it not just in that one meal.

And if we're in the experiment of trying to calibrate our inner navigation system and trying to figure out what warmer feels like and what colder feels like, I would say, one day, try having salad and see how that feels, and then the next day, try having the pasta and see how that feels. Because to me, alignment doesn't always mean feeling good or comfortable. An example I can give of this is actually when I was writing my book. And I wrote the whole book, I wrote a manuscript. I handed it in. My editor was like, okay, great, listen, you know, here are the edits. And I reread it. And I was like, this is the wrong book. This isn't it. I can't publish this. I have to rewrite this.

And of course, the decision I wanted, it had been like a year in the making, and I was signing up for like another year of writing the book again. And of course, the decision that felt the easier decision would be to say, screw it, I'm just going to public, you know, we're going to edit this and make it good and keep going. I did not want the answer that was true to me to be, I'm going to rewrite the book. That did not feel comfortable. But it turned out that for me, that was the true answer. And it was way harder and very uncomfortable, but it was aligned for me. And the way I knew that

is another sort of shortcut magic-busting question that you can always ask on decision-making is where is the freedom and where is the relief. I don't believe that what is aligned for us is always the easy way out. So that doesn't mean never eat vegetables if your body doesn't want vegetables. I think there's sort of like a deeper, more holistic understanding we can have to alignment and we want to be sort of like setting ourselves up for success. So I know that even if I'm not craving vegetables, what is aligned for me is still some form of vegetables, right? So I might think, what is the vegetable that sounds the best? But again, it's not that it's the easy decision, right? A lot of people pushback I get on this also is about, well, aren't we supposed to like get out of our comfort

zone and challenge ourselves? And there's a difference between being uncomfortable and aligned, like rewriting a book. Or frankly, as you know, putting a book out into the world is extremely vulnerable and doesn't feel comfortable at all. Yet I knew deeply that I couldn't die with this book inside me. Like I had to put this book out into the world. It was aligned for me, no matter what the results were, no matter what came of it, and no matter how hard it was. And I think the more we practice with this, the more nuanced you can get about your own feelings around this. But I would always come back to like, where's the freedom and where's the relief? And again, if you are having, you know, vegetables most of the time and you go out to one dinner and it's a special dinner and I would say have the pasta.

But if it's a consistent decision you're making, probably if you ask what's really aligned for you, like where is the freedom in the long term? The freedom isn't going to be in never eating a salad again. So if we're asking ourselves, when is this discomfort because something good is on the other side? It's because there's some sense of freedom there? Yeah. For me, there was freedom in writing the book. I think a lot of times there is freedom in facing our fears or doing things that are hard, right? This isn't a, you know, stay small.

But this is one of the hardest questions of like, when is it my true self and when is it my fear self? And how do we discern between those things? sort of when is the fear self like giving me legit like this is not aligned for you and when is it saying oh you might be humiliated by asking that person out on a date or something like that right like there's a difference between those things and but there is a freedom and a relief in the other side when it's aligned for you what if what's warmer isn't available to us like what's warmer is this partner or this job or living? in this place, but I don't have the money to move to that place or I can't get that job.

I can't get that partner. How do we navigate that? Yeah. So I would ask what is it about those things that feel warmer? And I guess I would argue if you can't, if it's not accessible to you, then it's not aligned for you. That doesn't mean there's not information there. And it may be aligned for you at a different time, right? So like, maybe you can't afford it now, but you'll be able to later and that sort of thing. But there's always our job is, again, not to get to the destination, if you have like a place in mind or a partner in mind, that's kind of destinational, right? Like you think that's the right thing for you, but it's not happening.

And so our job is not to assess like, oh, that's right for me or not right for me. It's to say, okay, how can I move closer in that direction? And when I say that direction, it might not be to that exact person, right? But there's something about that person that feels compelling. So is it that they, I don't know, or just that they? different gender than you usually date or is it that they are a musician or they are more empathetic than someone usually like what is it about them and see what you can do to move in that direction. This doesn't mean like go stock that person, right? If it's a place, then it's like what is it

about this place that feels so compelling to me? If I can't actually move there, what are the things that I can do that bring some of that to me that are the single next right step? How do we do directional living for things where you can't kind of inch in that direction? So for instance, something we talk about on this podcast a lot is the decision around whether or not people should have kids. I've been making this decision publicly. A lot of people come to me and are kind of like, I don't know, I'm weighing both options. You can't kind of have a kid or you don't have a kid.

