176. You Already Know the Answer. So Why Haven't You Made the Decision?

What would you do differently if you actually trusted yourself?

Laurie is recording from the mountains this week, which means no studio microphone, slightly different audio, and zero apology about it. Some things you just roll with.

What she did bring: a piece of paper with four transformations that become possible when a woman finally stops deferring to everyone else and starts trusting herself. Not the problem; we talk about the problem plenty. Today's episode is about the other side. What actually changes when you do this work. How it feels. What it looks like in your real life and your professional life simultaneously.

This one will make you nod. Pay attention to which transformation makes you nod the hardest. Laurie wants to know...and there's an ask at the end about exactly that.

What we cover in this episode

• The question most midlife women have never been asked -- and why the pause when someone finally asks it tells you everything
• Why you're not avoiding decisions because you don't know the answer -- and what you're actually waiting for
• The gap between how you make decisions professionally versus personally -- and how personal leadership development closes it
• Why the BEST LIFE Mastermind is where this work happens in practice — not in theory
• An engagement ask: which of the four transformations resonated most with you?

Quotable moments from this episode

"The reason you haven't made the decision isn't that you don't know the answer. It's that you don't trust yourself fully to act on it. There's a difference."

"You've been trained to trust yourself professionally — and trained to defer personally. Personal leadership development closes that gap."

"The guilt often arrives before the desire to do the thing is even fully formed. We shut it down before we can fully feel it."

"What you want for your life is not less valid than what you want for your career."

"This work gets to the reason why you've been waiting — which is almost never about timing and almost always about fear."

"There's a difference between knowing something intellectually and integrating it at a level where it changes your behavior."

Resources + links mentioned

→ Apply for the BEST LIFE Mastermind

→ Book a 15-minute call with Laurie 

Connect + engage

Laurie asks directly: Which of the four transformations resonated most with you? Tag her on social or drop her an email — she's using your answers to shape future episodes.

Instagram: @laurie.reynoldson Website: schoolofmidlife.com

If this episode landed for you, please subscribe, leave a five-star review, and share it with a woman who needs to hear it. Laurie reads every review personally.

