“We want you to come, Tony.” I’d just been offered a job that would mean leaving my current position, packing up, and moving my family across the country. What started a few months earlier as “just looking around” had become a very real, and very tangible offer to make a huge change.
Things were going well, no change was needed. We were comfortable. We had finally built some strong friendships. We were (relatively) close to family. But now we had an offer on the table. How do you decide whether to take it or not?
It’s either HELL YES! or HELL NO!
Big decisions are scary for a multitude of reasons, but I think the most intense is that you’re dealing with an element of the unknown. Change always means leaving something familiar and stepping into a situation that you haven’t navigated before. Knowing whether you made the “right” or “wrong” decision is impossible until it’s too late – you can’t really try before you buy.
Despite this, for me it’s very simple. Once the options are on the table I only ask one question: “Is the answer HELL YES!”? If so, the decision is made. If not, the decision is made.
Life is way too short to be living in the middle. Time is far too precious to be spent on mediocre. I don’t want a lukewarm life. I don’t walk away from decent offers. I run! It’s far too easy to get sucked into the “just kind of okay” situation.
If the answer isn’t “HELL YES!” then it’s “HELL NO.”
This isn’t about being impulsive
I really think the reason we struggle with making big decisions is that we don’t vet them fully. We act as though there is a decision to be made far before there actually is. Start by getting crystal clear on what the options are and identifying the real decision to be made. If I had tried to decide whether or not to move across the country before I even applied for the job, it would have been premature. Yet this is what we do to ourselves on a regular basis. We increase the stakes of the vetting process until the pressure becomes overwhelming.
Long before asking “should I do this?” I ask, “can it work?” This is when you crunch the numbers. This is when you ask if an opportunity leads in the direction you’re trying to go with your life. At any point along the way, if the answer is “no” then you can take the offramp and move on to considering something else. Otherwise, just wait. Just look and listen and find out the full deal before deciding how to respond.
Getting it Wrong
My perspective is that, despite the call I just gave you to not waste a minute of your life, you actually can’t make a mistake. If you’re willing to step back and evaluate, find ways to learn from every experience then there is no such thing as a wrong decision. Some may narrow your options moving forward, but nothing is permanent. I resent the “one way door” myth that we tell ourselves so frequently.
Instead of calling a decision that goes differently from anticipated a mistake, call it a learning opportunity and move on.
Conclusion
I’m not the first to give this advice. Yet I think it is far more profound than saying something like “trust your gut.” This isn’t about gut feelings or intuition. It’s about you living your best life, and making the biggest impact you possibly can. Success comes to those who are so passionate, so completely bought into the mission that they can’t be stopped. Who gets raises? Who gets promotions? The passionate. The people who are completely sold out to the cause. Don’t make it hard on yourself by taking a position that you have to convince yourself to love. There will be more opportunities and it’ll be worth the wait.
If you’re wondering how to succeed in life, I think this is the answer:
Hell Yes! or Hell No.