How do we live directionally in that way? I've actually gone through this in a directional way with many clients and people who feel ambivalent and they don't know. Now, granted, this can be a very expensive proposition. but the guidance would be the same, which is take steps to get more information for yourself about what you want and don't want. Because the thing is we really can only make the best decisions when we are actually confronted with those things. So this is why, you know, someone has a pregnancy scare. And obviously, I'm not saying that you should manipulate that, but someone has a

pregnancy scare and suddenly it's very clear to them. Like I want, I didn't know before. and now I'm very clear. And so we want to sort of figure out how we can give ourselves those situations where we can have those just like intuitive, clear decisions or just give ourselves more information because we need to be actually presented with those things in order to do it. So how do we get more information? That would be things like going to a fertility clinic and getting your hormones tested. Now, you might go and find out you have much lower eggs. quality, this is for women, but much lower egg quality than you thought you had. What does that do to you? Do you think, oh, who cares? Guess I'm not going to have a kid and you feel totally indifferent

about it? Or do you find out and go, oh my God, I really want to have a child? So start with that, getting hormones tested. I've had clients who go through, again, many have had good insurance to do so, but go through the process of like freezing eggs or freezing embryos and each time going through like there's so many moments in that process to get information about how you're feeling, right? How many eggs did you get? How many, you know, how many embryos froze? How many are healthy? And through all of this, realizing like, yeah, I really want this or I really don't. And sometimes the decision is made for you, right? Like, I've had clients who've gone through that whole process and they are faced then with the decision of, you know, should I get a surrogate or an egg donor or something else?

and that's where the decision ends up being made for them. But if they hadn't gone down that path, they say they would have regretted it, like not having gone through that. And then another thing I actually just recently recommended was for someone to like really try on with their partner and inhabit like for a week, act as if for both of them that they were not having children

and start planning their life. Like, what are we going to do? What are we going to do for the next five years? What trips are we going to do? That money we saved for a baby? Like, what are we going to do with that? And like really try to act. as if and see how you feel. Is there grief? Is there just pure excitement? And then I think the other

question, again, where is the freedom and where is the relief? Some people feel relieved or freedom when they're like, I'm not going to have a child or trying that on. What if someone told you, you cannot have a child? Like, do you feel, oh my God, thank God, that decision is off the table? I'm so relieved. Or do you feel devastated and immediately like I'm going to adopt a child or I want to look into other alternative ways of having a family. Like, it starts to present itself as you go through that process of just getting more information and taking the single next directionally right step in that journey. If we're facing a decision in our life, is there a way to know where to begin to acquire

that information? Like, what questions we should be asking, what information we should be seeking out for our specific decision? I usually say take an action, any action. So like literally anything you can do to get more information is a good start. I have something I call the aligned action formula. The process is five steps. The first one is what I call screenshoting your mind or like noticing whatever that curiosity is or what that decision is.

So if you are making a decision of like to start a podcast, like do I want to start a podcast or not, first just even noticing that that's something you're potentially interested in, usually we shove that aside. You know, people would be like, oh, I can't do that. I don't have any experience. There's so many podcasts who wants to listen to a podcast, who wants, I don't, blah, blah, blah, all those things and we don't even consider it. So the first step is screenshoting it, noticing that it comes up in your mind. What do you do from there? The next thing is to say it out loud or to articulate the desire.

So that could be saying it out loud to someone else. It could be saying it to your therapist or your coach. It could even be writing it down. But anything that gets it out of your brain and into some form, concrete form that's out into the world. There's something about making it real that saying it out loud or articulating it gives it more form. The next one is to do some research on it so that literally could be Googling it or like chat GPT, whatever it is. Like with a podcast, it could be, what do I do to start a podcast? Like what equipment do I need or are there classes? Like anything. Then the fourth step is to have a

conversation. So talk to anyone you can think of to get more information. So reach out to someone you know who has a podcast or who's been a guest on a podcast or who does audio for a podcast or whatever it is, just anything you can do to get some more feedback because, again, you're putting yourself in a situation where you're going to be getting more information about what you want. You may show up to that conversation and be like, I have no interest in doing that. That wasn't at all what I pictured. Or you could leave that conversation like, oh my God, I haven't felt so energized and alive and excited about something in so long. Like, I have to follow this. And then the last step is after you've done those things, you're going to have a lot more information about what you want next,

and that's to take an action, any action. So this could be signing up for a class. It could be buying a piece of equipment. It could be, you know, following up on the introduction that someone made for you. And then you sort of like wash, rinse, repeat, right? Where you go back to the beginning and you capture the next idea you have to move forward. So again, I would ask yourself the question, like, what information do I need to move forward in this decision? But any information is good information. Let's go through some listener examples. Yeah. Because I do think that's like very helpful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is my favorite part. I have a job that pays well, but it doesn't make me feel creatively fulfilled. Do I quit and try to find something more fulfilling? Or do I appreciate the

