Have you ever faced a hard decision to make?
I’ve made a lot of them in my life and work.
Many conversations in my coaching practice revolve around various kinds of decisions, because the leaders I work with are professional decision makers.
When we inquire into what makes a decision hard, a pattern shows up, which is quite different from what they initially think.
Some leaders idolize staying up all night, agonizing over Option A vs. Option B, weighing the pros and cons, and view this struggle as a badge of honor. They think it means they are taking the responsibility seriously.
Some grow tired of the negative consequences this has on the rest of their life, and seek a different approach.
From the perspective of Awakened Leadership, agonizing over a decision is not a sign of rigor. It is only a symptom of confusion.
Choice always implies lack of clarity. And when there is no clarity, the mistake that many leaders make is to think harder, not realizing that more thinking only leads to more confusion.
The ‘difficulty’ in difficult decisions is a product of the amount of conflicted thinking you have about the situation, and not a product of the situation itself.
I wish I could say that coaching at large can help with this, but I’ve seen too many qualified coaches equally blind to this phenomenon.
When there is complete clarity, there is no choice to make, only the immediate action that is effortlessly obvious.
Why? Because when you have total clarity, you see the reality exactly as it is, and the action arises inevitably from that seeing. Sometimes, that action could be no action at all, and that would be fine too.
So, why do some decisions feel so hard? Why do we stare at the ceiling at 3 AM wondering whether to pivot the strategy or fire the executive? (examples from recent coaching sessions.)
It is rarely because the data is ambiguous. It is because our perception is clouded by conflicting attachments and interests.
Part of you wants to do what’s right for the P&L. Part of you wants to be liked by the team. Part of you is afraid of admitting the initial hire was a mistake. What is needed in these cases is what I call structural integrity.
In addition, the struggle you feel is not between two decisions. It is often between reality and your self-image.
When you are attached to how you are perceived, or attached to being right, you create a fog. In that fog, the obvious path becomes obscured. You are forced to make a choice because you have lost the clarity of the obvious.
The highest level of leadership involves more than becoming a better decision-maker in the traditional sense. It is in cultivating what wisdom traditions call Choiceless Awareness.
This means cleaning your internal lens until the distortion of your ego is removed. When you drop the need to look good, the need to be safe, and the need to be right, the ‘hard decision’ no longer looks so hard.
Suddenly, you look at the underperforming business unit, and you don’t feel the agony of “Should I kill it?” You simply see the reality: It is draining resources and has no path to viability.
The action becomes as obvious as stepping away from a poisonous snake in your path. The ‘weight’ of the decision disappears.
A Practice to Undertake
Next time you find yourself struggling with a tough call, consider pausing the situational analysis. You have likely analyzed the options enough.
Instead, turn your attention inward. Ask yourself:
“What am I attached to that is making this simple situation feel complicated?”
“If I had absolutely no fear of how I would be perceived, what would I do right now?”
The goal is not to muscle your way to a decision. The goal is to see so clearly that the choice disappears, and only the inevitable next step remains.
I constantly invite you into Awakened Leadership. Even the act of waking up need not be a choice to make – it happens inevitably when you see your current reality clearly enough.