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Transcript

0:03

Real quick, before we get into today's episode, I wanna talk to you about the Best Life Mastermind. For years, the coaching industry has given high-achieving women a choice, invest in your career or invest in your life, executive coaching or life coaching, leadership at work or clarity at home, as if our lives were separated into two different parts. Here's what nobody has said out loud. You cannot separate the leader from the life she's living. If she's burned out at home, she's gonna be burned out at work. If she doesn't know what she wants from her life, then she doesn't fully know what she wants from her career either. The Best Life Mastermind is built on a different premises, personal leadership development for the whole woman. Because the clearest, most fulfilled, most purposeful version of you, she shows up everywhere: at work, at home, in every room you walk into. I want to invite you to join me as a founding member in the Best Life Mastermind. Here's what's included. Two in-person luxury retreats at award-winning destinations, Sun Valley, Idaho in September and the incredible Civana Wellness Resort Spa in Arizona in February. All accommodations, meals, and spa appointments will be included. Monthly personal leadership coaching calls and an intimate private community of like-minded women doing this work together, hosted off of social media and away from the noise. Nine months, 10 women, two in-person retreats, monthly coaching calls, everything included except your travel. Applications open right now. Click the link in the show notes Now, let's get into today's episode. Hey, friends. Welcome back to another episode of the School of Midlife podcast. I'm your host, Laurie Reynoldson. I might sound a little different today, and it's because I'm out of the studio. I did not intend to tag along on Mike's work trip this week, but the opportunity came up to head to the mountains and spend some time working remotely. So here I am. We found a sitter for Theo, and I tagged along, which also meant I was not home when I realized I did not have my remote podcasting microphone with me. So things are going to sound a little different than normal, and that's okay. Uh, we're just gonna roll with the punches today. What are we talking about? I wanna talk about what becomes possible when you finally say yes to yourself. This is going to make more sense as we get into it, but if you finally allowed yourself to say yes to yourself and yes to your life, what would that look like? Another way to think about this is what would you do differently in your life if you actually trusted yourself? Here's what I mean by that. Instead of doing what you should do, instead of doing what makes sense, instead of doing what everyone expects of you, if you actually trusted yourself to make the decisions that were right for you and for yourself, what would you do differently in your life? What would you do if the version of you who already knew the answer, the answer that's right for you, if she was the one making the call? Because for most of us, we don't trust ourselves enough to just make a decision, to believe that we know better than everybody else what is right for us and what we should do. Instead, we get stuck in that asking everybody else's opinion. We get really excited about an idea, and then, of course, we have to touch base and ask everyone around us what they think because we're looking for approval, and we're looking for validation, even though we say, you know, we're just, we're just asking people's opinion because we want more information. We're, we're trying to gather more information. At the root of that, though, is we are looking for validation. We are looking for someone to pat us on the back and say, "That is such a great idea. Why didn't I think about that?" We are expecting others to be enthusiastic. We are expecting them to be just as excited about something as we are. And I don't know about you, but I learned a long time ago that I am the most excited about my life. Everyone else is too busy worrying about what they are doing to be that excited about what I'm doing in my life. So that's what we're gonna dive into today because most women in midlife have never asked themselves that question or taken their answer seriously. They've been asked what they want for dinner. They've been asked what they think about quarterly numbers at work. They've been asked what their kids need. But they've not been asked what they would do differently if they actually trusted themselves. Another way to ask that is, what would you do differently if you could do anything that you wanted? And because no one has traditionally asked us that question, when we are faced with a question where someone is genuinely interested in our answer, oftentimes there's a pause, and it's a long pause because because at some point in our life, we just stopped answering that question. We were too busy doing the things that were expected of us. We were too busy doing the things that people needed us to do to take a step back and think, "Well, but if I could do anything I wanted, what would that even look like?" That's what today's episode is about. Not about the problem. We talk about the problem a lot. I wanna flip the script a little bit and talk about what's on the other side of you making a decision and creating a life and doing things differently as a woman who trusts herself. What actually becomes possible when a woman does this work? How does her life change? So let's start with, I, I'm gonna go through probably three or four different ways in which your life can change when you decide to trust yourself to make decisions that align with who you are in this season of life. They are in no particular order. It's just what I've jotted down on a piece of paper. In each of these, I'm not only going to let you know what the