Women Consultants, Here’s How To Find Your Resonant Choice

Welcome to the latest edition of the Seven Figure Consultant LinkedIn Newsletter for Women in Consulting.?Don't forget that you can get daily updates from Jessica in your LinkedIn news feed?by accessing her LinkedIn profile and hitting Follow.?She will be sharing insights and discussions through the week that she would love to hear your views on.

Did you know that one of the hardest things about leadership is.... making decisions?

Whether you're the CEO of your consulting business or a senior leader in the workplace, 'decision fatigue' and paralysis in the face of everyday decision-making is all too common.

There can be a lot of pressure to get it right the first time, but we also need to be resilient in the face of decisions that end up taking us to places we didn't intend to go.

And I'm sure you know exactly what this feels like. I speak to women all the time who had a Plan A for the year, but then get faced with Plan B and it can be a real struggle to course correct and feel good about this new direction or opportunity.

Should we fight for Plan A, or embrace Plan B? Can we actually embrace Plan B or are we really just resigned to Plan B?

A trivial example came up for me recently.

My husband and I had concert tickets for one of my favourite bands of all time, the Chicks, formerly known as the Dixie Chicks.

The week of the concert, the whole family was struck down with a tonsillitis bug.

On the day of the concert, a dilemma presented itself.

I was feeling ok, so I could:

a) Travel to the next city solo and attend the concert without my husband

b) Take one for the team and cancel completely, stay home and look after everyone

Perhaps you know this back-and-forth feeling, when you cannot completely let go of the original intention and yet also cannot quite commit to it either.

It happens often in life and in business - should you cancel an event due to unexpected low attendance or run it anyway? Should you follow up with that obscure lead from last year? Should you go ahead and fire that client who makes your soul shrink into your shoes?

This is where the concept of 'resonant choice' is super powerful.

It is really tempting when we're faced with an unwanted or inconvenient decision to feel powerless, churn ourselves up with woe and enter into an endless dialogue with ourselves that we don't know what we should do.

Round and round it goes.

And when we face this scenario from the perspective of our most powerless self, it feels like everything is a compromise we didn't really choose and don't really want.?

For me it felt like, traveling to the next city solo that night honestly didn't appeal that much. It involves driving along zig-zagging country roads in the dark for 50 miles, and then walking around an unfamiliar place by myself to get to the venue. I was tired and not 100% sure if I was yet to be properly hit by the family bug. Energy-wise it was a stretch, and I would need to have gas in the tank to resume family duties the next day.

But then not going felt like such a disappointment. Introverts typically don't feel FOMO very often, but even I was feeling a bit downbeat at missing out on what was supposed to be a really fun night, and one that I'd remember for a long time.

So instead of approaching from a place of powerlessness, I decided to find my resonant choice.

I got quiet. I thought about the details and the bigger picture. What did I want more? What felt more aligned to me in the moment? What would give the biggest payoff for the longer term?

I checked in with myself about my tiredness levels, my fun-o-meter (which as a parent of young children can sometimes be dangerously low!), my risk tolerance for the night and the balance of responsibilities that would be waiting for me when I got home.

What felt like it had more integrity in that moment? Going anyway, or missing out?

A huge thing that helps connect with your intuition is learning to sense what would feel like self-betrayal vs what feels like self-care, or self-actualisation.

The realisation that came to me felt like it was more significant than the specific choice I was making.

Independent of what choice I made, I realised I wanted to feel really good about the decision. I wanted to feel like I made the resonant choice, from a place of empowerment, and not like I was doing a clean up job for my own disappointment.

I'm a big girl. I can live with a bit of disappointment here or there. But what I want more is to feel empowered and to CHOOSE the resonant option.

So I sat with it. I weighed the pro's and the con's. I asked myself, what do you actually want to do, not in the abstract but here and now in this moment. What does empowerment look like?

And the answer that came was - 'I choose simplicity. I do not want any additional drama this week. I choose to stay home, but not with FOMO and sulking. I choose my resonant choice, from a place of empowerment, and for my greater good, and I feel peace'.

And this freed me to sit with my choice, calm and content, and finally stop the back-and-forth.

A good litmus test to apply is - do I feel resentful or sorry for myself about this situation? It is ok to feel that disappointment, or sadness that something hasn't worked out the way we had hoped or planned.

But finding the resonant decision is a powerful way to change your narrative and feel calm in the face of hard decisions.

Free Report - The Six Elements of a Seven Figure Consulting Business

I've created a free PDF report called The Six Elements of a Seven Figure Business.?It’s my most popular free resource and in it I outline the 6 areas of unscaled businesses that need to change in order to move past being ‘booked up and burned out’ and shifting into that higher gear that gets you cruising again.

It’s the framework that helps consultant women like you find their feet and get back to leading the business, rather than being buried in client work and back-end business operations.

Sign up here for your PDF report, and I'll show you the six elements your consultancy needs to make the shift from a nice little 6-figure lifestyle business to a serious 7-figure enterprise.

==========================================================

Thanks for reading and subscribing! I'd love to hear your feedback and future topics you'd like me to feature.

To find out more about the work I do, visit?jessicafearnley.com?or message me here on LinkedIn if you'd like to hear more about private coaching and how I can help you transition from booked up and burned out to THRIVING as the CEO of your 7 figure consulting business.