Welcome to the Daily Ascent. I'm Molly Carmel and this is the podcast I always wish existed. A bite sized on the ground spiritual note that can shift your thinking and your outlook on life to help make us all a little bit more awake, alive and ascending. So I want to talk about decisions today.
Specifically those ones that keep you up at night and the ones that your brain won't stop chewing on, and the ones where you go back and forth and back and forth until you're just literally exhausted and stuck in the same exact place without an answer. And I'm working with a few clients right now who are facing some really big choices. And some of them are about jobs, some of them are about relationships, some of them are about the future. But these are like big, life altering choices without a clear right answer.
You know, those kinds of decisions. And I gotta tell you, I have been a therapist and coach for over 25 years and I am still so impressed and amazed with what the brain can do with a decision like that, right? Like the brain can just get into this yappy, singular thought process. Should I?
Maybe I shouldn't. What if I do and it goes wrong? What if I don't and I miss out? What if people laugh at me?
What if they don't laugh at me? Maybe I should wait. Maybe I should just go for it, you know, round and round we go for days or weeks or months or like, honestly, sometimes even years. And I know I've been there.
I assume you've been there. We have all wasted so much time and energy thinking and worrying and thinking and worrying and like genuinely believing that if we just think hard enough or worry thoroughly enough, the answer is going to reveal itself. Like, this right choice is hiding somewhere in our brain or in our heart or in our soul and we just haven't found it yet. And I love this slogan.
I've used it on the show before. But, like, worry is not a form of preparation. I'll say it again, for those of you in the back, worry is not a form of preparation. And I love it so much because it really exposes the lie.
Because we think worrying and obsessing is doing something. We think it's like super productive and we think we're being responsible by spinning. But worry is not preparation. It's just this suffering in advance.
And I'll be really honest with you, I mean, I am in the category of having lost years of my life to this behavior. Years, truly hedging decisions, going in circles, convincing myself that I just needed a little bit more time or just a little bit more information, just a little more clarity. Certainty before, you know, I could make a decision. And I have to say, you know, certainty has really become a spiritual bypassing word.
Because, I mean, if we're really honest, certainty is just another word for control, right? That's what we're chasing when we spin. We're trying to control the outcome before we've even taken a step. And you know what?
All that circular thinking and worrying gave me nothing. It just kept me stuck and moved me into shame that I wasn't moving as fast as other people are, taking risks the way that I knew my soul wanted me to. So all that to say, I am watching the show Shrinking. I'm a devoted fan of the show Shrinking, and it is in its third season.
And if you have never watched it, can I tell you how jealous I am of you? Can I tell you how jealous I am that you get to start at season one? Please get on it. It is like.
It is like the companion for the Daily Center. We're really the companion for Shrinking, but whatever. It's a gift to the world. And it's about a bunch of therapists.
And one of the therapists on the show is played by Harrison Ford, who is a national treasurer. And his character, Paul, had this line on the show that just stopped me cold. He asks, what do I always say about tough choices? And the answer is, you don't know whether your choice is right or wrong until you make it.
You don't know whether your choice is right or wrong until you make it. I swear to you, I had to pause the show, and I actually said out loud, well, there's the episode, you know, like, there it is. Because that's really the thing that none of us want to hear, right? We want the answer before we take the step.
We want the guarantee before we sign the lease. We want to know what's going to work out before we leave the job or end the relationship or start the program or have the conversation. But, oh, I wish it was true, but it's just not how decisions work. We just.
We don't get to know if it's right until we've made the choice. And the clarity comes after the action, not before. And so that brings me to today's pocket stage. I'm surprised that in over 100 episodes, we haven't gotten to Eckhart Tolle the Power of Now.
I mean, that's like an oldie but a goodie. And, you know, Eckhart Tolle really says things very, very Simply that we can almost, like, miss how profound they are. And so here's what he writes. Any action is often better than no action, especially if you've been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time.
If it's a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it's no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing. How good is that? I'll read it again for those of you in the back.
