The Choice Is Yours

By Robin Albin & Daria Myers, Co-Founders / Everlusting

When I was in my 20s, I had a choice between two job opportunities. Lucky me. The first was a promotion with my current employer — Revlon — to be a senior copywriter. Same type of role — writing package and promotional copy for cool beauty brands — but with added responsibility and a pretty good pay raise. Safe. The second was to join a large advertising agency as a junior copywriter. Low man on the totem pole. Creating print and TV ads for CPG brands like Johnson & Johnson. New categories and tasks out of my immediate wheelhouse. Scary.

I agonized for days. Stay or go? Stay or go? My dad drew two columns on a yellow lined pad weighing the pros and cons. It was obvious that he — being very risk adverse — was steering me toward safety and job security. “Agencies are unpredictable — first one in, first one out,” he cautioned.

I joined the agency. I won’t lie — there was plenty of angst attached to the decision. I was deep into my Imposter’s Syndrome and convinced everyone would find out I knew nothing about advertising. But the decision set the stage for the rest of my career. Choosing the risky and unknown. With few regrets. Robin

Many of us now find ourselves at a crossroads. Leaving one chapter in our lives. Headed in an entirely new direction. Which route will we take? What choice will we make? A new job? A new home? A new relationship? To be done and retire? (We hope not!) How do we face these decisions? With optimism? Or fear? Anxiety? Or excitement?

To answer these questions, we sought the sage advice of Isabelle Tierney — CEO and founder of The Feel-Good Life, an array of services that help people recover the power of choice and live a life of less stress and more joy — to discuss our choices. Here’s what we learned.

Us: Why is it so hard for women to make new choices?

Isabelle: Women have this incredible capacity to be empathetic to all points of view. We can understand all sides. This is our gift. But this gift can also be our curse because the cost of not making a choice is that we stay undecided. We remain in a relationship that is bad — or just good enough. Or at a job that makes us enough money but doesn’t satisfy us emotionally. We say “Just one more month. One more year.” We end up staying stuck in our comfort zone. Nothing new ever grows in a comfort zone.

The fact is, though, our brains are wired to stay in our comfort zone, a safe and familiar homeostatic level. Anytime we step off that familiar path and do something new, our limbic brain screams, “danger, danger, danger”. It triggers a whole slew of fear, doubt, and worry signals designed to stop us — “don’t do it, you won’t be able to do it, you’re too old, you’re not good enough….”

What’s happening in your life right now that’s challenging you to choose a new direction? Maybe the kids are gone to college. Maybe your marriage has ended. Maybe you’ve been let go or quit your job. Maybe for the first time in years you actually have time on your hands. How do you want to spend the next 10, 20 or 30 years of your life? When we are faced with such important choices, it’s easy to feel scared and overwhelmed. It’s easy to get stuck in indecision. It’s a little bit like being at the top of a diving board and looking down saying I’m going to jump, no, I’m not going to jump, I’m gonna jump, no I’m not going to jump.

To get out of your comfort zone and make a fully conscious choice, you need to understand of how your brain responds to choice. And then, you need to take action.

Us: So how can we make the best choice?

Isabelle: One of the things I teach is that conscious choice is not available to us when we are in the Stress Response — what I call the Red Zone. This is because the part of our brain that is responsible for making conscious decisions — the neocortex — gets kidnapped. Without the neocortex, we can’t think rationally and we lose our capacity to be focused and creative.

The other thing that happens in the Red Zone is that we experience what’s called “negativity bias”. We can only see what is wrong because that’s what protects us from possible danger. So getting back to Robin’s original job choice, she would have never taken the big agency job, seeing only seen the uncertainty and dangers of it and her decision would have been based on fear and doubt rather than trust in the opportunity.

This is why it’s so important to recognize the signals that let us know when we are in or heading into the Stress Response.

These are very specific signals — or “warning bells” which include tense muscles, racing thoughts, rapid heartbeat, shallow breathing, exhaustion. Your voice may be getting louder and pushy. Or you find you have no voice at all. You’re likely having self-doubts — I’m not worthy. Or feeling like life is out of control. It’s not safe out there.

Us: I now understand that I shouldn’t make a choice from the Red Zone. So where do I make a choice from?

The ideal place from which to make a conscious choice is the Relaxation Response, what we call the Green Zone. In the Green Zone, you can breathe deeply and abdominally. Your muscles are relaxed. Here is where you recover your capacity to think rationally. You regain focus and creativity. You can see yourself and the world through a lens of positivity, noticing what is right with yourself and the world. You feel safe and at ease. You are grounded, inspired peaceful, trusting and present in the moment. In short, you can see options and opportunity.

Us: Makes sense. But if I’m in the Red Zone, how do I get to Green?

Isabelle: The most effective way to get to Green is to first to recognize when you’re in the Red Zone. We listed some of the signals above, so make sure to practice tracking your body to notice them as they arise. Then, you can take specific actions to bring you back to the Green Zone. Here are the 3 steps to follow once you realize you’re in the Red Zone.

1. Stop. Don’t believe what you’re thinking or feeling. Don’t trust any of your impulses and don’t take any action. Remember, you’re seeing the world through a distorted lens and you can’t think rationally.

2. Slow Down & Breathe to get yourself to the Yellow Zone: Take at least 10 deep abdominal breaths in and out through the nose. Deep abdominal breathing is the single most effective way out of the Red Zone.

3. Go With A Feel Good Habit to anchor you back into the Green Zone. Something that will nourish you physically, mentally or spiritually. Go outside. See a friend. Work out. Listen to music. These activities will help rewire your brain toward the positive. Beware of False Good Habits like that glass of wine or a sugary treat. They may offer instant gratification. Like a sugar high — they are seductive but the rush won’t last. They’ll take you right back to Red — perhaps feeling worse than when you started.

Isabelle: I often think of Marianne Williamson’s book, Return to Love — which was seminal for me where she talks about miracles. For me, a miracle isn’t a gigantic angel landing on your shoulder espousing the greatest wisdom. A miracle is simply a shift in perception. That’s the goal of my work. To shift you from the Red Zone lens of seeing yourself and the world to a Green Zone lens.

When you practice this work, you realize that the world doesn’t have to change for us to experience it differently. That’s the power of conscious choice.