transformation is, I, I'm calling it a transformation, but what the outcome will be when you move forward with trust and possibility. So we're gonna talk about what the action is, and then we're gonna talk about skills and feelings that you will potentially experience, that you should expect to experience, and then we're gonna, we're gonna talk about real-life versions of what that creates in your life. We're gonna talk a lot about how you're, how you're feeling about it too. Sound good? Let's get started with number one. You finally make the decision you've been avoiding. So if we look at what this gives us, what the skills that we Build When we finally make a decision that we've been avoiding, we're talking about clarity, we're talking about discernment, we're talking about self-trust here. So If there are decisions that we've been avoiding, I want you to think about this. The reason that you haven't made a decision isn't that you don't know the answer It's that you don't trust yourself fully to act on it. There's a difference there. Can you tell? I mean, you know the answer. You've probably known the answer for a while. What you've been waiting for is courage and oftentimes some permission too. And those come from finally understanding what you actually value and who you are in this season of life. Because for most of us, we haven't taken the time to take a step back, and think about who we are and what's important to us right now. We made big life decisions in our 20s and 30s: where to go to school, what to major in, what kind of job we were gonna get, what city we were gonna live in, who we were gonna marry, if we were gonna have a family. Lots and lots of big decisions that have completely changed the trajectory of our life many times for the better. But if you honestly look back over the last 10, 20, 30, 40 years of your life, how many big decisions have you made in your life since you made those initial decisions? If you ended a marriage, of course, that's a big decision. If you changed a career, of course, that's a big decision. If you move to a completely different part of the country or the world, yes, that will have an impact. For most of us, though, we made those big decisions early on in our lives when we were chasing a dream we thought that we wanted, and then we've sort of sat back and let all of the opportunities come to us because of those decisions that we've made. And for many, many years, that has been, it's been great. I mean, I think most of us listening to this podcast would say we've got great lives. We also would probably say it still feels like there's a little something missing. We're not sure what it is, but we still feel like there's something to be chased. There's something that just doesn't feel like we're there yet. And so much of that comes down to making decisions in our life that we've been avoiding. So if we think about some real-life versions, what would that look like? If you could actually make a decision that you've been avoiding or the decision that you've been avoiding, it could look like leaving a job that you've outgrown. It may be starting the business that you've been researching for the past three years. It could be ending or finally investing in a relationship. Could be your marriage, it could be a friendship, it could be a relationship with your sister or your mother. Maybe it's moving to a city that you've only ever dreamt about living in. And when I say moving, maybe you just decide to take a sabbatical to see if you actually even like it, if it really lives up to the expectations that you've had for it. Maybe it's finally having that conversation with your aging parent about what comes next for them or taking away the keys. You know you should. It's a really tough conversation to have, so instead of biting the bullet and making sure that that happens, you just kinda sit back and hope that maybe it'll take care of itself Maybe it's saying no to the board seat or the committee or the obligation that you were asked to fulfill that you might have been excited about at the time, but now it's just become an obligation and you're not really getting anything out of it. In fact, you're feeling worse about it than any benefit you're getting out of it. Do you see how these are real-life versions of delaying a decision? But once you actually make that decision, and, and I'm not just talking about your personal life You make decisions every day at work. And what's interesting is at work, almost across the board invariably, you make those decisions without this same level of paralysis, right? You've got the data. You consult the right people. You get the information that you need, and then you act. You don't think about it or ruminate on it or hand-wring about it for three or four years. You don't have time to do that at work, right? And I think it's because you've been trained to trust yourself professionally, and you're rewarded for that. You've got people in your professional life that understand what you bring to the table. So you were rewarded for making decisions professionally. But on the flip side, you're trained to defer personal decisions. Someone else can help you make that decision. If you wait long enough, the decision will just be made for you, so you won't have to hurt anybody's feelings When I talk about personal leadership development, which is this idea of showing up as the same woman in your personal life and your professional life without feeling like you have to perform for either role, but just being the person that you are. When we do this personal leadership development, then we're able to close that gap between how you show up professionally and how you show up personally. So that moving forward, not only are you trusting yourself professionally to make those decisions, but instead of deferring decisions on a personal basis, you make those too. So you're using the same discernment that you