Sometimes the hardest part isn’t knowing that you want something different. It’s deciding what to do about it. When we’re unsure which path to take, it can feel safer to wait until we have more information, more certainty, or a clearer picture of what comes next. But staying in that place can keep us from discovering what’s actually possible.
In this episode, I talk about the cost of indecision and why you don’t have to know exactly how everything will work out before you make a move. I share what it was like to spend six years in decision limbo during my corporate career, and I explore the idea that the life we’re living right now isn’t the only life available to us. I also share the poem The Fig Tree by Sylvia Plath and why its image of all the possibilities in front of us made me want to have this conversation.
You’ll hear why choosing one path doesn’t mean giving up on everything else, how taking action can give you information you simply can’t get by thinking about a decision, and why there are no wrong decisions in the sense that every decision gives you an opportunity to learn. Whether you’re thinking about starting a business, changing careers, making changes within your current job, or simply creating a life that feels better, I want to encourage you to trust yourself, choose a direction, and start moving.
If you're looking for the right environment to start your networking journey, look no further than my group, the Mom Entrepreneur’s Circle. Sign up here for mutual support, advice sharing, and the tools you need for both you and your business to thrive.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why staying in indecision can have a real cost, even when making a decision feels scary.
How to recognize that your current life isn’t the only version of life available to you.
Why choosing one path doesn’t mean giving up on all the other possibilities.
How taking action can help you learn what you actually want and what doesn’t work for you.
Why you don’t need to know the whole plan before you start moving.
How to trust yourself when you’re making a big decision without having all the information.
Why making a decision can create more data, experience, and possibilities for change.
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The Fig Tree by Sylvia Plath
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Full Episode Transcript:
What if the biggest risk you're taking right now isn't quitting your job, starting a business, or making some big life change? What if the biggest risk is actually not making a decision on these things? I know so many moms who are sitting in this place where they know the life they're living isn't quite the life they want. They're exhausted, they're overwhelmed, and they know something needs to change. But the thought of actually making that change is terrifying.
And so we stay. We think about it, we weigh our options. We wait until those options feel more certain. And before we know it, years have gone by. I know because I spent six years in that exact place.
So today, I want to talk about the cost of indecision. I want to share a powerful poem that a friend shared with me, and I knew immediately that I had to talk about it on this podcast. And I want to talk about why choosing one path doesn't mean giving up on all the others. Because the life you want might be a lot closer than you think, but you have to be willing to move toward it.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi, mom friends. Welcome to episode 129 of the How to Quit Your Job podcast. This is one of those episodes. I know I had another one just recently. It's one of those episodes where a few things converged at once and inspired a conversation that I knew I needed to have with you. This episode is about decision-making, which has been a bit of a theme in my world lately.
It's also an episode about creating your own destiny through those decisions, the intersection of those two things, and ultimately a conversation about what you're capable of and the possibilities that are out there for you. Because I know so many of you are sitting in this place where you know you want something different for your life, but you're not quite sure what to do next.
And I want this episode to help you feel seen and understood, but I also want to hold your hand a little bit in making the decisions that could change your life for the better. So let's talk a little bit about how this episode came to be because I also think it's fun to just share kind of what's going on in my world that inspires these.
Recently, we had a group coaching session. I meet with all of my clients together, all of my moms together weekly for an hour, and we build connection, we coach on strategy, we have really great conversation, and it's just a wonderful community that gets built with my moms. And so we had a group coaching session where we talked about decision-making, specifically how to make big decisions.
And I was thinking about my moms who come to me because they're in a traditional 9-to-5. They're barely staying afloat. They feel like they're drowning, and they want a different life for themselves, but they're stuck in decision limbo. The should I, shouldn't I. And I know that place so well because I was in decision limbo, I've talked about it before, for six years when I was in corporate.
I questioned everything. Should I start my own business or shouldn't I? Should I leave or should I stay? Is this the right decision? What if it doesn't work out? It's a real place to be. I think Dr. Seuss refers to it as the waiting place in Oh, the Places You'll Go! in that book. When we're on the cusp of this, this I want change, but I don't know what to do. I don't know what the right decision is. It feels like a really, really big decision.
