DECISION MAKING: Sense of Justice
In most cases we have that clarity when we need to give advice to our friends, family, business partners, client, or even a stranger… about what path they should choose when on cross roads or at least we, with coaching skills, know what questions to ask to help someone to make decision.
In previous week or so I remembered how hard sometimes it can be to make your own decision. You see, I consider myself to be really fast decision maker, and this stands for some the most important life decisions as well. But, nevertheless, some decisions take some time to be made from the place of authenticity and power. One of them, for me, was should I stay or leave certain project in which I put a lot of effort. At first, it felt like an impossible choice. It felt like should I leave my ten years relationship or stay kind of choice.
All this encouraged me to analyse what is it about the struggles people I work with and myself - what is it that we have in common. I have found that we have strong sense of justice and that we struggle mostly around things that many people might not even think about.
In this post I will address 3 common pitfalls and I hope this will help you to get some clarity when you find yourself at a cross road.
This crossroad might sound and feel like:
Should I address this issue I have to my boss/colleague/team member or should I just skip it because I feel like he/she/they have no capacity or will to understand me?
Should I stay at my current job while I do not find something better or start on my own or should I leave this toxic environment now and focus 100% on finding/creating something more aligned with me?
Should I stay in current environment, keep seeing my friends and family (after all they helped me many times) or should I distance myself because I feel like too much negative energy influences me?
.... Or it can be something completely else, but in all scenarios, I have detected three little tricky sneaky cunning... khm, khm… let’s call it voices. These voices make some decisions so freaking hard for people who have strongly developed sense of justice. They bring a lot of guilt, shame, blame, feeling of failure.
You see, we already know that the best decisions are made intuitively, then elaborated by our brain on how exactly we are going to do this and then we use our heart to give us courage to endure. This is decision making based on three brains utilization and I am explaining more about this in this interview.
But, sometimes, our sense of justice can make decision hard and then we are not sure what is our intuition and what is our warrior and justice fighter telling us.
#1 Sense of Responsibility. Financial, moral, emotional, ethical, name it. Responsibility towards everyone involved, team, colleagues, children, siblings, parents, spouses… How your decision will affect those around you? Is it going to impact your family budget or overall atmosphere in the workplace...? Are you going to let someone down or maybe even disappoint?
#2 Another one is the voice of Expectations. Financial, moral, emotional, ethical, and again - you name it. Expectations that your team, mother, employee, client... have when it comes to your role. How this decision will be perceived - will you under-perform in their eyes? Will you be labeled as a quitter? How your image, your authority, credibility will be influenced?
#3 Maybe the most challenging one is the voice of Success. Financial, moral, success as a business owner, in career, accomplishment of any kind, in love, in power fight, in looks… This voice will call all your brain cells and will remind them that they put so much effort, so much time, energy, possibly money, patience or faith into achieving a certain goal. Certain success. And, this voice is going to dictate and list you everything you have invested into what you now want to leave, quit, change, talk about. Which is disturbance, detraction, which is failure.
Well, I am sure you clearly see the common denominator? All three voices are actually external. All three voices come from external judgement. And, of course, they are loud. We live as a pack, after all, don’t we. These three voices are calling you to take responsibility for the loved ones and for the team. They are calling you to live up to expectations of your loved ones, your team or public eye. They are calling you to be successful according to success measurement tools that use your loved ones, your team members or public eye.
And, behind all that is fear of failure. Because if you make the wrong decision, if you let your loved ones down, if you do not raise up to your client expectations or you do not achieve desired outcome and success… You are failing and all your effort is wasted, it was for nothing. All the time and energy.
I want to remind you now about all those women who stay in wrong marriages for the sake of image, children or cultural conditioning. I want to remind you of all women that stay quiet when their boss talks loudly than he should or comments inappropriately. I want to remind you of all women that take bullying from other women because they want that promotion that bad. I want to remind you of all children that don’t say anything about hell they go through because they do not want to stress their parents even more than they already are.
Yes, I know that these examples at first seem extreme. And I know that your dilemma is should you stay or should you go at your current job, project, marriage. And the dilemma is there because you are actually not in a bad enough situation to have that clarity about good vs bad.
Situation you are in and the choice you need to make is not that clear as for women that are in toxic relationships, right?
But, you see, my point is that in all cases decisions are made because external voices are so loud. And fear is real and big. And, my point is - if we all practice to make our decisions based on our inner voice, innate wisdom and remain true to ourselves - then we might be able to teach those children from my last example that it is OK to speak up. That it is OK to speak your truth even when it can hurt those you care about. Simply because, progress is possible only when people with a strong sense of justice stand in their power. Fully.
No compromises.
When it comes to justice and true quality of your life, no matter how hard it seems in a moment, no matter how hard external voices are, listen and hear what your inner ones have to say:
You have responsibility toward yourself. Your core values, your highest mission.
You have expectations from your soul, heart and higher mind. And expectation is to remain true to yourself.
You have the right to write your own success story. Not what the whole wide world thinks success is, job title, number of zeroes on your account, perfect picture from dreamy holiday destination with your handsome husband.
Please, be aware of the true impact of your decisions. Because you might pay the price of health, balance, insomnia, stomach pain or other reasons for not making authentic decisions.
So, my lovely Authentic Leaders, in order to serve your calling and to be powerful change makers - walk your talk, even when nobody's looking - because the Universe will reflect back to your material reality what you send from the inside.
Turn your meditation frequencies on and check with yourself from which place do you make your decisions. From the place of authenticity or from the place of someone’s Instagram account.
Good luck in connecting with your authentic self.
I am an email away if you want to collapse space and time and step into your Authentic Leadership shoes sooner rather than later.
Your Leadership Mentor,
Olja