bring to a boardroom decision, that you are making about sales projections, that you are making about hiring and firing. That same discernment, that same clarity, that same knowing. Through personal leadership development, you start feeling and experiencing that same discernment in decisions that actually shape the trajectory of your life. How do you feel when you start living your life that way? It's almost like this feeling of relief, and I don't mean relief in a triumph like, "Oh, I, I won that. I did good." Not that kind of relief. I'm talking about relief like you've been carrying something really heavy for a long time, and you finally get the chance to put it down. Because whether you realize it or not, the weight that is associated with a big decision that you have been carrying but not acting on for a long time, that is a heavy, heavy weight. Heavy weight. So when we are able to find the clarity and the discernment and the self-trust to finally make the decision that we've been avoiding, then we are met with almost immediate relief. Sounds good, doesn't it? The second thing I wanna talk about is when you actually trust yourself to make decisions and act in certain ways in your life, you stop feeling selfish for wanting more Think about that. How good would it feel to not feel selfish for the things you want in your life? Here we're talking about self-worth. We're talking about owning your identity as who you are, not as the roles you play in the lives of everyone else. We're talking about giving yourself permission to want something more or different and not feeling selfish or guilty or shameful about doing it. I will say across the board for every woman, every coaching client I have worked with over the past six years there is a conditioning that has happened that women have bought into across the board. I don't-- I can't remember one client I worked with who didn't face this feeling at one point or another. It's this idea that women have been so conditioned to put themselves last. Related to that, that if we want something for ourselves, that feels like a character flaw. That feels like we are being bitchy or we're being selfish, and we've been taught to be selfless, that giving to others is our divine calling That we need to be in service to others always. And when we're not, or if we dare to feel like we want to do something for ourselves in a way that puts ourself ahead of our spouse or our kids or our family members or our coworkers, anyone else in our life, Then it feels shameful, right? There's a lot of guilt involved. The guilt often will arrive before the desire to do the thing is even fully formed because we'll almost shut it down before we can fully feel and get excited about the thing that we wanna do because our inner editor is like, "Oh, God, that's awful. You shouldn't want that. That's... No, no, no, no. Women, selfless women, righteous women, they don't, they don't want that." I will say that this work doesn't eliminate the guilt immediately, but it does something maybe more powerful, and that is it teaches you to distinguish between guilt that's telling you that something is true or wrong and guilt that's, that's just this very old habit. This, this piece of us that we've been carrying around for years and years and years based on the way we were raised and our conditioning. This one's a tough one because so much of our identity and self-worth have been tied up for decades in how we are showing up and serving others in our life. Think about when you, when you think about your own identity, you think about daughter, mother, wife friend, community volunteer, worker. I mean, who we are or who we think we are is so intertwined with the roles we're playing in the lives of others that for the most part, we don't know who we are without those roles. And that's why when we get to midlife, we feel like we might be having a crisis because all of those roles are changing. We are no longer hustling to continue to climb the ladder in our career. Our kids don't need us to, you know, 24/7 show up for them and help them. We will still always be their mother, but that relation has changed. Our marriage, the most important long-term relationship we have, that has changed because we're also different people. Do you see how every piece of our life that has formed our identity is changing in midlife? And that's why midlife feels so different. It's why we worry about having a midlife crisis. What happens if we move forward and we actually do something for ourselves and we stop feeling selfish about it? Maybe we take the trip that we've been saying that we wanted to go on for a decade. I was talking to someone at dinner last night, and she is in her mid-50s and is taking her first trip to Europe. This is something she has thought about for years. She started thinking about it when she was just out of college. She was gonna backpack across Europe. Obviously, the way that the trip is, is gonna play out when she finally goes to Europe, that's much different. You know, she's gonna stay in a five-star hotel, and she's gonna travel first class, and yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally different idea, but this is something she's wanted to do for decades. Think about how her life could have changed if she would have acted on doing this, the thing that she wanted to do so much many, many years ago. How things would be different for her if she didn't feel like it was being selfish for her to take that time away. She's waited a long, long time to make that trip. Sounds like that Alanis Morissette song, doesn't it? But we shouldn't feel guilty or selfish for wanting more in our life. Here's other ways that, that this could play out. Maybe you choose a career pivot that excites you instead of just looking good on paper. Sure, the VP of sales job is open at your company, and yes, you feel like you should totally apply for that because