There's a lot that we feel like we need to consider and do our due diligence on. So we were talking about decisions in that group coaching, and there was a lot of really great conversation coming up. And then I led an in-person networking group here in Denver for mom entrepreneurs, parent entrepreneurs, where we also talked about decision-making. I shared models that I use with my clients in making decisions. So decision-making was really at the forefront of my mind.
And then I had a neighbor who's newly postpartum send me a poem by Sylvia Plath, The Fig Tree. You may have heard of it. And as soon as I read it, the poem that she sent me, I thought, I have to do a podcast on this. I have to talk about our lives, the possibilities available to us, and the cost of indecision. The world we know right now and are experiencing isn't the only world available to us.
Here's the thing. We tend to think that the life we're living is just life. It's what we know, it's what we're comfortable with. It's what we have experience with. There aren't really unknowns because we're living it, right? And we're experiencing it. This is what we're used to. We're present for all of it. We live here, the good and the bad. And it's really hard to envision another life and actually believe that it's realistic.
And I will absolutely share the poem and go down into why that inspired me to record this episode. But before I talk about that, I really want to talk about this vision that we have for our life, what we want it to look like. This hesitation to believe that another more compatible, more enjoyable, less stressful life is available to us, a life that doesn't have some of the same stressors and anxieties and pressures or demands that our current life has. It's hard to see that when we're living within our own context of life.
This is a little bit of a digression, but there's a quote, and I know I've said this before, but it's something along the lines of, to a worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish. And what that means is that we tend to mistake our immediate environment, our background, our experiences, like our entire reality for what is available to us in the world. We just don't see other possibilities.
If we're in a traditional 9-to-5 and our entire network is in the 9-to-5, our friends, our family, our coworkers, and everyone is stressed out, and everyone's rushing in the mornings and evening, that's our reality. That's what we know. And it can be really hard to understand or even realize that there's a different reality out there. There's not just horseradish. There's peanut butter and ketchup and mustard and relish maybe, although relish is not really my jam. There are all these different environments and contexts and lifestyles and ways of living and possibilities for what our lives could look like. But if we only know horseradish, it's really hard to see what's available to us.
And this is really important. If you're feeling confused about what to do with your life and all you know is that how it's currently going is not it, I want you to know that there is a world out there that is not horseradish. There are options, and it's not all or nothing. It's never all or nothing. It's not black and white. There's some beautiful gray area of life. You don't necessarily have to give up your entire career in order to be the mom you want to be. You don't have to completely quit your job, become a stay-at-home mom, stop making income, or give up on certain dreams in order to be present for your kids, in order to be there for pick up and drop off.
There are options, there are combinations. There's a world where you're able to be the mom you want to be and contribute to the greater good of society in ways that tap into strengths and the expertise that you have that you've developed all of your life outside of motherhood because you have other identities too. It really does seem and feel too good to be true. I know, but it's not. You just have to be willing to see that the jar you're currently in is not the only jar and get the courage to explore other jars out there.
I've seen it so many times in my clients, and it's also the life that I live. And I will tell you, 10 years ago, I never would have imagined that this would be my life. I never saw myself as an entrepreneur. I saw myself climbing the corporate ladder, moving into senior positions, and staying in the horseradish that I knew so well and was comfortable with. And then priorities changed, and I discovered there were other options worth exploring.
Now I'm outside of the 9-to-5. I create my own goals, I create my own schedule, I love what I'm doing. I'm making money to support my family. I'm present with my kids. I'm there for pick up and drop off. I really can be there for everything. And still have that piece of my identity that is creating something meaningful to me in the world. And I really feel like I have it all.
And I know that feels impossible and probably a little annoying to hear when you're in a traditional 9-to-5, but I promise I was there once and know how impossible it feels. Just yesterday, I was coaching one of my moms on life stuff, and I shared my screen with her and was talking through my own calendar and how my husband and I use it to create connection and really be intentional about how we're spending evenings together after bedtime, which I know is like a black hole for many of us.
