How to make the decision before you feel ready

Most leaders don't need more information.

They need a stronger relationship with their own judgment.

Lead From Within™ is a 6-week mental fitness cohort for leaders who are ready to stop second-guessing themselves and lead with greater clarity, confidence, and self-trust.

September 2026 • Small Group • Limited to 6 Leaders

This week a client wrote me something I keep going back to.

She'd been at her company for years. Good comp. Familiar team. A role she'd built from scratch.

She also had a growing sense that staying required her to operate outside her own values, and that no amount of patience was going to fix that.

She wrote:

She made the decision.

Not when she had all the information. Not when it stopped being scary. Not when the timing was right.

She made it when she finally trusted herself more than she trusted the noise.

This week, I want to give you what got her there.

Most leaders I work with aren't stuck because they don't know what to do.

They're stuck because they don't trust what they already know.

There's a difference, and it matters. Because if your problem is information, the solution is research. But if your problem is self-trust, research becomes a hiding place. One more article. One more conversation. One more quarter.

The question isn't "what should I do?"

It's "why am I not doing what I already know I should?"

After twenty years of coaching leaders through transitions, I've learned to look for these. When I see them, I stop asking "what's the right move?" and start asking "what's making you wait?"

Real uncertainty resolves over time. You get new information, the situation shifts, things become clearer.

But the kind of stuck that lasts six months, twelve months, two years, that's not uncertainty. That's a decision you've already made that you haven't admitted yet.

If you've been in the same loop for more than a quarter, it's worth asking: what would I have to give up to admit I already know?

You've probably already said it.

"If my best friend were dealing with this, I'd tell her to leave / take the role / have the conversation / stop waiting."

We're remarkably clear on other people's situations. We give good advice. We see what they can't see because we're not afraid of the consequences for them.

The gap between what you'd tell a friend and what you're telling yourself, that's where the real work is.

Not scarier. Heavier.

Fear is about the unknown, the risk of a bad outcome on the other side.

Heavy is about the known, the cost of another day in something that no longer fits.

When the thought of staying starts to feel heavier than the thought of changing, your body is telling you something your brain hasn't caught up to yet.

Fear you can work with. Heavy is a signal.

Here's what I've learned from watching leaders navigate this: the regret they feared from choosing almost never materialized the way they imagined.

The regret from waiting? Much more common.

I'm not telling you to leap without looking. I'm telling you that you've probably already looked. More than once. From every angle.

Certainty isn't coming. It was never the prerequisite you thought it was.

What you're really waiting for is permission. Permission to trust yourself over the noise. Permission to choose what you want over what's expected. Permission to make a decision and live with it, and discover that you can.

Consider this your permission.

I give this to every client in our first session together. It's not complicated, but most people have never been asked it directly.

What would you do if you trusted yourself completely?

Not what would be smart. Not what would make other people comfortable. Not what would look right from the outside.

What would you do if you trusted yourself completely?

Write it down without editing. Don't explain it. Don't justify it. Just answer.

Whatever comes out in the first thirty seconds, that's usually where you need to go.

I'm writing this from Barcelona.

Not a vacation. A pilot.

Years ago, when I let myself picture what my ideal life actually looked like, living and working from somewhere in Europe was in the image. I filed it under "someday."

Then I kept filing it.

Then I stopped picturing it at all, because someday is a comfortable place to put the things you're not ready to want out loud.

This week I stopped filing and booked the flight.

I'm here with my husband and my brother, who hasn't left the country in twenty years.

Watching him navigate a city where nothing is familiar, where he can't default to what he knows, where everything requires just a little more courage than usual, I keep thinking: this is what activation looks like from the outside.

We also don't have the kids this trip.

So we're quietly trialing something: what does this chapter look like? Who are we when we're not in the roles we've been playing?

I don't have answers yet. But I'm here, which is more than I could say six months ago.

Someday was the hiding place. Barcelona is what happened when I stopped.

That's the only resource I have for you this week. Go do the thing.

Before you close this email, sit with one question.

Not "what's my next move?"

This one:

If the cost of not moving is higher than the cost of moving wrong, what are you still waiting for?

You already know.

You've always known.

You've just been waiting for permission to act on it.

Until next Saturday,

P.S. If you've been circling a decision and want to stop, that's exactly what I do in a Decision Sprint.

One 90-minute session.

We go from spinning to clear.

Reply SPRINT and I'll send you the details.

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