paycheck, especially in this economy and stay even though it's eight hours of my day every single day? This is like the most classic example that people have. The first thing I would say is that it doesn't necessarily have to be either or, right? So another, you know, sort of piece of pushback I get sometimes is like all this sort of self-help personal development stuff is really expensive. And like not everyone can just afford to quit their job. And my response to that is, yes, absolutely, I wish it was all more accessible and it doesn't have to be. So for this person, I would say, don't quit your job. Let go of that question and just start figuring out what makes you feel more creatively inspired? What is directionally right for you? And again, I know for me, this was one of the

hardest things because when you're showing up at work all day and sort of masking in one way, when you get home, the last, it's very difficult to then like find your authentic, like true self-expressed self to figure this out. But whatever you can do in this time period, you know, say for the next six months, I'm going to spend like every Saturday morning just exploring things that make me feel alive, make me feel aligned, that move me closer to what I want to be doing. And I would start figuring out what that looks like, take some more concrete steps to that until you have, like, start to have a little bit better of a picture. I think one of the things with certainty and uncertainty is we think that we either have to stay in the job or quit the job, right? And in fact, I think just

start focusing on like, what would feel more directionally, right? I would say look into things that have to do potentially with work, but it doesn't have to only be that. If you start feeling more aligned in your relationships, in your exercise, and your health habits, and where you live and all of these other things, that sort of rubs off on the other parts of your life because you start feeling more aligned generally. You're better able to detect the right opportunities for you. I would also look within your job that you're in. Is there any way that I can make this more aligned for me? So is it what are the things that aren't aligned for me? I call these haywaltz. It's an acronym that stands for how are you walking around like that?

And there anything in your life that's sort of like weighing you down? This came from a friend of mine who basically ignored a sinus infection that she had for months, just having headaches, not realizing what it was and eventually ended up having to go to the ER after just like taking Advil for a while and forgetting about it. And the doctor said to her, how are you walking around like that? And I thought there's so many things like that that that we just start tolerating because we think we can't change them. So figure out where are the haywaltz in your life and in your work. is it a certain client? Is it a certain type of work? Is it your boss? Is it your team? If it's the whole industry, that's, you know, a different question. So I would get clear on like, what is the scope of not liking? Is it just like this company I don't like, but I, you know, if I was at Google, for example,

I don't like working at a big company anymore, but I want to stay in tech, right? That's a very different decision than like this whole thing is wrong and I'm making a big career swap. So I would do that too. I would look at like, get a sense of the scope that you're dealing with, where the haywolds try to eliminate those and create some more space for what is aligned for you, and then start taking the smallest steps you can towards what does feel directionally right and aligned for you and doing it just because, not with the expectation that it's going to lead to something in your career, because we tend to miss out in a lot of opportunities that way. I have a whole list of questions that you can start to ask yourself around figuring out

what is directionally right for you that you can find, you know, on my website and my book and everywhere that can help you to start figure this out. But I would say start just taking small steps towards that. There's another scenario where you discover like this is a big scope. Like this has been years. And for like in my case, I was having anxiety attacks regularly. I was really depressed. It was I could not function. If you're at that extent of things or if you discover that, like, truly this whole thing is wrong for you. You can still take that small steps approach or, and again, depending on your circumstances, you can take an approach, which is like, I need to leave this job and I need to give myself the space to figure out what this next step is,

and I have the means to do that. So I would never suggest doing this if you're going to feel anxious the whole time. If you can create however much time you can create with psychological safety, meaning, and I did this. I quit my job with no plan, not a risk taker, and I knew that I would just like take the next job that was offered to me because I would be so scared about not having income. And I also knew that I had to figure out another way to do this. And so when I left, I committed, I looked at my savings. I sold some Google stock and I was like, okay, I have six months to live on like the bare minimum and figure this out. And I am not going to worry about money in that interim. At the end of the six months, if I still don't know what I want to do and I still haven't figured

this out, I can always go back to some tech job or whatever it is. I would never suggest doing this if you're going to feel stressed all the time because we do not make good decisions when we're in our stressed fear of mind. So you have to be able to create a space where you can feel psychologically safe. So if that's moving home, whatever, savings account, all those things, if you can create that space for yourself where you can go all in on like what is aligned for me, I'm just figuring this out. I would love that for everyone if we could do that. But obviously that doesn't. That's not in the cards for everyone. I do think something we're sort of, we've been talking around the whole episode is developing a tolerance for uncertainty. How can we begin to do that? Like, how can we practice

becoming more tolerant of uncertainty in our lives? There are a few things. The first is, if you really get into the mindset of my job is only to figure out the next directionally right step. My job is not to know the destination. My job is only to figure out the next directionally right step. and you focus on the next directionally right tolerable step. So you're not doing something that, again, creates this gigantic cloud of uncertainty, just the next one that feels like, okay, I could do this, because you can always backtrack, right, if it's a small step. So starting by only making decisions that are tolerable for you, that are a tolerable

for you, that are a tolerable amount of uncertainty or unknown, but still are moving you in a direction that feels warmer than where you are. And again, notice that it's warmer and colder. The other thing I would do is to set yourself up as an experiment, to commit to trying a mindset shift from this destinational thinking, which is about making decisions based on certainty. You're maximizing for certainty in destinational thinking. That's the whole thing. Making this mindset from destinational thinking to directional thinking. Directional thinking is where we are allowing.