But as I was sharing my screen with her and my calendar, she was completely befuddled, not because of what I was sharing about connection and how we plan out our evenings, but because of the other things that she saw. She saw that we had just recently had a date day, and my entire Friday was blocked off for that date day. She said, "How do you do that?" She said, "I'm so low on PTO right now. I just couldn't do that." And I said to her, "This is why we're getting you out of the traditional 9-to-5."
And she said to me, "Wait. How are you able to do movie night at 7:30? How do you get the kids down in time to do that?" And I told her, "Well, we eat dinner at 5:00." And we can easily have dinner ready by then because our day ends when we pick up the kids at 3:00. And she was completely befuddled. She's like, "I barely get home by 5:00, and there's no way that dinner would be ready." And I told her again, "This is why we're creating this business, these options to get you out of the 9-to-5 so that your calendar and therefore your life is designed around the things that matter most to you."
This is what we're working towards, more freedom and flexibility, a possibility that's so hard to envision, but that I promise is available to anyone who has the courage to try. I know how it feels when this lifestyle is really hard to wrap your head around as a goal for yourself, because again, to a worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish. But we've got to wiggle out a little bit and take a peek at what else might be available to us.
So I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about this poem. So what I just talked about was really this plea for everyone to understand that this is available. It's worth exploring, it's worth seeing and giving it a try. If the life that you're currently living is just not it and you want to change, there is a different jar out there that you can explore. I promise. And it might not be starting a business necessarily, which I'll talk about a little bit in a few minutes, but it's worth looking into, it's worth trying new things. The worst thing that you can do is to not make a decision on it and to stay where you are because the world is horseradish.
So that's one reason that I see a lot of moms stay in indecision. It's like there's a disbelief almost that other options are out there. But then there's this poem by Sylvia Plath from The Bell Jar. Okay? And I'm going to link it in the show notes as well. So this is the poem by Sylvia Plath:
"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet, and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was E.G., the amazing editor. And another fig was Europe and Africa and South America. And another fig was Constantine and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions. And another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion. And beyond and above these figs were many more figs that I couldn't quite make out.
I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest. And as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black. And one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."
Okay, that passage or that poem, there's so much there. What she's describing is this idea that the possibilities for our lives can feel endless, and those possibilities become almost pointless if we never make a decision, if we don't decide to go for things, if we don't just choose a path, if we don't make a move. Being stuck in indecision leaves us stuck, it leaves us starving. We want to go after something, we want to create and build meaning in our lives, we want to create and build purpose. There are things we want to do, places we want to see, experiences we want to have, but all of these things take brave decisions. It takes starting somewhere.
It's okay to want more than one thing in life. In that poem, when she talks about wanting each and every one of those figs, but believing that choosing one meant losing all the rest, I think it's a complete thought error. Choosing one path does not mean losing all the rest. This is especially important for moms who are thinking about starting a business or leaving their corporate careers. Choosing to start a business doesn't mean you have to lose the career you've built. It doesn't mean you have to lose the expertise or credibility you've spent years building. It doesn't mean you have to stop being ambitious or stop contributing to your family.
And choosing to be more present with your kids doesn't mean you have to give up your own goals and dreams. It can actually be that when we choose to take action, when we start moving towards those tasty figs in our future, we begin to figure out how to design a life that taps into as many of our needs and wants and goals as we desire. We learn so much about what we don't want and what we do want in the act of moving, getting up from that seated position, climbing that tree and going for some of those figs, trying things out.
That's the thing about decisions. We tend to think we need to know exactly what we're going for and everything there is to know, like whether things are going to work out, before we make that one movement, before we make that one decision. But so much of what we need to know can only be learned by starting. You don't have to see the whole picture of the business or of the life or of what's possible to start moving, to start creating change.
For anyone who's sitting at the base of that theoretical fig tree, starving to death, drowning, confused, knowing there's more to life, but feeling like you have no idea where to go or what to do next, I want to encourage you to choose. Maybe it's not a choice that you have an entirely clear picture of. Remember, in that passage in the poem, she talks about all those other figs that she couldn't quite make out that were on that tree. You don't have to know exactly what every fig looks like. You don't have to know exactly what's possible for your life and family. I want you to choose anyway, and I want you to start moving. Wanting change but not acting on it feels really bad.
