How To Change A Bad Life Decision (You Have A Lot More Options Than You Think)

This week, I have a fascinating question about the choices we have in life and what to do if you feel you made a poor decision and now what to reverse that decision. 

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Script

Episode 131

Hello and welcome to episode 131 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

Have you ever felt a decision you made about your career or life many years ago is the cause of your stress and unhappiness today and you feel trapped? Well, that’s the topic of this week’s question. What to do if you feel you are travelling down the wrong path.

Now, before we get to the answer, last week, I launched a brand new course called The Time Sector course. This course is designed for the twenty-first century. Created to help you manage all the inputs that come your way every day and allow you to focus on when you will do the task.

Many people have discovered that managing and organising your tasks by project does not work for them. In today’s world, with all the inputs coming your way and the many things you have are multi-step tasks, you end up with hundreds of projects to manage that leaves you spending a disproportionate amount of time just trying to stay on top of everything. 

And many of the tasks you collect get processed into one of those hundreds of projects only to die a slow death never to see the light of day again. A really bad way to manage your work. 

The Time Sector System eliminates projects from your to-do list altogether and instead organises your work by when you need or want to do it. A much more logical way to manage your tasks. 

If you think about it, the only thing that matters is when you will do a task. The only factor that will tell you whether you can do a task or not is available time. It does not matter how much intention, motivation or inspiration you have to complete a task if you don’t have the time to complete it you will not complete it. 

The Time Sector System gives you a much simpler way to manage your tasks. It puts the planning and managing of projects where it belongs—in your notes app—and helps you to manage your available time more effectively.

A link to more details about the Time Sector System is in the show notes. I hope you take some time to have a look as this system could be the difference between continuing to struggle to manage your tasks and your time and finding an effective way to balance your work and the things you love doing. 

Okay, on with the show, so that means it’s time for me to hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Bill. Bill asks: Hi Carl, several years ago I decided I wanted to work in sales, but over the last year I have felt increasingly unhappy with that decision. I took your Time and Life Mastery course and I realised my long-term vision is not what I am doing today. 

I want to change my career and my direction, but I have a family and a mortgage and I just don’t feel I have a choice. Do you have any recommendations that might help? 

Thank you, Bill, for the question. Now, let me start by talking about one of my favourite actors: Jason Statham. Like most action-adventure actors these days, Jason Statham plays pretty much the same character in all his movies: a tough, non-compromising, generally good guy. 

But if you watch a little closer you will notice his characters also all appear to live the same simple life. If you have seen his Mechanic movies, for example, you’ll notice his home, while luxurious, appears to have very few things his character cares about. His record collection and his watch seem to be it. 

Even in real life, Jason Statham lives a simple life—well simple by Hollywood standards. He follows a simple diet and a consistent exercise routine. You will also probably notice he does very few interviews or promotions outside of his movies. 

If you look at the lives of the most successful people, the people who maintain their success over a long period of time, they all appear to have something in common. No matter how successful they become, they generally stick to the same routines and habits that enabled them to be successful every day. There's no compromise. Most of the people who achieve immense success and then disappear without a trace, also follow a similar pattern. They stop doing what made them successful in the first place.

Every day, when you wake up you get to choose whether to stay in bed or go and do some exercise. Nobody’s telling you to do anything. You are no longer a child. You get to choose. It’s the same with your diet. You get to choose whether to eat that cake or not. Nobody’s forcing you to eat it. 

When you accept you have a lot more control over your life than you think it can be incredibly liberating. 

Many years ago, after studying and training to be a lawyer, I discovered I hated working in an office. Prior to working in an office, I had worked in hotel management, car sales and other non-office based jobs. I thought working in an office would be fantastic. I was wrong. It felt I was a day release prisoner but in reverse. I had to be in a fixed location Monday to Friday, five days a week and was allowed home in the evenings. It was a horrible experience for me. 

The problem was I felt I had no choice. After studying and training for six years I believed had to live with my choices. Then one weekend I sat down to think about where my future life was going and it did not look good. I was heading towards a career in an industry that did not inspire me, it was only a matter of time before I settled down got married, got a mortgage and had kids. And once that happened I knew it would be incredibly difficult to give up my legal career. 

