A 4-Lens Toolkit For Impossible Life Decisions: there's no best candy.

You can have a great life and still feel stuck when you’re surrounded by great options. That’s the modern trap: career opportunities, relationship paths, places to live, even “best” health choices can turn into analysis paralysis when there’s no clean yes or no. I’m Angela Shurina, and I’m sharing a practical way to make complex life decisions without trying to logically rank your entire future - based on some of the best work of experts in life coaching/navigation including Simon Sinek's Dis...

• 0:09Speaker 00

  Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Shurina, I'm your host, I'm your partner in change, personal and collective transformation, your master health executive coach, sleep stress management, recovery, self-actualization coach, and simply said, just someone who is really passionate about human potential and looking and using more of it in our day-to-day life, growing a little bit better every day, a little bit stronger, a little bit taller, so together we could live the most extraordinary lives, creating the most positive impact in the world.

• 0:53Speaker 00

  Today, guys, I'm very excited because we're going to be talking about one, I feel like one of the most important subjects in our today's world, making complex life's decisions and choices, when there is no best answer, no yes or no answer, no right answer, no matter how advanced AI analytics get and how much data you can pump into the system, many choices in life, choosing your next career step, choosing a life partner, choosing

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  what, where are you gonna live till the rest of your life if you decide to choose a different place, choosing what causes you want to contribute, even the best diet, there is no best diet, there is only the one that works the best for you. So today, I'm going to share with you a four-step or four-layer lens that will help you to navigate these impossible choices, what I like to call them these days, with the finely tuned compass.

• 2:13Speaker 00

  Navigating those complex decisions, guys, is like navigating an open sea with a compass. There is no path, there is this open field where you can chart many paths and many courses, but there is one right direction, like a north star, that feels so right to be moving towards it, even if you never arrive, the journey towards it is a fulfilling one.

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  So that's what it's all about today, and you're gonna get a four-step toolkit, a four exercises that are linked in the show notes, by the way, if you are impatient, you can check them out, resources to help you navigate those impossible choices, moving into the right direction for you, not the ultimate best direction. So you're gonna have four tools in your life navigation toolkit, which are available to you, mostly free, one assessment is not free, and I use it myself and with my clients,

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  and I believe it's one of the best out there to figure out certain things, to help you navigate those impossible choices. But besides that, let's jump into it. The title of the blog that helps me to create this podcast experience was, it was inspired, A, by a few clients' interactions who are in the season of navigating transitions and change in their personal life and their professional life. And then after another session, I decided, let me write a blog, so it's out there and I can share it with people when they'll ask me the same question.

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  The title of the blog, "There is no best candy: How to make complex life's decisions when there is no best answer."

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  So the question then prompted, that inspired this blog, was from a client in a recent coaching session, and he shared it with me.

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  "I feel like a kid in a candy store. So many opportunities are landing on my plate, but I just don't know which one to choose."

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  He was an executive his whole life and always had a direction, a target to hit, a benchmark to go to the options against, and now he was a free sailor in the open sea. And one might say, that's a good problem to have, a lot, a lot of options, rather than common one, you might think, in a world full of problems. But actually, in my experience, coaching experience and my life experience, this is, it's more and more people are drowning their ability to achieve great things in a sea of too many options.

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  Imagine, guys, you could only eat whole foods, I don't know, chicken, fish, vegetables, nothing else available, just whole good foods. You'd eat just that, you know, you'd get into the best shape of your life with no freaking problem, you'd finally end your food struggles and you'd re-up energy to pursue more meaningful goals.

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  Or now imagine that there were no countless series to watch on Netflix, like no such option, just a few books sitting on your shelves. I guarantee, your ambition to read more books would come true a lot sooner with no discipline or willpower required.

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  In fact, what stops many of my clients from reading in the evening isn't the reading, it's the choosing between all the options. There are just, well, a lot of Netflix shows, but also so many books they want to read and kind of should be reading, that picking one feels like too hard of a job and missing out on all of the rest while spending time on this one that might not even be the best one.