Any action is often better than no action, especially if you've been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it's a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it's no longer a mist. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing. And that reframe is great, isn't it?
It really is everything to me. Because we're so terrified of making the wrong choice that we choose nothing. We stay frozen. We stay in a spin cycle.
And Eckhart Tolle's like, even a mistake teaches you something, which means it's not really a mistake, but staying in the loop, staying stuck. We learn nothing. And it keeps you right where you are. And so our word of the day today is decide.
You know, here's something I really love about this word, the word decide. I mean, I did a little research. It comes from the Latin decidier, which means literally to cut off. And so when we decide we're cutting off the other options, we're ending the spin cycle.
We're saying, I'm going this way, and I'm closing the door on all the other ways. And of course, that sounds scary. That sounds like a noose around my neck sometimes, right? Cutting something off feels permanent and final and terrifying.
But it's also freedom. Because as long as every option is still on the table, you're stuck standing at the table. You can't move. You can't walk through a door if you're trying to keep every other door open at the same time.
And so listen, deciding does not mean you're not going to doubt yourself or you're not going to doubt your decision, or the path won't be smooth. It doesn't mean you're not going to look back sometimes and say, I wish I made that other choice. But it does mean that you're in motion. And in motion we can learn, and in motion, we can grow.
And in motion, the clarity that we seek starts to find us because we've given it something to respond to instead of just spinning in the darkness. So here's what I want you to think about today. We treat decisions like they're math problems. Like there's one right answer, and if we just think about it long enough, we'll find it.
But most of the decisions that keep us up at night aren't actually math problems. They're leaps. And the leap, by definition, means that we leave the ground before we know where we're going to land. And Paul Harrison Ford's character nails it, right?
We don't know whether our choice is right or wrong until we make it. Which means all that thinking and worrying that we're doing, it's not getting us closer to the answer, it's keeping us from the answer. How crazy is that? Because the answer lives on the other side of the decision, not on this side.
And listen, I watch my friends, my clients, my family and me. I watch us all do it. We convince ourselves that the thinking and the worrying is productive, that we're being careful and responsible and thorough and. But worry is not a form of preparation.
And there's a really big difference between, like, a thoughtful consideration and an endless loop. Thoughtful consideration has a shelf life. And at some point, you gather. You gathered enough information and felt all the feelings and consulted all the people, and now you're just kind of scared and stalling and listen, I get it.
I get it. The fear of making the wrong choices. Real, right? But this pocket sage today, Eckhart Tolle, he's reminding us of something we keep forgetting.
Staying stuck is not actually the safe option. Staying stuck is its own kind of loss. I mean, frankly, its own kind of hell. Right?
Because we're not protecting ourselves from a bad outcome. We're guaranteeing that nothing can change. And so listen, if you're in a spin cycle right now, Namaste. Spin cycle, right.
If you're going back and forth about a job or a relationship or a move or a conversation that you need to have, you to ask yourself, am I still thinking and worrying about this because I genuinely need more information, or am I thinking and worrying about this because I'm afraid to decide? And listen, if it's the second one, just do it. I believe in you. I'm here with you.
Email me, let me know. I want to know all about this. Just cut off the other options. Just take that step.
You're going to find out really quickly if it was right really quickly. And even if it wasn't, you'll still learn something, which, according to our pocket stage today, means it's no longer a mistake. So your reflective question of the day, what decision are you spinning on that you actually already know the answer to. And listen, if this one's resonating, if you've been going back and forth and back and forth about something related to your food or your body or your health or your relationship with eating, you know, and that spin cycle is its own sort of prison.
I just want you to know that my stop starting over system stops the spinning and gets you moving because we help you to make these decisions in the next one and the next one, not perfectly, but in motion, because motion is where everything changes. And so, you know, I want to talk and you can go in our show notes and schedule a call with me. You can go to Malachi.com and learn more about the program. I am right here with you Ascenders.
I too, am learning that the answer is always on the other side of decision, not in front of it. And you know, this episode, if you're like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, please spread the love. I'm all about growing our sender crew. The more the merrier.
We rise together. Until next time.