I want you to know that the actions that you take and the things you start exploring can lead you towards feeling more fulfilled, reaching your goals, and creating a life you love before you even get to whatever the finish line is. That may include starting your own business, but it may also include just figuring out what work is aligned with you. It may include making changes within your current career or company that are available to you. But at the end of the day, I want you to make sure that you decide. I don't want you to sit there unable to decide, watching all of the possibilities wrinkle up and fall to the ground.
I want you to trust yourself. And I want you to consider that there are no wrong decisions in the sense that every decision gives us an opportunity to learn. There are decisions that lead us to action, and those decisions lead us to more data, more experience, more learning, and the possibility of change, the change that we are yearning. You don't have to have the entire plan or vision figured out before you begin.
I want all of those figs in your future to be plump and delicious, and I want you to taste them. I want you to go for them. You don't even have to know exactly what they are right now, like I've said, like I talked about at the beginning. You don't have to know what the peanut butter jar looks like, feels like, tastes like. I just want you to make moves to get out of the horseradish jar, to see life differently, to know that there are other possibilities and avenues out there. Life can feel and look different. You don't have to know the expanse of possibilities. You just have to know that there are other ways that life can look and feel. And maybe even that there is a world where you do feel like you have it all as a mom who is working and making the most out of this short life that we're given. To get there, I just want you to make decisions so that you're not left feeling like you're starving to death just because you can't make up your mind.
And you don't have to make these decisions alone. Listen, coaching is such a powerful tool in decision-making. One of the biggest pillars of all coaching is helping people make decisions, helping people become better at making decisions. That's why so much of my life recently and what inspired this episode is conversations with people and entrepreneurs about making big decisions. We don't want to make these big decisions in a vacuum, especially when you're thinking about doing something that you've never done before. You couldn't possibly know whether it's the right decision for you if you've never done it before. There's so many unknowns. It's so hard to know.
Having support in making that decision, support in getting unstuck, support in figuring out the next best path is incredibly valuable. Having a thoughtful conversation about what you even want out of life, what's not working, like maybe you don't know what you want out of life, but you just know what's not working right now. Having that conversation in a structured and intentional way is so enlightening. Talking about what you want your family life to look like, what you want your presence and support for your family to look like, what you want presence and support for yourself to look like, what you want for yourself outside of motherhood, those are all really important conversations to be having out loud. And sometimes we don't necessarily have the time or space to do that unless we are intentional, unless we are talking with somebody who is holding us accountable to it.
So if you're in this space, if you need support or want support having these big conversations about big changes that you want to make in life, whether to quit your job, whether you start a business, whether you change careers, whether you stay where you are and figure out how to feel better, that's a huge one. Stay at your job and be happier and provide for your family and be the mom you want to be within your current environment. That can be a big change too. Please know that coaching exists to help you get there.
So this conversation today, a little bit inspiring, I hope, also a little bit melancholy. That poem always gets my eyes sweating, but it's such a powerful poem for looking at our lives and knowing that there is a cost to not making a decision on what we see for our futures and going after change. I couldn't not do an episode on that poem. As soon as my friend shared it, I was like, got to do a podcast on this. And so here it is. I couldn't read it and not think of every single mom out there who might be deferring her dreams for any number of reasons, but mostly because she can't make a decision. She's someone who knows that something needs to change, is starving for something different, but who's sitting there watching those yummy figs wrinkle up and fall to the ground.
I want you to know that your dreams are worth going after. The life you want is worth going after. Moving away from a life that you don't want is worth taking action on. I trust that you're capable of doing that. I've seen it in so many moms who didn't believe in themselves, and I know that every single mom is capable of it. If you don't feel like you're capable right now, or if you have some hesitancy, or if you just want to feel better while you're figuring it out, please know that coaching is here to support you, no matter where you're at.
Okay, moms. If something I talked about today struck a chord with you, please schedule a conversation. I do one-hour free consultations. You can go to Jenna.Coach, or you can go to Jenna.Coach/129 and schedule one of those calls. It's a conversation where we go a little bit deeper into what your goals are, what sort of pieces of the picture you're envisioning of what your life could be, maybe even just talking about what is not working right now, what's within your control, and what actions you can start taking right now. Those conversations are always so energizing for moms.
