How to decide what’s next — in just 30 minutes.

How are you going to decide what’s next? Here’s a clue: you’ve got start where you are.

Where are you?

Struggling to decide what’s next? Could be a career move. Or a relationship change. In any case — if you need to decide what’s next, you’ve got to start somewhere. Right? I mean, if you’re going to go somewhere, you’ve got to leave somewhere — by definition. That’s the way it works. Otherwise, you’ll keep spinning your same old tired out wheels in the same old place. And you’ll feel bad, to boot. But even though you know something needs to change, you don’t know how to get started. So you feel that unresolved growing pressure of not moving ahead. Well — if you want to get moving, you need to get clear about where you’re moving away from. But the fact is — you don’t really know where you are right now, do you? But you can change that, right now — in just 30 minutes.

Start here.

So if this is you, do this brief exercise now. It will only take 30 minutes, and will save you months of time and frustration. And I know — this is the last thing you want to hear. Because you’re impatient. And I know this because I’m impatient, too. I hate having to do all that prep work, when what I really want to do is splash paint on the wall. But if you want a great paint job, you’ve got to do the prep work. And that’s what this exercise is all about. And it only takes 30 minutes.

30 minutes that will change your life.

In this brief exercise — which, by the way, is not journaling — you’ll be free writing.

The point of free writing is to shut down the internal editor in your head, so we can get to some core issues.

Remember what E. M. Forster said? “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” You need to write so you can see what you think.

And here are the guidelines:

1. Set aside 30 minutes — alone — where you can write at your computer, without interruption.
2. Open a fresh document
3. Set the document for single spacing
4. 12 point font
5. Once you start writing, write as fast as you can, without stopping to clean it up — and don’t stop until you have filled one page.
6. Once you’ve filled the page — wherever you are, even mid-sentence — stop. (In other words, even though you’ve set aside 30 minutes, you don’t need to use the whole 30 minutes unless you need it.)

Your prompt for this writing exercise is: “How I Got Here.”

(You get to decide where “here” is).

Decide what’s next.

7. And then, read your writing. This is the seventh and final step before you decide what’s next. But make no mistake about it. If you’ve taken the 30 minutes to do this exercise, and you actually read what you just wrote, you will be suddenly so much more aware of where you are, that your next move will begin to take shape — almost by itself.

And — if you’d like a little help with the next step, feel free to contact me. As a men’s life coach, I work with men every day, to help you get focused and get moving.

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I'm here to help you focus, overcome resistance, and get moving again.