for some sense of uncertainty because we understand that that is where all of the good stuff in life is. And we can get into more of what that is. But when you start to make this shift, it's hard to do in the beginning because it's sort of like when you first learn to drive where you get in the car and you're like, I don't know if I know how to do this. But you learn, right? So I'm going to decide to tolerate uncertainty more or learn how to do that. And give it a timebound experiment. So I'm going to do this for six months. And there's an expression in like 12 step groups. We can always refund your misery, which is like you can always go back to your old way of doing things, right? Most people who are coming to me or having this conversation reading my book, listening to this podcast, probably aren't

doing it because their life is so perfect that they cannot imagine changing anything to make it better. And that's the big thing is certainty means sameness. Certainty means no change. Uncertainty. needs a rebrand, right? Uncertainty means possibility, potential, opportunity. It means something different than what you're doing now. So I think understanding what the potential is, but making this commitment to, I'm going to experiment for six months with switching this mindset and to focusing on the next directionally right action. And if at the end of six months, you're like, that didn't work, cool. Go back to your old way of doing things and maybe, you know, see how that goes. I have never had someone do this and not feel, not feel better, first of all, so much less anxiety than trying to

pretend we live in a world that can be certain. And when you limit, like, it's so liberating to be like, I only need to make this one next decision of where the headlights are shining in front of me, that my only job is this little part here, what I can know today, that's my only job. I don't need to know where I'm going. And so there's so much less anxiety involved. And so I would put it in a timebound way. And the other thing is that when you start to see, it working, when you see your life getting better, when you see yourself getting less anxious, when you see decisions coming more easily and more naturally, when you know where you want to live, when you start to see what you want to do for your life's work, you don't usually want to turn back.

So it really is just getting over that hurdle of being willing to give it a try to make a concerted effort to switch this mindset. And it really is just deciding, pausing when you're making a decision and saying, am I forecasting into the future? Or am I just trying to make the single next right decision in front of me? I very rarely get genuinely excited about skincare, but this is one of the most innovative products that I have come across in years, and I am so obsessed with it. I've been telling all of my friends to get it,

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What if the source of our uncertainty is completely out of our control? Like we're worried about the future of the economy. We're worried about having kids and climate change and how that impacts things. We're worried about if our jobs will exist in 10 years because of AI. How do we approach that type of uncertainty? I think the same way in that we can only control what we can control. You can't. Those things are out of your control.

There's nothing you can do that is going to make those things more certain. And I think this is part of it. We were raised, and for a long time, I think it was possible to believe that there was a certainty. Jobs felt relatively stable. Oftentimes people got a job, and then they kept it for their whole lives. The economy was relatively stable. The politics were relatively stables. You know, our democracy was relative.

Our institutions, there were a lot of things you could rely on, or it felt like you could rely on, to be safe. In this century, we had the financial crash of 2008, and then we had COVID, and we've had, you know, sort of constitutional crises and technology, which has sped things up so much. And so change is happening so much more rapidly in a way that I think makes it impossible for us to deny that there is so much uncertainty and so much that's out of our control. And that was always the case. It was always a myth of certainty. You could always have gotten laid off. You could always have planned to have children and not be able to have children. You could always get married and end up getting divorced. You could always buy a house and have it burned down. Those are all obviously extreme examples, but there are so many things like that. That was always possible. It just seemed like it was less likely.

And so we sort of bought into this idea, which is, I think, one of the questions I've always asked is, like, why is this destinational thinking, like, so compelling to us? And the reason is that we think it gives us certainty and we've thought it gives us. safety. And we were taught that that is what makes a good life. And it was plausible, right? Because the world, like, kind of seems stable. Now it's not plausible anymore. And so we have a choice. We can either acknowledge how uncertain things are and learn to work with that, or we can try to make a bubble of certainty, which just creates anxiety because you're trying to control everything that you cannot control. That doesn't mean don't do what you can to create.