that's the next rung in the ladder that you're climbing. But It doesn't really excite you, and you love the type of work that you're doing. You don't wanna manage a bunch of people on the sales team. So what happens if you decided to go in a different direction instead of taking the job or applying for the job or moving in the direction of the job that makes sense as the next logical step? What would happen if you prioritize your own health in a way that might take time and energy away from other people in your life, but gives you the freedom to pursue your health in a way that you never have before? What if you started asking for what you needed in a relationship and you meant it? You weren't just doing what you thought the other person wanted you to do, but you were actually asking for what you needed in the relationship, and you were specific and you were direct. No sugarcoating. You actually said the thing that you needed to say. What about if you built your life in a way that reflects who you are now and not when you were making those big decisions in your 20s or 30s? Maybe you don't wanna live in the city that you ended up living in. Maybe you don't even want to be in the job or on the career path that you were set on in your 20s and 30s. Maybe your marriage has run its course What would it feel like to build a life that reflects who you are now and not who you were in your 20s or 30s? I think it's so interesting that, so, so if we tie this to your professional life, no one in your professional life will tell you that you're being selfish for wanting, say, a promotion or a raise or even a seat at the table. Isn't it interesting how ambition is expected in your professional life? And that same ambition focused in a different direction in your personal life is oftentimes met with guilt or shame. Isn't that interesting? So when we talk about personal leadership development and doing the work to reunite your personal and your professional lives together so that you only have to show up as the person that you are, that also extends some legitimacy to your personal ambitions. What you want for your life is not less valid than what you want for your career. Your ambition that is awarded in your professional life should also be awarded in your personal life. It's time that you treated your life that way, and it's time that you yourself were treated by the other people in your life that way. What does it feel like when you finally stop feeling selfish for wanting more? Well You feel lighter. You know, we, we felt like a little bit of relief for making some decisions that we've been avoiding. Similar thing here, but You can almost compare it to if you've been holding your breath for a really long time and you finally have the opportunity to exhale. You know what I'm talking about? Like, you've, you've been inhaling and taking in the world and taking in air. This is all a metaphor here, but you know, you've been taking it all in. You've been holding your breath for years, and you finally get the opportunity to exhale, and it's so much lighter, so much lighter. I'm looking at the clock. I'm, I'm going much longer on this than I thought I would. Um, let's... So let me just look here. Da, da, da, da, da, da. Okay. Um, I'm gonna skip a couple of these. Like I, I was thinking about, you know, you make decisions clearly without ruminating on it for days. We kinda talked about that, number one. When you do that, you get confidence and clarity. You feel like there's an alignment between your values and actions. Um, you know whether to take the next promotion or not. You know how to handle a family dynamic that's been simmering for years, and, and you know exactly the one I'm talking about. You know what to say yes to and what to stop saying yes to. You know how to respond to an opportunity that sounds great but doesn't feel quite right. And you understand like you without a doubt whether you should stay or go, and that applies across the board in every context. I think about for your, your personal life, like... Well, let's talk about your professional life real quick here. You would never run a business without a strategic framework, right? You wouldn't make a major financial decision without certain criteria. When you apply this work to your personal life, that gives you the framework. We're talking about your values and your visions and your non-negotiables here. So the decisions get made against a framework, something solid, instead of just on a whim or in a vacuum or because the time has finally come and you either have to say yes or no, and you're out of time and you just have to make a decision. The beauty about figuring this out is you're just, you feel so much more decisive. You feel so much more like yourself. You feel like someone who can trust her own judgment, and that feels a lot like relief and exhaling and just knowing that you are comfortable in your own skin. Number four, you stop waiting for the right time and the right version of yourself. Oof, gosh. Th- this takes courage. This takes acceptance. It takes what I call present moment ownership. You're owning this moment. You are not waiting. You are seeing the opportunity, and you are acting on it. I think we all know that there is no right time. Um, uh, there is no someday, and that none of that is promised to us. But there's a difference between knowing something intellectually and integrating it into your life at a level where it changes your behavior, right? Those are two completely different things. So this work gets to the reason why you've been waiting, which, uh, I'm gonna tell you is almost never about timing and almost always about fear. That could be fear of failure. It could be fear of judgment, so fear of what people think about you, fear that you'll make a move, and it won't be enough. Fear that you won't be enough. Like, if you do all of this work, can you trust that you will feel