So even opening yourself up to just a conversation can move you forward. It is absolutely part of taking action and moving instead of staying stuck at the bottom of that tree. There will be a link in the show notes, like I said, Jenna.Coach/129. Also, click that plus button where it lives and follow the podcast so you have these conversations every single week that are encouraging you to move forward, encouraging you to make big decisions, encouraging you to create change. I want to help you create a life that feels like a win-win, that feels like you have it all, a life that allows you to be the mom you want to be while still tapping into these other parts of yourself that have big goals and dreams and know that they can make a big impact. Okay, you don't have to choose. You really can have it all. And you don't have to figure it all out today. But you do have to give yourself the opportunity to find out what's possible. Okay? So make decisions. Start moving.
I love you, even though many of you I've never met. And I'm here for you. Okay, I'll see you next week.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
And so we stay. We think about it, we weigh our options. We wait until those options feel more certain. And before we know it, years have gone by. I know because I spent six years in that exact place.
So today, I want to talk about the cost of indecision. I want to share a powerful poem that a friend shared with me, and I knew immediately that I had to talk about it on this podcast. And I want to talk about why choosing one path doesn't mean giving up on all the others. Because the life you want might be a lot closer than you think, but you have to be willing to move toward it.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi, mom friends. Welcome to episode 129 of the How to Quit Your Job podcast. This is one of those episodes. I know I had another one just recently. It's one of those episodes where a few things converged at once and inspired a conversation that I knew I needed to have with you. This episode is about decision-making, which has been a bit of a theme in my world lately.
It's also an episode about creating your own destiny through those decisions, the intersection of those two things, and ultimately a conversation about what you're capable of and the possibilities that are out there for you. Because I know so many of you are sitting in this place where you know you want something different for your life, but you're not quite sure what to do next.
And I want this episode to help you feel seen and understood, but I also want to hold your hand a little bit in making the decisions that could change your life for the better. So let's talk a little bit about how this episode came to be because I also think it's fun to just share kind of what's going on in my world that inspires these.
Recently, we had a group coaching session. I meet with all of my clients together, all of my moms together weekly for an hour, and we build connection, we coach on strategy, we have really great conversation, and it's just a wonderful community that gets built with my moms. And so we had a group coaching session where we talked about decision-making, specifically how to make big decisions.
And I was thinking about my moms who come to me because they're in a traditional 9-to-5. They're barely staying afloat. They feel like they're drowning, and they want a different life for themselves, but they're stuck in decision limbo. The should I, shouldn't I. And I know that place so well because I was in decision limbo, I've talked about it before, for six years when I was in corporate.
I questioned everything. Should I start my own business or shouldn't I? Should I leave or should I stay? Is this the right decision? What if it doesn't work out? It's a real place to be. I think Dr. Seuss refers to it as the waiting place in Oh, the Places You'll Go! in that book. When we're on the cusp of this, this I want change, but I don't know what to do. I don't know what the right decision is. It feels like a really, really big decision.
There's a lot that we feel like we need to consider and do our due diligence on. So we were talking about decisions in that group coaching, and there was a lot of really great conversation coming up. And then I led an in-person networking group here in Denver for mom entrepreneurs, parent entrepreneurs, where we also talked about decision-making. I shared models that I use with my clients in making decisions. So decision-making was really at the forefront of my mind.
And then I had a neighbor who's newly postpartum send me a poem by Sylvia Plath, The Fig Tree. You may have heard of it. And as soon as I read it, the poem that she sent me, I thought, I have to do a podcast on this. I have to talk about our lives, the possibilities available to us, and the cost of indecision. The world we know right now and are experiencing isn't the only world available to us.
Here's the thing. We tend to think that the life we're living is just life. It's what we know, it's what we're comfortable with. It's what we have experience with. There aren't really unknowns because we're living it, right? And we're experiencing it. This is what we're used to. We're present for all of it. We live here, the good and the bad. And it's really hard to envision another life and actually believe that it's realistic.