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  It's the most common reason so many founders and entrepreneurs fail too. They try to do too many things all at once for too many clients with too many options and buttons. Each thing gets too little energy to survive in a world full of other choices where only exceptional things stand out, and exceptional things take a lot of focus to make, the focus that many of us don't manage to create. Too much holds more people back than too little could ever dream of. And I'm guilty of it too. Sometimes I attempt to start so many things that none of them actually gets finished working on it. But here is what I've learned about making choices.

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  In 18 years of my coaching career and living as a human for the past 39 years, obviously, a lot of those 39 years were not exactly conscious as a kid, a teenager, don't forget about that, guys, that no matter what age you're in, like first 20 years, it's just figuring out how to stay alive and make something of yourself, understand yourself. So I've learned it as a coach, working with clients all over the world for the past 18 years, clients who have plentiful opportunities. I've also learned it going through the human experience myself, often wrestling with my inability to give anything my undivided attention because I'm not sure what deserves it the most, or if it gets me anywhere worth going.

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  The answer, here's what I learned, the answer is never to evaluate every option logically and choose, quote-unquote, "the best one." There is no best candy. When you go to a candy store, what's the best candy? There is none. You go to ice cream parlor, what's the best ice cream? None. That's why they have so many ice cream flavors, because people like different stuff. There is no best candy, just the one you like the most or tend to like the most. All you need is to figure out what that is, what you like the most, what fulfills your soul and your stomach sometimes the best.

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  Think about your attention also. Your brain is bombarded with far more signals than it could ever pay attention to. So how does it learn to prioritize what to pay attention to? Your brain aligns what it notices with the goals and needs that matter to you the most. Not always perfectly, but that's the idea. That's why the moment you decide which car you want, which dog you want, which cat you want, which, I don't know, piece of clothing you want, you start seeing it everywhere. But those cars, dogs, cats and clothes were always there. It's just your goals, your preferences shifted.

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  So now the question is, if the best way to evaluate all the impossible choices in life, career, partner, place to live, even the best diet. If you have so many choices and they're impossible to make and there is no right answer, just like there is no best candy. How do you, how do you, yeah, how do you choose at all? And if the answer is you need to get to know yourself to align the choices with who you are and what's going to make you feel fulfilled in life.

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  Now, how do you know yourself that well that choices you're bombarded with? That the right choice becomes very clear. It's almost like this candy in a candy store is highlighted. It's a lot brighter and a lot more appealing than the rest of the choices. What I learned in my career as a coach and living this beautiful human experience, trying to be as reflective as possible, is that you just gotta spend some time to, spend some time learning about you, not just about the world around you.

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  Logic isn't the answer, guys, for those impossible choices. There is always going to be to be something, quote unquote, better on paper. And never enough time or data to evaluate it all. Live alone, try it all. You are the only answer. So here are four tools that I found incredibly useful to use with my clients. Incredibly useful and effective and myself to help you make the impossible choices, to be able to walk into any candy store and say, 99.9% of it doesn't matter. This is what I'm after.

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  The first tool and the first lens to see the best candy clearly is your values. What are your values? What are the things that make your life feel meaningful? When, when you align what you do with them, your values, things like, to give you an example, work centrism. I'm using some terminology from the values assessment, bridge, values bridge assessment that I'm going to link in the show notes. I found it to be one of the most useful and effective ones, working with clients and myself,

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  to give you very practical clarity on your values and how to align your life's choices with those values, right? So the terminology like work centrism, a lot of it I borrow from that values bridge assessment, again, which is linked in the show notes. It's not my work, but that's what I found very effective, working with clients from a scientist who helps people to figure their life out for living in, out of New York City, New York University. So anyhow, so some of my values are work centrism and scope, which is creating meaningful

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  impact on a larger scale in the world. Another one is voice or expressing my opinion, you know, that's why I'm doing this podcast. It's just natural to me, it's something I crave for. Another one is agency or being able to make my own choices. And that's why I'm a freaking entrepreneur and I like to call myself unemployable. That's how freedom to make my own choice is important to me. And that's why I'm a lot more comfortable being single than not, because I want to be able to make my own choices more than that. And not everyone can make peace with that. But that what makes me happy.

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  And when I align my life's choices and my lifestyle and how I organize and design my life with my values, no matter how the rest of the world thinks it is, doesn't make sense, it's not great, it's not perfect, it's not balanced. It makes me feel so freaking happy every day that I jump out of the bat with one of a kind energy. That's when you know your life is aligned with your values. So do you know your values? Do you know how to live your values? That is lens number one. Please take the assessment, any assessment, preferably a good one, research-backed, good one is linked in the show notes. I'm not affiliated, but I really, really love it.

