Dani Tan: Hi, I'm Dani Tan, and if you are here, you are in the right place. Welcome to the Pivot and Promotion podcast, where we say, forget the rules because they weren't written for us. I'm Dani Tan. I'm your host as well as career and leadership coach and a proud advocate for redefining what success and leadership looks like. And here's what I know. You can lead at any level. You can pivot at any age, and. And you can make moves that feel right for you, whether you're climbing the corporate ladder, starting something completely new, or just figuring out your next step. I've got you covered with strategies, stories, and straight up inspiration. So let's make some moves. Okay, so for today, we're gonna talk about why you keep going in circles.

And not in circles in the sense of, ooh, I'm. I'm sitting on the same loop of the same thought or belief, and I'm not taking action forward, but in the sense of you keep revisiting potentially decision that you've already made. And why do you keep revisiting them? Why are you going in these circles around the decisions that have already been decided? And what this can come up in is, for example, let's say you are looking to explore a career pivot. You're trying to make a change in your career, and so you decided that you're going to explore, you know, this one path after looking at three different paths. So, for example, when we're working together with my clients, I have an exercise that people go through in order to narrow down, like, their skill sets, their expertise, their experience.

Experience. What is it they enjoy to narrow down at least to one to two paths that they can go ahead and pursue and start to do research for and go forward with. Now, a lot of times people will come up and say, oh, I'm not sure what I want to do. I'm completely unclear, or I'm indecisive, or, you know, I need help and guidance. And then we do the exercise. They get one path. Let's say it gets three. Let's say they get three to two, two to three paths, and they narrow it down to one. They will start to work towards that one, and then they'll start to circle back and be like, I'm not actually sure. I'm not sure if I want this one. What if I want to look at the other two? What was. What was the option two?

What was option three? And they start to go back to the beginning, and they're basically circling and going Back to decisions that were already made. And so this is not somebody who is short of making decisions or short of options. It's actually that they are going back to the beginning after they've already made decisions and how that actually can slow you down. Right. And so let's talk about it. So what is actually going on? So you're not stuck. You just may have multiple paths open, right? So if you or somebody's looking to do a career pivot or change, you might have multiple paths open. You may have the path of marketing, the path of customer success, the. The path of, you know, project manager.

You may have multiple paths. And so you may have decided to move forward with path A. But then you start to question, is path A the right path? And you start to think about path B and path C. Right? That might be you. Another person that it might be is about building a business. Oh, I think I want to help this kind of person. Even though you may have had three different types of people you wanted to, you may start circling back, oh, do I actually want to help somebody who is focused on nonprofit website website design? Or don't want to focus on helping somebody who's going to be more so, you know, for profits website design? Like, you may just start going back to decisions you've already made.

And so if that is the case, you are, in reality, you are reopening the decisions that you thought you made. You're revisiting, you're revisiting options. And this is like just to check and you're questioning the progress instead of building upon it. So you take like two steps and you go three steps backwards. And the thing that is most important is that this is holding you back in so many ways and slowing you down in so many ways versus just owning that decision. And so I'm thinking about a client, specifically who for career pivots, for example, she had three paths laid out in front of her, and we narrowed it down to one for her to start to focus on and work on. And then as she was going through the process of informational interview, doing market research, doing the priority exercise, doing the love live without exercise, she started to say, oh, I don't know.

I don't know if this is the right one. Doesn't. What if it's. What if it was B? What if it was C? Right? And so that does not help you, because this is the thing I want you to understand. These circles are not confusion. They are decisions without boundaries. So if you are constantly circling back to the decisions you've already made. That means you are making decisions without boundaries because you're not holding to what it is that you said you're going to do. Which for you is not good because that means you are starting to question your self trust and you're not able to necessarily be like, okay, I've got my back, I know what I'm doing. You actually are second guessing yourself, which is not good for your self trust in that sense.

And so the reflection that I have for you is what decision do you keep reopening? So what decision do you keep revisiting? Like you decided it, but you keep back to it because that is starting to deteriorate. Solely your ability to trust your decision making skills in yourself, but also it is slowing you down from taking the movement and the action that you want to do because you're going backwards every single time. So think about what decision do you keep reopening versus just committing to. And then I want to talk about like why going in this like circle back to your decisions feels safer than taking any direction circles feel safe because then there's nothing final, right? And so every single time you keep things kind of open, you keep going back to them.

It's like you haven't really taken the time to fully test out that path. You've never, you don't have any risk because you haven't really fully committed to one path. You don't feel like you've lost anything because it doesn't feel necessarily real yet. And so all that safety, that safety of not feeling like you have taken a risk or that you've really tested it, I mean it doesn't feel real is at a cost, right, because you're actually not moving forward. And it just feels safer to constantly revisit the decisions that you've already decided. And so the things that I want you to think about is what options keep getting reconsidered. So what decisions that you already make that you keep going back to and questioning and trying to negotiate with yourself on the decision that you made.

And if decision hasn't been contained, you know what, what decision have you not allowed to be set in stone? And even if it's temporary, it doesn't be forever. But like think about it, what options keep getting reconsidered? What decisions are not, are you not allowed to be cemented in? And what are you afraid what are you afraid could happen? Or what are you afraid it'll look like if you actually do choose one path? What are those fears like saying for you? And I would say this Is that I'm thinking about, you know, one client who she kept thinking about, oh, okay, do I want to stay in my current role? Do I want to apply somewhere else? Do I want to start something new? And she wanted to just, she wanted to do all of them all at once.