a certain way once you put the time and the energy into it? When those fears get named and examined, especially in the context of a group of women who have the same ones, that fear loses its power. That's why the mastermind that we're doing is so important, because if you can surround yourself by women who have similar experiences and they're able to validate what you're feeling and experiencing, then you understand that sure, there might be some fear there, but that's not a good enough reason to stop you. What does this look like with specific real-life versions? Maybe you start the business before you have the perfect plan. Maybe you have the hard conversation before you have the perfect words. I don't know about you, but every big discussion I have, I have played it out in my mind over and over and over again. And I think about how will I respond to every, you know, argument that's thrown back at me. That's why I have been thinking about something for weeks oftentimes before I bring it up to Mike. I've gotten much better about that because what I've noticed is most of the time he has no idea that what I'm even talking about, but I'm so far down the weeds in, in how I think he's gonna respond and, and anyway. What happens though if you have the conversation before you actually perfect the argument, before you rehearse it so much? Maybe you make a move before you're certain that it's the right one. You feel like it's what you should do and what you should want, and you just go with that instead of coming up with all of the reasons why it doesn't make sense. What does this feel like in your life? Well, there's a freedom that goes along with it. Like, the waiting is finally over because nothing will ever be completely resolved, right? There will always be questions, but because you've chosen to move in a direction before everything is resolved, everything is known, everything is perfect, you feel like you can conquer anything because you stop waiting for the right time, and you just trust that the version of yourself who needs to show up will. There are a couple more that I wrote down, but honestly, this, this episode's going a little long, and I'm concerned about how the audio will sound. Um, I, I'll go ahead and, and write an article about this and post it to my Substack, um, and probably include it in an email that I send out to the newsletter list. So if you want all of the, the reasons and the arguments for that, make sure that you, um, subscribe to the email newsletter. These are the things that become possible when a woman does this work. These are the things that are available to her, not someday, or not when the time is right, or when the time is better, or when the time is perfect, or not when she's more ready, but right now. But I'm, I'm telling you, this is exactly the work that we're gonna do inside the Best Life Mastermind, not in theory, but absolutely in practice. Over nine months, with the 10 women who raise their hands to do this work, we're gonna show up in two extraordinary locations for life-changing retreats. We're gonna have this ongoing support of a cohort who knows your story, is cheering you on. They're not gonna let you walk it back. They're not gonna let you... It, it, there's an accountability there. There's this idea of a rising tide lifts all ships, and we're gonna do that in practice. You're gonna be there to support one another. So if you've been listening to this episode and nodding along, if any of these things have landed for you, I want you to consider that that nod, that knowing, that feeling that you are being seen, that, that what I'm talking about here applies to your life, I want you to consider that that is not accidental. That's your gut telling you something. That's your gut, your intuition, your internal knowing telling you that you are ready to do this work. The time might not be right. It might not be perfect. You might have to change some plans. You might have to juggle some things at work or at home, but the time is right, right now. You are ready for this. This is, this is not accidental. This is your intuition telling you that this is something that you need to pursue. Applications are open now. There are only 10 spots available. I'm gonna drop the link in the show notes for you to learn more and apply if you, um, are ready to apply. And if you've got questions before you apply, there's also a link to book a call with me, and I'd love to talk to you. I am curious which of these four that we talked about, what resonated with you the most? Which feels the most like, wow, if I could feel that way, then I feel like it would really change my life? Will you either tag me on social or drop me an email and just let me know? That's gonna help me figure out programming for future podcasts so that I'm giving you the support that you need to continue doing this work. Thank you so much for being here. I will see you right back here next week when The School of Midlife is back in session, and until then, take good care. Thank you so much for listening to the School of Midlife podcast. It means so much to have you here each week. If you enjoyed this episode, could you do me the biggest favor and help us spread the word to other midlife women? There are a couple of easy ways for you to do that first. And most importantly, if you're not already following the show, would you please subscribe? That helps you because you'll never miss an episode. And it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. Second, if you'd be so kind to leave us a five-star rating, that would be absolutely incredible. And finally, I personally read each and every one of your reviews. So if you take a minute and say some nice things about the podcast, well, that's just good karma. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you right back here. Next week when the School of Midlife is back in session until then take good care.