I've changed my mind a lot lately…

Mostly about my business and a little about my life. And if you've been reading these weekly notes for any amount of time, you've had a front-row seat to a lot of it.

And I'm talking the good seats.

The truth is, I've changed my mind about quite a few things I was absolutely certain about three months ago. I've made plans, announced those plans across the interwebs, invested money in them, and then gotten a little further down the road and thought, Yeah...I don't actually want to do this anymore.

And if you know me, you know changing my mind isn't entirely new. I've always been willing to pivot when something isn't working, but lately I've been thinking about how much easier it has become for me to do that without turning it into this whole thing about what changing my mind says about me.

But here's what I don't want to get lost in all this talk about changing decision: you have to actually make a one first.

Everything in life begins with a decision.

Before you can change your career, leave or repair a relationship, move across the country, start the business, go back to school, get serious about your health, or create a life that looks anything like the one you say you want, at some point you have to decide.

And I think sometimes we spend so much time trying to make sure we're choosing the right thing that we don't choose anything at all. We want guarantees about how it's going to turn out before we're willing to move, but most decisions don't come with that kind of certainty.

At some point, you have to make the best decision you can with what you know, commit to it long enough to see where it takes you, and trust yourself to deal with whatever you learn along the way.

Because a decision doesn't just close one door and open another. It gives you information you couldn't get while standing still. You learn by choosing. You learn by moving. And sometimes the only way you discover that a decision needs to change is because you were willing to make it in the first place.

I don't immediately assume I made a bad decision, and I don't need to convince myself that the original decision was a mistake in order to make a different one.

Sometimes I simply know something now that I didn't know when I made it. Other times, it was because I actually had to try something before I realized that I didn't like it nearly as much as I thought I would.

It happens. Neither means I got it wrong. And that's the thing about making decisions.

You can think something through, weigh all the options, make what you believe is the best choice with the information you have, and still discover that what looked really good on paper doesn't feel nearly as good once you're actually living it.

And sometimes, nothing is actually wrong with the decision at all. You've just gotten clearer since you made it, and what made sense for that earlier version of you doesn't make as much sense for who you are now…even if that earlier version of you was from 6 months ago.

I think we forget we're allowed to do that.

We'll make a decision at 35 and somehow believe the 45-year-old version of us is obligated to keep choosing it simply because she's the one who chose it in the first place. And we do this with some of the most important areas of our lives.

We choose careers, cities, relationships, lifestyles, dreams, and even our own definition of what a successful life is supposed to look like.

Then somewhere along the way, the decision stops feeling like something we chose and starts feeling like something we're required to keep choosing.

But a decision isn't always a lifetime contract.

And “always” is the part we keep forgetting.

Now, before I am tarred and feathered, I don't believe every decision should be reconsidered simply because it becomes inconvenient. Some things really are commitments, and I think we should honor them and treat them that way.

Marriage, for example, is intended to be a serious commitment and having children creates a responsibility that doesn't disappear when parenting becomes difficult. I’ve walked away from one and never even considered neglecting the other.

And sure, we can go into the epigenetics of it all on why I’m able to abandon a man but never a child or a friend…but that’s another note for another day.

There are promises we make to other people, and to ourselves, that deserve more consideration than simply deciding, Well, this doesn't feel good anymore.

We, the humans, and me definitely, raises hand, sometimes sees that friction as a reason to leave, when in fact, the right decision might be to stay and work through the hard season.

Yes, it might mean having the uncomfortable conversation you've been putting off OR changing your own behavior, getting help, and trying again…OR even still, simply giving something enough time to become what you hoped it could be.

Can I be real with y’all for a second? Yes? Ok, good.

I know I said I wasn’t going to go into it, but indulge me for a bit…

I’m not the girl who usually sits around and waits for the hard thing to resolve itself. I often give people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their circumstances, and I'll even give them the opportunity to change, but rarely do I give them the benefit of time.

And I’m not saying I’ve always been right. I can think of a few instances where I bailed before the relationship matured enough to get to the good part.

But what I have always been able to do is eventually admit when I was too hasty. Later, of course, and often too late…and learning to recognize that impulse before I act on it has been part of my inner work in this season.

Here’s what I’m learning at my big age…discomfort doesn't automatically mean something is wrong, and changing your mind isn't automatically a sign of growth.

Sometimes the growth is in staying when leaving would be easier…or in my ex husband’s case, circling back and asking for another chance to get it right. He attempted this eight months after our divorce. I was living in another country and he with another woman. So while the effort was sloppy and definitely too late, I could appreciate the courage it took to say, “I made a mistake.”

I just wasn’t willing to bet my life on it again.

Listen, I was a runner who married a runner…and I was fully aware of the dynamic. Mirrors, ya know. But the way he looked at me gave me hope. It quieted every doubt. I can still pucture it. That look is what made me say, I do.

I also know that our issues went deeper than running. There was a harmful story that lived underneath what we both believed about marriage, and it was one we just couldn't outrun together.

Eventually, it mowed us down.

But like I say, it’s one thing to understand something intellectually, and another thing entirely to live it.

Now to the obvious part, I also don't believe commitment requires you to abandon yourself or remain in the same harmful circumstances forever.