It was a weekend in November 2001, that I decided I did not have to do any of those things if I chose not to. I always had a choice about what I did each day and I also had a choice about what I wanted to do with my career. 

All I had to do was exercise that choice and I could do that at any time. 

And that is how I found myself in South Korea in June 2002. I exercised my choice and it was the best decision I have ever made. 

For whatever reason, we often feel trapped by decisions we made earlier in life. The thing is you are rarely ever trapped. You always have options and you can always accept you made a poor choice and decide to try something new. 

In many ways, the hardest battle we have is accepting we made a bad decision. But let’s get real here, nobody makes the right decisions every time. We all make poor decisions from time to time. Some of those decisions have small consequences, others have very big consequences, like marrying the wrong person or investing all our life savings into a sure thing that turned out not to be a sure thing. 

But whether the consequences are big or small, we almost always have a choice about whether we continue down the same path or take an exit and begin something new. 

So what do you do if you feel your current path will not take you towards your vision for the future?

Well, first research what will put you on the right path towards achieving your vision for the future. This can take quite a bit of time as it depends on what your vision is. You may be lucky and already have a clear idea of what you want to be doing with your life. Other times it may take a few weeks or months to figure it out. 

For example, you could be a manager in a company now but want to become a church minister and share your faith with other people. In this instance, you only need to become more involved in your church, volunteer to run bible study groups, talk to your church minister about what he or she would recommend you do to fulfil your desire to become a leader of a church. You could investigate taking a theology course, or if there are any seminaries that allow you to attend part-time. There’s a lot of things you can do before you need make any kind of decision. 

The key is to understand you do not have to make any kind of decision right away. Often the process of investigating and researching will give you a lot of inspiration and that will create momentum to keep moving forward. Remember, "most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade." 

The fact you make a decision to do something about what you really want to do will change the way you look at things. You will start to see opportunities open up and you can then choose to take those opportunities or not when the time comes. 

I often have people take a piece of paper and write out what they envision they will be doing in ten years time if they carry on doing what they are doing today. Where will they be in ten years time if they don’t change anything about the way they live today? 

What if you don’t change your current career path or lifestyle choices? What if you are in an uninspiring career, eat and drink too much and do no exercise? What physical and mental condition will you be in in ten years time? Will you be happy? Will you be healthy? 

Once you have done that exercise, turn over the piece of paper and envision where you will be if you make some changes to your career path and lifestyle choices? Will you be in a better place? 

Often when you realise that to get where you want to be in the condition you want to be in in ten years time will not take a lot of changes. It may involve enrolling in an online university course and making some minor changes to your diet. Nothing too dramatic. 

After that exercise, all you need do is make a decision about when you will begin. And the best time to begin is now. As the old Chines proverb says: “the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now”.

The next piece of advice I would give is; do not overthink things. All plans change over time. I’ve seen far too many people decide they want to start their own business, for example, and they spend months—and sometimes years—thinking about their branding and target audience. The truth is the chances are you will not get your branding or target audience right the first time anyway—at least not until you start doing something that attracts an audience. Then you will see who your real audience is and be in a better position to create a brand that work for them (remember it is always about your audience it is never about you) 

 I had a vision and a plan when I began my YouTube channel four years ago that within three months had completely changed. I also had a branding message, that was turned upside down once I was able to see the analytics from the content I was producing. The people watching my videos and reading my blog posts were not the people I thought would be watching. From that data, I modified my message and branding to better suit the people who were engaging with my content. 

If you do a Google search for Apple’s first logo, you will see the idea of a simple, minimalistic company was not what Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak first envisioned. Apple’s branding and image and products evolved over time once the company saw how they could differentiate themselves based on who was buying their products. 

So Bill, take a step back. Do some thinking and figure out how you will use the next ten years to put yourself on course for the career and lifestyle you want to achieve for yourself and your family. You do not have to do anything as dramatic as quitting your job right away. Often all you need is to retrain yourself, change a few habits and make choices about your future life. 

I hope that has helped and thank you for your wonderful question, Bill.

Thank you also to all of you for listening. Don’t forget if you have a question then you can email me at carl@carlpullein.com or you can DM me on Facebook or Twitter. All the links are in the show notes.

It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.