psychological safety, right? Like, that doesn't mean spend all your money or, you know, anything like that. It doesn't mean take, you know, insane risks unless that's your thing. But it does mean we need to learn how to sort of dance with uncertainty. We can imagine it as like co-creating with the universe. It's sort of like playing a game of tennis with the world around you. And this is what's so amazing about living directionally or living in a way that you're taught where you're allowing uncertainty to be part of it is because it lets you be responsive to the world around you. A.I. takes the job that you thought you wanted. No problem. You've been moving on a directionally right path. That's not the right direction. This other thing is. And you just continue to take the next directionally right step no matter what is happening around you. You,

you know, thought that the climate was going to look like one thing. And now it's changed whatever. You know, you take the single next directionally right step. No problem. I think we live in a world where we want, we want ourselves to be able to evolve. We want the world to be able to evolve. I think most people, no matter where you stand in terms of politics, would say that we need some new policies. And that doesn't exist with certainty. Certainty, again, means no change. It means staying the same. If we are going to enact new policies, if we're going to have new ideas and new conversations, that is going to involve launching and iterating and testing and learning. And it's not going to be totally certain how things are going to go in the same way that AOC running for office is never certain.

That's so interesting. So basically you're saying uncertainty needs a rebrand. 100%. Like we view uncertainty is this negative, scary thing, but actually uncertainty is where opportunities and possibilities lie. Definitely. And I think the thing is certainty means not only sameness, but it means guarantees.

That's what we're looking for when we want certainty. We're looking for a guarantee. And what I have found, in my work is that we think that the path to fulfillment, the path to purpose, the path to having our most impact is through achievement. And we think the way to achieve these things is through certain outcomes, right? We think that if we pick something that we know is going to be successful, that that's going to ensure this happy life that we're going to have, and if we just go and get it, then everything's going to be great. And we think that that's guaranteed.

Let's leave aside the part that it's not guaranteed, but let's pretend that it is. The problem with that is that anything original, if you want to find your unique authentic path, your unique work in the world, that is not going to be anything that's ever been done before. That's completely new. It's creative in the sense that creativity or creation means making something new from scratch that's never been done before. Your life has never been done before. Living a life that's uniquely well suited to you, never been done before. There's no blueprint for that. If you want to

create anything, whether that's, you know, your family, create a conversation, right? This is creative. This involves uncertainty. Both of us sat down at this table. We don't know exactly how the conversation's going to go. We can have guardrails on it, right? Where, you know, you've thought of some questions, we've prepared, whatever it is. But we don't know exactly how the conversation is. We don't know exactly how the conversation's going to go. You don't know how your relationship is going to go. And if you are in a relationship, you have to create that unique relationship between the two of you to have something that's authentic and real. And this is true for all of life. If we want something that is uniquely ours and that's authentic to us, we have to create it from scratch. And by definition,

you can't create anything from scratch without uncertainty. You can't write a book. You can't do a podcast. You can't create a business. You can't take a trip. You can't have a conversation. You can't have a relationship, a family. You can't create a home without some sense of uncertainty. And I think when we talk about uncertainty, we think the most risky thing you can possibly imagine. But again, all of this we're doing just in the single next tolerable step. And uncertainty means an opportunity for something different. So unless you're like, I am so happy in my life, I want nothing to change ever, which is not human nature, right? Even if you have the best, most aligned life, you're going to evolve with time, right? Life evolves, the world evolves,

and you want to be able to respond to that. You want to create some sense of uncertainty, uncertainty in your life. And the question is just figuring out how to do it in a way that feels empowering and giving you agency instead of being debilitating. And in my estimation, that way is directional living. I love that. Okay, let's do another listener question. I love my partner, but I don't know how to tell if they're really my person. If you know you know doesn't feel really grounded in the real world to me, balancing things like finances and friends and goals for our lives.

How can I tell if this is the person that I should marry? I mean, another classic question and a great one. And I would say that if you're, I wouldn't totally subscribe to the like, if you know, you know. but I would say it may be too early to make that decision if you're wondering. So whenever we can't, we don't know how to make a decision, it usually means we need more information, right? I've said that a few times. How do we get more information?

We keep showing up. So for this person, I would say keep taking next steps, right? So if you're early on in dating, I would say the only thing you need to decide is if you want to go on another date with this person. So for this person, I would say, okay, they're trying to, what are the pieces that make you unsure? If it's finances, time to sit down and talk about finances and exactly what that would look like. Maybe it means merging part of your finances to start experimenting with what that would look like.

If you are, you know, the thing that feels unsure in your relationship is about friendships, like what would be a good proxy for how you want to move forward? So the only thing there is to do is to keep moving forward unless you're sure you don't want to move forward. A lot of my friends are trying to decide where to settle in terms of their dating a relationship lives. And it can be hard because you'll be kind of in a relationship with somebody. So you can't take the next step of seeing what else is out there. And I also think the apps and all of that kind of encourage us that there's so much more out there and we shouldn't settle. And their lived experience says, well, I can't find a lot of the things that I want.