And I will absolutely share the poem and go down into why that inspired me to record this episode. But before I talk about that, I really want to talk about this vision that we have for our life, what we want it to look like. This hesitation to believe that another more compatible, more enjoyable, less stressful life is available to us, a life that doesn't have some of the same stressors and anxieties and pressures or demands that our current life has. It's hard to see that when we're living within our own context of life.
This is a little bit of a digression, but there's a quote, and I know I've said this before, but it's something along the lines of, to a worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish. And what that means is that we tend to mistake our immediate environment, our background, our experiences, like our entire reality for what is available to us in the world. We just don't see other possibilities.
If we're in a traditional 9-to-5 and our entire network is in the 9-to-5, our friends, our family, our coworkers, and everyone is stressed out, and everyone's rushing in the mornings and evening, that's our reality. That's what we know. And it can be really hard to understand or even realize that there's a different reality out there. There's not just horseradish. There's peanut butter and ketchup and mustard and relish maybe, although relish is not really my jam. There are all these different environments and contexts and lifestyles and ways of living and possibilities for what our lives could look like. But if we only know horseradish, it's really hard to see what's available to us.
And this is really important. If you're feeling confused about what to do with your life and all you know is that how it's currently going is not it, I want you to know that there is a world out there that is not horseradish. There are options, and it's not all or nothing. It's never all or nothing. It's not black and white. There's some beautiful gray area of life. You don't necessarily have to give up your entire career in order to be the mom you want to be. You don't have to completely quit your job, become a stay-at-home mom, stop making income, or give up on certain dreams in order to be present for your kids, in order to be there for pick up and drop off.
There are options, there are combinations. There's a world where you're able to be the mom you want to be and contribute to the greater good of society in ways that tap into strengths and the expertise that you have that you've developed all of your life outside of motherhood because you have other identities too. It really does seem and feel too good to be true. I know, but it's not. You just have to be willing to see that the jar you're currently in is not the only jar and get the courage to explore other jars out there.
I've seen it so many times in my clients, and it's also the life that I live. And I will tell you, 10 years ago, I never would have imagined that this would be my life. I never saw myself as an entrepreneur. I saw myself climbing the corporate ladder, moving into senior positions, and staying in the horseradish that I knew so well and was comfortable with. And then priorities changed, and I discovered there were other options worth exploring.
Now I'm outside of the 9-to-5. I create my own goals, I create my own schedule, I love what I'm doing. I'm making money to support my family. I'm present with my kids. I'm there for pick up and drop off. I really can be there for everything. And still have that piece of my identity that is creating something meaningful to me in the world. And I really feel like I have it all.
And I know that feels impossible and probably a little annoying to hear when you're in a traditional 9-to-5, but I promise I was there once and know how impossible it feels. Just yesterday, I was coaching one of my moms on life stuff, and I shared my screen with her and was talking through my own calendar and how my husband and I use it to create connection and really be intentional about how we're spending evenings together after bedtime, which I know is like a black hole for many of us.
But as I was sharing my screen with her and my calendar, she was completely befuddled, not because of what I was sharing about connection and how we plan out our evenings, but because of the other things that she saw. She saw that we had just recently had a date day, and my entire Friday was blocked off for that date day. She said, "How do you do that?" She said, "I'm so low on PTO right now. I just couldn't do that." And I said to her, "This is why we're getting you out of the traditional 9-to-5."
And she said to me, "Wait. How are you able to do movie night at 7:30? How do you get the kids down in time to do that?" And I told her, "Well, we eat dinner at 5:00." And we can easily have dinner ready by then because our day ends when we pick up the kids at 3:00. And she was completely befuddled. She's like, "I barely get home by 5:00, and there's no way that dinner would be ready." And I told her again, "This is why we're creating this business, these options to get you out of the 9-to-5 so that your calendar and therefore your life is designed around the things that matter most to you."
This is what we're working towards, more freedom and flexibility, a possibility that's so hard to envision, but that I promise is available to anyone who has the courage to try. I know how it feels when this lifestyle is really hard to wrap your head around as a goal for yourself, because again, to a worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish. But we've got to wiggle out a little bit and take a peek at what else might be available to us.