You can believe marriage is intended to be a lifelong commitment and still understand that there are marriages that need to end. Relationships CAN become unhealthy, and there are promises we make before we fully understand what keeping them will eventually require of us.

Sometimes you really have tried.

You've had the conversations, extended the grace, done the work, forgiven, forgiven, and forgiven some more, tried to understand, tried to repair what was broken, and eventually had to acknowledge that staying is costing you more than leaving ever could.

As for our children, I’m sure there are circumstances where a parent needs to walk away from the reckless endangerment of their adult child and their choices, especially when it comes to addiction or physical violence…but that’s a conversation well above my pay grade.

I just wanted to be sure I included it because it is also a very real thing.

The bottom line is that commitment doesn't require you to ignore reality, and honoring what you once chose doesn't mean you have to keep choosing it regardless of what happens next.

That distinction is important.

The fact that something was meant to last doesn't mean you're required to sacrifice yourself to make it last, and the fact that you once chose it doesn't mean you can never choose differently.

This is where we often get stuck, because we constantly want to know: Did I make the wrong decision?

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe you made the best decision you could with what you knew at the time.

I've been thinking about this a lot as I build this new business and, arguably, a new life. There are things I've tried that made complete sense when I decided to do them, and then I actually did them and got more information.

I learned more about the women I want to serve, but I also learned more about myself. I learned more about the kind of business I actually want to wake up and run every day and, probably more importantly, how I want to spend my life and who I want to spend it with.

Naturally, some of my decisions changed along the way.

That doesn't make the earlier decisions bad ones. They got me here, and each new decision will eventually get me to wherever I'm going next.

And I encourage you to carry that line of thinking with you.

Because it's entirely possible that you really did want that career when you chose it and that relationship really was good for you for a long time. Maybe you loved the city you moved to, and the dream you've been chasing really was your dream.

It's quite possible that the version of your life you've built was exactly what you wanted.

Then.

But now you're standing in a different season with more information, more experience and, hopefully, a deeper understanding of yourself and you simply want something different.

And it’s ok. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, that IS life.

Here's the good news: you don't have to rewrite your history to make a different decision about your future. Something could have been right for you then (and yes then could have been last month) and not be right for you now.

Two things can be true, and in this life, most often they are.

Before you change the decision, I want for you to take a minute and get honest with yourself about why, because whether or not we like it, there's another side to all of this.

Sometimes we aren't changing our minds, we're running. Full stop.

Something gets hard and we're afraid we're going to fail, so we stop. Someone doesn't approve of what we're doing, or the outcome isn't happening as quickly as we thought it would, or we get to the part where we're required to do something uncomfortable.

And suddenly, we're questioning whether this is what we really wanted in the first place. Babe, that’s usually just fear.

That's why I don't think you're allowed to change your mind is enough. Of course you are. But I think the better question is:

Why are you changing it?

Are you responding to new information, or are you responding to fear? Have you genuinely outgrown this, or have you simply reached the part that requires you to grow?

Maybe this really is no longer aligned with who you are. Or maybe you're uncomfortable because you're finally doing something different and different doesn't feel natural yet.

And then there's the question I think we absolutely have to be willing to ask ourselves: Have I genuinely given this everything I have, or am I looking for the fastest way to feel better?

Are. you. just. looking. for. an. out.

Those aren't always easy questions to answer, especially when you've spent years making decisions based on what keeps everyone else comfortable. It can take some time to figure out which voice you're actually listening to and whether the thing pulling you toward a new decision is wisdom, fear, exhaustion, growth, or some combination of all of them.

But this is what learning to trust yourself looks like. It’s a grind, but worth every step. Especially when you stop treating every past decision like an obligation and every uncomfortable feeling like an emergency exit.

Instead, you give yourself enough time and space to figure out what you're actually feeling, what has actually changed, and whether this moment is asking you to stay or giving you permission to go.

And ya know, maybe that's the real work in all of this.

It isn't learning how to make the perfect decision or somehow getting it right every single time. It's learning how to trust yourself when it's time to make a new one.

Eh, but what do I know.

Take one decision you've been questioning lately. Write down why you made the original decision. Then write down what's true now that wasn't true then.

And finally ask yourself:

If I weren't trying to prove that the old decision was right or wrong, what would I choose now?

Just see what comes up. You don't have to make the decision today.

But you should probably stop pretending you don't know there's a decision to make.

At some point, you have to stop asking whether the old decision was right and start asking whether it's still right for you.

And for those of you who already know there's a decision sitting in front of you that you haven't been able to make, I want to help you work through it.

On Saturday, September 26th from 11 AM–1 PM ET, I'm hosting The Decision Reset, a live two-hour workshop where we're going to slow all of this down and actually look at the decision in front of you.

And no, I’m not going to tell you what you do. Your life, your decision.

But I do want to help you get underneath the fear, obligation, expectations, overthinking and all the other noise that makes it hard for you to hear yourself clearly.

By the end of our time together, my goal is for you to understand what has been keeping you stuck so you can get clear on the decision you’re ready to stand behind.

Join me for The Decision Reset Workshop

You don't have to keep living inside of an old decision simply because you're the one who made it.

You get to look at what's true now.

And decide again.

Donteacia 💛

P.S. I’m officially an empty nester, the kid made it to the west coast for grad school on Friday…and now I get to design an entirely new life that is uniquely mine. More on that next week…