So how do we know what we should settle on? If you feel like you're settling, like that's how you would describe your relationship, there's a difference between this is not my favorite thing about my partner. Like, no matter who you are with, there's going to be things where you're like, this drives me nuts, or this is not my favorite thing, or I wish they were different, or whatever. But if you are thinking to yourself, I am settling in this relationship, then that, I would say that is not aligned and that's not fair to you or to the other person. So I would really look at, again, I would ask the question like, how would you feel if this person wasn't in your life anymore? If they came to you today and said, I'm out. How would you feel? You know, you'd probably feel sad at first, right? But like sit with the grieving of that. Then would you feel freedom? Would you feel relief that it's over? Or would you feel I just miss the best thing in my life or I really miss that person? So I would try to get

at it from that angle, like, where is the freedom and where is the relief? I also, I think anytime you're making a decision compared to what else is out there, that's not always the best. Like, I would make a decision from, like, assuming you're going to be single. Like, do I want to be with this person or do I want to be, like, single and happy? And I think you need to kind of wouldn't only compare to, like, some other hypothetical person. And I think that's kind of the hard part with that. Why do you think we shouldn't be making comparison-based decisions? Because I think that we do that with jobs. We do that with almost everything in life. We're like, do I want this thing or do I want this alternative to this thing? Not do I want this thing or do I want the absence of this thing?

If you're like, I'm leaving this person so that I can have this other set of characteristics that I don't even know if they exist, that wouldn't be sound decision making to me. I would say for this point, like, where's the freedom and where's the relief? And I would also go back to those four omens, right? So know, are there shoulds in this? Right. Sometimes it's like, I should be with someone who's taller or who makes more money or whatever it is. And it's actually not that important to you. So that was the first thing I would do is weed out like where are there beliefs that are like sort of getting in my way here that aren't necessarily about what I really want? Because it may be that you're like, actually, I thought I only wanted to be with someone who was six feet or I thought I only wanted to be with someone

who was, you know, made over a million dollars a year. But turns out that actually isn't that important to me. But there could still be a should in there. So I would first do the work to like figure out where their shoulds, where are their optics, right? Are there expectations of your friends or your family about this person? And that's what's getting in the way of it. So I would sort of do some work on that part to like dismantle whatever's going on with you. And then, I mean, I think with situations with relationships, unlike jobs, I would try to have conversations about the places that you guys are far apart. That doesn't mean either of you are wrong or have to change. But, you know, the classic example is like cleanliness or messiness, right? Again, that feels superficial. And it's,

It's kind of one of the reasons that I use it. But like, if you are going to sign up for that and you're really different on that, you should be able to talk like both acknowledge, like, we are really different on this. And here are the places where I'm going to try to move a little closer and here are the places I'm going to try to move a little closer. Or if it's something like finances, right, like here's what I thought I was going to be in. Or this is what it brings up for me, right? Like I'm really scared to build a life with you because of this thing about finances or like,

I'm not making as much money. What's that going to be like? Or I'm making more money than you. What that's going to be like? So I would have, after you do your own work of like clearing out whatever the things are that are shoulds and that kind of thing, I would obviously with kindness and compassion, talk about the things where you are really far apart. And see, that's again another way of getting information. If your partner is like, screw you, I'm not going to change. That's dumb.

Like, that gives you a lot of information, right? If they're like, yeah, I imagine that's really hard for you if you thought it was going to be like this and this year childhood conditioned you to want this. And this is what feels safe for me and this is what feels safe for you. Like, how can we both get what we want? And you may not have a resolution, but at least you can acknowledge it. You don't have to, like, stuff it down, you know? And so, and that may evolve over time with how, how you handle that. But I think being able to, like, that will give you a lot of information if you can have those conversations. Are there external signs that maybe we're going down the wrong path that you find that people are often ignorant of or miss? You can only really self-diagnose yourself of what is aligned and not aligned, right? Like, I can't look at you and say, this is really aligned for you or this isn't. I can say you're great at this, but you could be sitting there like, I hate this, I'm miserable,

I wish I didn't have to do this, I don't know how to quit my job type of thing. So I can't totally know from the outside. You have to have a sense of someone's inner world, which I do with my clients, right? I don't know what's right for them, but if they're sharing honest, about themselves, I do get a sense of what is right and aligned for them. So I don't think you can totally tell from the outside, and I don't think you can really diagnose people, but especially for people you know well, and sometimes for people you don't, but you can have a sense of when they're fulfilled, when they're vibrant, when they're vital, when they're lit up, when they feel alive, like,

you know, their eyes are sparkling, when they're thriving, right? Like, you can have a sense of that. I can have a sense of like you feel like a dulled down version of yourself right now and like you like soulless, right? Like something's killing you from the inside. And I would say to a friend like I don't know what it is and I don't know what's right for you. But something is a haywalt. Something is really dragging you down and making you not the fullest version of yourself. So like how can we move you in a more directionally, right, a line direction or how can we figure out what isn't working? What if two opposite things both give us equal senses of warmer?