But the thing is that, yes, is there a way that can kind of happen for sure, but you have to also be able to commit to what is a timeline for those things, what is the priority in those things, and what is it that you need to kind of double down and focus on out of them? Right. You can't go. Go a hundred percent on three different paths. And so to make the decision of, okay, for now, I'm going to commit to my main. My main path that I'm going after is to move up internally or is to move out externally or is to build my business. But you can't go 100% on all three paths. And so versus trying to renegotiate and reconsider decisions you've made of like, oh, should it be path abc, you got to pick one and start to explore it and commit to it before you go ahead and go backwards and try to change it.

And so that means if you keep doing that, you don't have any answers to go off of. There is no data to go off of. And so I think that part is really important. So what do you keep reliving instead of actually, like trying to make it happen? And so where are you constantly negotiating with yourself decisions I'm super curious of. I made the decision, but you keep going back and you renegotiate it with yourself. And the last piece is, you know, how do you kind of like break this cycle essentially without pushing yourself? And so this is the thing that I want you to think about, and this is something that we talk about within coaching of like creating a plan. Like I call. There's so many different ways you can create this plan.

But this is the one that I would say is that the first piece is choose your one active lane. So like I was saying, if you have like lane abc, pick the one that is going to have your attention for now. And everything else kind of pauses, not forever, just intentionally. And the second piece, just to kind of like help our brains feel a little bit safer, like, put a time on it. So if you're like, oh my gosh, I can't just focus on this one path of internal promotion or this one path of building my business in a certain way, then put a time on it. And that way it removes the pressure feeling like it is forever and it creates safety within your brain. So is that going to be for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days?

What do you want to do for that time bound choice while you're taking towards intentionality towards that path? The next piece is you have to review. Instead of restart versus saying oh, it's not working or I'm not sure I don't like it, and throwing everything out the window, you want to go ahead and do an analysis first and collect some data. So out of the things you did in the 30 day window, 60 or 90 day window for path A, what worked for you, what didn't work, what changed you have to that analysis first before you go ahead and jump into path two or path, you know, three. Because that way you have good data to understand of what it is you're enjoying versus not so you know, what kind of takes into effect for the next piece.

So for example, I had a client who she was like, okay, I just don't think this path is working. I don't think it's what I want to do. I think I just want to go ahead and you know, go with another route. Okay, great. But we have to understand what parts are you not liking about path A. And some things that came up was like, I don't know if I have enough experience, I don't know if I feel confident speaking about this. I don't know if my credentials reflect that. Okay, great. But the thing is though is that if that stuff is an A, there's some of that stuff that you can still tackle before you go and change to another path. Because if you don't, it's actually going to carry into other things as well.

And so it's just being able to understand for yourself of like what is working, what's not working. I want you to feel like versus just assuming something is not working because you have not achieved a result right then and there of how can you run a diagnostic and do an analysis on what it is that you've done in order to help prove it? And so we create safety with those choices by collecting data, by collecting evidence, by collecting information. And that's important. So if you're somebody who keeps going in circles, you're going in circles and you are renegotiating the decisions you have made, I really want you to think about, you know, why, why are you going ahead and renegotiating these decisions, why you're reopening them and that why are you not creating boundaries?

Essentially you're having Boundary list decision making, because you decide that you can flip flop whenever you want. And so if you're someone who keeps saying, oh, I'm a flip flopper or I'm indecisive, this is especially for you because I have lots of folks who are really smart, really more than capable, and they will come in and say, I flip flop or I'm indecisive. And the reality is there just has to be a little bit more of structure around your decision making. So that way you have some like, you have a framework essentially to work through when it comes to, okay, like why am I questioning this and why do I keep renegotiating? It doesn't mean that you can't do that. It just means sitting with, why is that coming up?

Right? And what is working versus not working in that? And before you throw it in the garbage, give it like a timeline, test it, and then see what worked, what didn't work, and then go ahead and retest. And that was what's most important when it comes to why you're going in circles. But you're going to circles mainly because you have too many paths open. You are revisiting them and you're just check to see how you're doing and you're questioning yourself versus building upon the progress that you have created. And so I just want you to think about how you can go ahead and reassess that by doing a couple of things. When it comes to how you choose one active lane, create a timing around it and then review it before just going ahead and.

All right, so if there's something that was like, oh my gosh, I am definitely this person. I'm definitely the person that thinks I am flip flopping. I'm definitely the person who thinks I am indecisive and can't make decisions. We make lots of decisions when it comes to private coaching. So all my clients are trying to make decisions when it comes to going ahead and building a business while they are in their nine to five thinking about making decisions when it comes to going into their business full time and leaving their nine to five making decisions when it comes to getting a promotion internally, getting a new job externally, changing careers so many different ways that they are making really big decisions.

And these are women who have made decisions their entire lives for themselves. They're more than willing and capable, but these are big ones that they are making now. And you have just taken on like so much of the mental load that you have been playing out in your mind of your day to day from what's on your to do list, from what you're doing at work that you just need a clear space to have support with this. So much so that you want to make sure you're having true self trust in yourself and your decision making skills. And you don't want to feel like flip flopper. You don't want to feel indecisive. You want to feel really confident about what it is that you're going towards and having a plan.

com and you can go to the contact tab and book a call with me and we can talk about about what you're looking to decide this year and what needs a plan and some structure. I can give you a coaching plan and let you know what it's like to work together and then we can talk about what that's like. Working together is for three months and we meet biweekly and then you have slack voice, note, text and document review for those three months, albeit through slack messaging. And yeah, we always have action items. It's always very strategic. I'm all about giving you takeaways and giving you frameworks and tools to use and I want you to feel really, really confident about these big decisions that you're making changes that you want to make and not be sitting circling on the same stuff over and over again because we don't have time for that.

And it is truly my mission to help as many women as possible, especially women of color when it comes to achieving what it is they want to achieve, especially when the systems are not set up and built for us. And so anything I can do to kind of make that happen is what I'm going to do. All right, so hopefully you found this helpful and I will talk to you soon.