It’s a New Year! Welcome to 2017.
Now might be the best time for you to discover the tools and the approach that will help you make the right choices for you when it comes to your life, your career, or your relationships moving forward.
I am an inside-out kind of person and everything I suggest to my clients (and myself and others, frankly) about how to make the best decisions for yourself moving forward is to take an Inside-Out approach.
What Is an Inside-Out Approach and how will it help you make the right choices for you?
In order to best explain what an Inside-Out Approach looks like, I will first describe the opposite, an Outside-In approach, which is an approach you are likely very familiar with. An Outside-In approach involves you searching outside of yourself for answers. It might look like you asking others what it is that they did, or asking them to tell you what they think you should do. Taking an Outside-In approach might also look like you looking at what options already exist and then trying to figure out, based on those options, which you would rather do. This approach usually leads to creating a pros and cons list. It is also an approach that, from what I’ve seen with my clients (and myself and many others that I know), leads to confusion, anxiety and self-doubt.
An Inside-Out Approach, on the other hand, is an approach where instead of searching outside of yourself for the answers about what to do and what choice(s) to make, you look to yourself first. You ask yourself questions about what you value and what matters to you. You clarify how it is that you are feeling and what your personal, professional, or relationship goals are.
An Inside-Out approach allows you to listen to your own voice. It guides you on a path to discovering what is most true and right for you.
With this approach you will make choices about your future from a place of calmness, confidence, and strength.
[Click here to find more articles that explain what I call the ‘Inside-Out Approach.’]
How can you apply the Inside-Out Approach to decision making?
Make a date with yourself or someone you feel you can trust and be your real self with. On this ‘date’, ask yourself (or ask a friend to ask you) open-ended questions. When I say open-ended, I am mainly referring to questions that begin with the word ‘what.’ Examples of open-ended questions include, ‘What do I want?’, ‘What is most important to me?’, ‘What do I most value?’, ‘What are my career goals?’, ‘What are my relationship goals?’
Ultimately what you want to keep doing is going back to you – to your core, where you can hear and honor your own voice.
That is where you will ultimately find the answers to what the right choices are for you.
In support and admiration and in awe of all that you are and are capable of,
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