do we begin to prioritize if like I can picture myself living this beautiful country life and I wake up and the birds are chirping every day and that feels so warm and lovely to me. And I can picture myself living this city life where I'm go, go, go, hustle, bustle all the time. And that feels really warm to me. How do I weigh those? So two questions I would ask. The first one is do you have to decide between them, right? Can you do both in some way? Sort of what we were talking about earlier, like a week in one place or have, you know, houses in both places. Maybe you suburb. let it half the month or half the year or you do by coastal something like that. So do you have to decide. The second thing I would ask is if you, I would reframe the question to not which of these

lives do I want to live, but which of these lives do I want to live right now? And if you knew that you could also live the second life another time, so like maybe you live in the city now. And then in your mind, you're like, and I'm going to live my country life later. You may or may not end up living that country life. But you can, I mean, you totally could, right? You could decide that's the compromise. So that's the next question I would ask is like, what do I want to do right now. This is a question I especially ask people working with new moms and new parents where it's like, okay, this isn't about what you're doing for the rest of your life. Like this is what you're doing right now. What is the right decision for you right now? Assuming you can make another decision

in two years, five years, whenever it is. It reminds me of something we have a friend in common, Phoebe Lupine, and she always says life is long. And it's so simple, but I think we're so conditioned to believe life is short and we need to do everything right now that we can kind of forget that life long and there is a lot of time, if we're lucky enough, to have all these different phases. Yeah, I often say life is short, but it's also long. And the reason I say that is because life is too short to stay in something you know isn't right for you. Again, I'm not saying you need to quit immediately or do anything drastic, but it's too long to settle, right? If you know something's not working for you, it's too short to not take anything.

steps, right? Take some steps to get more information to have those conversations with your partner. You're not sure you want to marry or commit to for life to see about changing jobs. And it's also long, right? We can take the pressure off of, I have to decide this right now or I have to fit everything that I want to do in my life into this one next year. There's also another phrase that I find to be really helpful, which is, and it's not my original thought, but it's been attributed to so many different people that I don't know who to directly quote. But it's, we overestimate how much we can accomplish in a day and we underestimate how much we can accomplish in a year. And I think that applies to all sorts of time frames, right? Like, we think we can do so much right now. Even, you know, I talk to people so much in this year, right? Like, I'm going to launch a business and have a child and write a book and do it a podcast. And it's like, yeah,

you probably aren't going to get all of that done this year, but that doesn't mean you can't do it all in five years or you can't do it all in 10 years. And I think having that sort of framework where it's like, don't have to do all of this right now and having the question of like, what do I want to do right now or in the shorter term and allow those other possibilities that you also want to be in the longer term, I think can be a really helpful and honest way to both ask yourself the questions and sort of live the questions, as Rilke said, and to be able to get yourself to a decision right now. Let's do another listener question. This one is interesting because of the amount that I get it, like a surprising amount. A lot of people want to move abroad or they're trying

to decide whether or not they should move abroad. And they always say to me like the lifestyle seems so much better. I do think like the political situation and also like TikTok really glamorizes like, oh, you could like buy a villa in Italy for $10 and it'll be great. So they say the lifestyle seems so much better, but my career will take a hit. Will I be lonely? How do I know in advance if this type of big choice is something I'll regret? So you are not going to know in advance if it's something, well, you can know in advance, probably if it's something you'll regret. I would say you're not going to know in advance if you're going to like it, right? You can't know for sure that this is going to be the best decision you've ever made. What you can do is start moving towards that and paying attention

to the information you get as you go without the preconceived notion of I'm definitely move and I'm definitely going to like it. So, for example, if you're like, okay, if I was going to move, the first thing I would do is get a visa or I would figure out what country I'm going to move in. So like start doing the research, start moving through the process as if you're going to do it. You will start to get very clarifying information about whether it's something you actually want. You will find out quickly if you're like running home after work every day, like so eager to do research on what country or what city or what groups you might join when you get there or who you know and having people connect you, or if you're, like, so bored by it. You'll know pretty quickly. And so, again, start going through the process as if you are going to do it. At some point,

you will probably know, like, yeah, I can't not do this. And that can be a good enough decision, right? Like, I can't not try this experiment. Or you'll be experiencing, like, so much resistance and you'll be like, yeah, I should do this, right? So that's the other thing I would ask yourself, Like, is this a should, like, oh, I should do this because of the political situation? Or I should do this because I have no obligations and this is the only time in my life I can do it, or is it a true desire? So again, I would go through the decision-making framework of making sure the four omens aren't involved, right? So are there shoulds or obligation?