So I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about this poem. So what I just talked about was really this plea for everyone to understand that this is available. It's worth exploring, it's worth seeing and giving it a try. If the life that you're currently living is just not it and you want to change, there is a different jar out there that you can explore. I promise. And it might not be starting a business necessarily, which I'll talk about a little bit in a few minutes, but it's worth looking into, it's worth trying new things. The worst thing that you can do is to not make a decision on it and to stay where you are because the world is horseradish.
So that's one reason that I see a lot of moms stay in indecision. It's like there's a disbelief almost that other options are out there. But then there's this poem by Sylvia Plath from The Bell Jar. Okay? And I'm going to link it in the show notes as well. So this is the poem by Sylvia Plath:
"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet, and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was E.G., the amazing editor. And another fig was Europe and Africa and South America. And another fig was Constantine and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions. And another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion. And beyond and above these figs were many more figs that I couldn't quite make out.
I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest. And as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black. And one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."
Okay, that passage or that poem, there's so much there. What she's describing is this idea that the possibilities for our lives can feel endless, and those possibilities become almost pointless if we never make a decision, if we don't decide to go for things, if we don't just choose a path, if we don't make a move. Being stuck in indecision leaves us stuck, it leaves us starving. We want to go after something, we want to create and build meaning in our lives, we want to create and build purpose. There are things we want to do, places we want to see, experiences we want to have, but all of these things take brave decisions. It takes starting somewhere.
It's okay to want more than one thing in life. In that poem, when she talks about wanting each and every one of those figs, but believing that choosing one meant losing all the rest, I think it's a complete thought error. Choosing one path does not mean losing all the rest. This is especially important for moms who are thinking about starting a business or leaving their corporate careers. Choosing to start a business doesn't mean you have to lose the career you've built. It doesn't mean you have to lose the expertise or credibility you've spent years building. It doesn't mean you have to stop being ambitious or stop contributing to your family.
And choosing to be more present with your kids doesn't mean you have to give up your own goals and dreams. It can actually be that when we choose to take action, when we start moving towards those tasty figs in our future, we begin to figure out how to design a life that taps into as many of our needs and wants and goals as we desire. We learn so much about what we don't want and what we do want in the act of moving, getting up from that seated position, climbing that tree and going for some of those figs, trying things out.
That's the thing about decisions. We tend to think we need to know exactly what we're going for and everything there is to know, like whether things are going to work out, before we make that one movement, before we make that one decision. But so much of what we need to know can only be learned by starting. You don't have to see the whole picture of the business or of the life or of what's possible to start moving, to start creating change.
For anyone who's sitting at the base of that theoretical fig tree, starving to death, drowning, confused, knowing there's more to life, but feeling like you have no idea where to go or what to do next, I want to encourage you to choose. Maybe it's not a choice that you have an entirely clear picture of. Remember, in that passage in the poem, she talks about all those other figs that she couldn't quite make out that were on that tree. You don't have to know exactly what every fig looks like. You don't have to know exactly what's possible for your life and family. I want you to choose anyway, and I want you to start moving. Wanting change but not acting on it feels really bad.
I want you to know that the actions that you take and the things you start exploring can lead you towards feeling more fulfilled, reaching your goals, and creating a life you love before you even get to whatever the finish line is. That may include starting your own business, but it may also include just figuring out what work is aligned with you. It may include making changes within your current career or company that are available to you. But at the end of the day, I want you to make sure that you decide. I don't want you to sit there unable to decide, watching all of the possibilities wrinkle up and fall to the ground.
I want you to trust yourself. And I want you to consider that there are no wrong decisions in the sense that every decision gives us an opportunity to learn. There are decisions that lead us to action, and those decisions lead us to more data, more experience, more learning, and the possibility of change, the change that we are yearning. You don't have to have the entire plan or vision figured out before you begin.