Do you think it's objectively, like, oh, it's objectively the right choice to move abroad? There's no one objectively right choice, nor is it objectively the right choice to stay, right? Are there optics involved? Like, oh, I would look so cool if I did this or whatever those things. things are. Or, you know, I would look unpatriotic if I did this, like, whatever those judgments are that you have. And then are you focused on the outcome? Obviously, the outcome you're focused on is like, is this going to feel good and right for me? But I wouldn't do it if you're like, the only reason I'm doing this is because it's good for my career. The only reason I'm doing this is because

it's, I don't know, some person, like I'm following someone there or whatever it is. So I would never do it just because of that. So I would go through those, make sure that your, just the decision-making criteria is sort of clear. Again, do that warm, colder calibration so that you're like in your body and you're like, okay, does this feel warm and colder? And you continue to ask yourself that at every step of the way. And you have to go into the process with the willingness to stop, with the willingness to be like, oh, it's not what I thought. Which is another optics thing, I think, because a lot of people have a lot of resistance to going down a path and then being judged for stopping that. I often tell people to keep things like this,

decisions like this private, maybe not don't tell anyone, but don't broadcast it to the whole world unless you're looking for that accountability because I think it's very hard. You only want to tell people who you're also going to want to tell if you don't do it. When people are starting anything that feels maybe vulnerable or new or uncertain, we're really excited about it often. So we want to tell a lot of people. But I would try to, you know, I say this to people if they're starting, you know, a new creative project or a side. Like, don't tell the whole world. until you're really ready to tell the whole world. Like keep it small first so you can really have your own experience of it

without having everyone's projections. Because as soon as you tell people you're going to get, don't do it, do do it, do this, live here, all of this feedback. And if you are not in a position where you are clear, either you have really good emotional and psychic boundaries or you are really clear on what it is that you want, such that that's not going to disrupt you, then you're probably not ready to be telling everyone about it.

So I would start moving through the process. Like, what is the single next step act as if you're going and be prepared and willing to stop, knowing that if your curiosity and your joy is leading you down that path, even if you don't move abroad, there's something about it that you needed to know. Maybe you find out that, oh, it's actually not that I want to move abroad. It's that I want to move, but I want to move domestically. And I wouldn't have known that or realized that otherwise. Or the reason I wanted to live abroad was that I really missed, like my, I don't know, French community or

Or you wanted like a slower life. And maybe that slower life is something you could start to build into your life wherever you are. Right. And so as you go through that process continuing to ask yourself like what everything is a clue, right? It's like you're going on a scavenger hunt of your life when you're doing this warm or colder. So like what is this clue telling me? I'm going to follow this clue. And you just keep following the clues. And if it turns out, oh, I went in the wrong direction, then you want to look, then you want to pause and say, okay, what was it about this that made me think this was the right direction? Because there's still something there. And you can make. make a slight iteration. And this is the thing about living directionally is we're not jumping from moving to another country and then moving back, right? That could totally happen. But when you're taking these slow steps through the process, you're probably going to be thinking about this and taking steps on this for like six or nine months. Like you're going to be really adjusted to this idea and like very accustomed to it such that you're going to be pretty clear on it. Can you leave us all with one homework assignment, something we can all do the second we turn off this podcast that can get us a little bit more clarity on a decision that we're struggling with. Yes, I would do the

inner navigation system calibration exercise. So think of something that you know is right for you, a decision, a person that you love that feels aligned and uniquely well suited to you. And then really get clear on how that feels in your body. Go do the opposite of someone who you don't like or decision that you know is not right for you or something that makes you anxious and stress. Hold that in your body. Notice the contrast. And you, you, use that as your warmer, colder compass, and then start practicing that in any small decision that you can as you move through your life. I love that.

Can you tell us a little bit in your own words about your wonderful book and your coaching practice and anything else that you want to spotlight? Yeah. So my book, Directional Living, well, the subtitle, Transformational Guide to Fulflement and Work and Life is both the philosophy of how to navigate a life that tolerates uncertainty or maybe even embraces it while also making aligned decisions for you for your most fulfilled. life. And it was really important to me to write a book that was both sort of the high level philosophy or, you know, the intellectual way of understanding this paradigm shift that we need to make

from destinational living to directional living and also a practical guide of exactly how you can do that, how you can see the places that you're stuck in the old way and how you can move into a new way of doing things that will lead you to living your most impactful, fulfilled, and authentic life. And you can find more on my website, meganholler.com or Instagram at Megan Haller. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Megan. This is wonderful. So fun.

Thank you, Liz. If you know somebody who is struggling to make any type of decision in their life, please send them this episode. I have recommended the things that Megan and I talked about in this episode to so many people since I did the interview. And it's truly been so helpful in completely different situations. It is also the best way to support the podcast alongside. following the podcast. Are you following the podcast on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify or on

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