I want all of those figs in your future to be plump and delicious, and I want you to taste them. I want you to go for them. You don't even have to know exactly what they are right now, like I've said, like I talked about at the beginning. You don't have to know what the peanut butter jar looks like, feels like, tastes like. I just want you to make moves to get out of the horseradish jar, to see life differently, to know that there are other possibilities and avenues out there. Life can feel and look different. You don't have to know the expanse of possibilities. You just have to know that there are other ways that life can look and feel. And maybe even that there is a world where you do feel like you have it all as a mom who is working and making the most out of this short life that we're given. To get there, I just want you to make decisions so that you're not left feeling like you're starving to death just because you can't make up your mind.
And you don't have to make these decisions alone. Listen, coaching is such a powerful tool in decision-making. One of the biggest pillars of all coaching is helping people make decisions, helping people become better at making decisions. That's why so much of my life recently and what inspired this episode is conversations with people and entrepreneurs about making big decisions. We don't want to make these big decisions in a vacuum, especially when you're thinking about doing something that you've never done before. You couldn't possibly know whether it's the right decision for you if you've never done it before. There's so many unknowns. It's so hard to know.
Having support in making that decision, support in getting unstuck, support in figuring out the next best path is incredibly valuable. Having a thoughtful conversation about what you even want out of life, what's not working, like maybe you don't know what you want out of life, but you just know what's not working right now. Having that conversation in a structured and intentional way is so enlightening. Talking about what you want your family life to look like, what you want your presence and support for your family to look like, what you want presence and support for yourself to look like, what you want for yourself outside of motherhood, those are all really important conversations to be having out loud. And sometimes we don't necessarily have the time or space to do that unless we are intentional, unless we are talking with somebody who is holding us accountable to it.
So if you're in this space, if you need support or want support having these big conversations about big changes that you want to make in life, whether to quit your job, whether you start a business, whether you change careers, whether you stay where you are and figure out how to feel better, that's a huge one. Stay at your job and be happier and provide for your family and be the mom you want to be within your current environment. That can be a big change too. Please know that coaching exists to help you get there.
So this conversation today, a little bit inspiring, I hope, also a little bit melancholy. That poem always gets my eyes sweating, but it's such a powerful poem for looking at our lives and knowing that there is a cost to not making a decision on what we see for our futures and going after change. I couldn't not do an episode on that poem. As soon as my friend shared it, I was like, got to do a podcast on this. And so here it is. I couldn't read it and not think of every single mom out there who might be deferring her dreams for any number of reasons, but mostly because she can't make a decision. She's someone who knows that something needs to change, is starving for something different, but who's sitting there watching those yummy figs wrinkle up and fall to the ground.
I want you to know that your dreams are worth going after. The life you want is worth going after. Moving away from a life that you don't want is worth taking action on. I trust that you're capable of doing that. I've seen it in so many moms who didn't believe in themselves, and I know that every single mom is capable of it. If you don't feel like you're capable right now, or if you have some hesitancy, or if you just want to feel better while you're figuring it out, please know that coaching is here to support you, no matter where you're at.
Okay, moms. If something I talked about today struck a chord with you, please schedule a conversation. I do one-hour free consultations. You can go to Jenna.Coach, or you can go to Jenna.Coach/129 and schedule one of those calls. It's a conversation where we go a little bit deeper into what your goals are, what sort of pieces of the picture you're envisioning of what your life could be, maybe even just talking about what is not working right now, what's within your control, and what actions you can start taking right now. Those conversations are always so energizing for moms.
So even opening yourself up to just a conversation can move you forward. It is absolutely part of taking action and moving instead of staying stuck at the bottom of that tree. There will be a link in the show notes, like I said, Jenna.Coach/129. Also, click that plus button where it lives and follow the podcast so you have these conversations every single week that are encouraging you to move forward, encouraging you to make big decisions, encouraging you to create change. I want to help you create a life that feels like a win-win, that feels like you have it all, a life that allows you to be the mom you want to be while still tapping into these other parts of yourself that have big goals and dreams and know that they can make a big impact. Okay, you don't have to choose. You really can have it all. And you don't have to figure it all out today. But you do have to give yourself the opportunity to find out what's possible. Okay? So make decisions. Start moving.
I love you, even though many of you I've never met. And I'm here for you. Okay, I'll see you next week.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
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