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  And I did a lot of assessments in my life and coaching career. So that is lens or tool to know your perfect candy, number one. Tool and lens number two, what lights you up? What energizes you? What are you doing when you feel most engaged, most alive? When you're in the flow, losing track of time? I created, based also on work of people a lot smarter than myself, Energy Audit Journal, which is absolutely free and available, linked in the show notes. I made it. And if you keep it for a couple of weeks, collecting that data about what makes you

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  feel the most engaged, alive, in the flow, losing track of time, and reflect on that, and also reflect on activities that lead you up and energized you in the past, you will start seeing patterns like, oh, these activities really make me feel alive, make me come alive. So maybe, just maybe, the next choice I'm making gotta be somewhat similar to that, where I get to do more of that, right? So Energy Audit Journal, linked in the show notes. And it is tool or lens number two to find your perfect candy. Tool number three, lens number three, what's your why?

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  Contributing to which causes fills your days with a sense of purpose? The clues are in your life's stories, your life's accomplishments, people you admire and what you admire them for. Why worksheet, which I adopted from courses like Unlock Your Path to Purpose or Discover Your Why by Simon Sinek's team. It's a compilation of different tools that I found incredibly effective and useful with my clients and myself, which help you to clarify your why, your purpose, things

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  that, again, create a sense of fulfillment and meaning and like you are on purpose. Again, the worksheet is linked in the show notes, absolutely free for you. And if you have any questions, by the way, guys, if you want to work through these worksheets together, help you reflect, help you get more clarity and then put that clarity into action in your day-to-day life and career, you can also book your one-on-one clarity session with me. The link to do so is in the show notes as well. But tool number three, lens number three, to find your best candy, is absolutely free

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  and available, linked in the show notes. It's called Why Worksheet? And the last, but not least, what's your ideal work-life integration? Tool number four, lens number four.

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  What do you want more of or less of in your life? What level of health? What kind of adventures? What social life? What places to live? What schedule to shape your days? What relationships? Now that you understand your values and your why? And you know what lights you up? Now, how do you integrate the all areas of your life? And the best way to figure out how to integrate all these different pieces of your life together to create, to have the opportunity to create a more coherent picture and vision that you live every day? The best way is to create vision in the first place. Best, again, based on the reflections that you're gonna do with values and why?

• 18:06Speaker 00

  And what energizes you already? Based on the experience of life that you already had? You already know quite a few things about yourself. What makes your life work and what doesn't? And now it's your turn. It's the time to put a beautiful, coherent, aligned vision together. So then you can look at all of the candies and options on your plate and you can say, hey, this from my understanding of myself and my experience and where I wanna go, this belongs here and this doesn't. And there are gonna be a lot more things that do not belong anywhere near you than things that clearly belong in your life.

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  And you'll find out often that you already kind of felt it and knew it, but maybe didn't have the guts or the explanation, the clarity of the explanation to say, this is what I want and this is why. And it doesn't have to make any sense to the rest of the world, but it makes sense and feels really good to me. It feels very right to me. So tool number four, lens number four, work-life integration journal, which is also linked in the show notes, available to you absolutely free. All the worksheets, by the way, guys, they are on my Google Drive. And to use them, to edit them, you just click file, make a copy.

• 19:31Speaker 00

  And then a copy is gonna be on your drive as well, which you can get absolutely free. If you need some other format, then please let me know. My email is [email protected], [email protected]. Or also just WhatsApp me, which the link to my WhatsApp is linked in the show notes as well.

• 19:55Speaker 00

  And guys, before we recap and jump off to live our most meaningful, extraordinary, aligned lives. So before that, don't forget to share this podcast episode, the resources, with this one other person who might feel stuck and like, I can't choose. There are so many things, I feel overwhelmed in small and big things. So share this podcast episode with them. I'll re-review our podcast on different platforms so we can naturally and organically reach more people making those impossible trade-offs and choices and decisions, right? There are so many people struggling with this all over the world right now as our world gets noisier and noisier.

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  So please do help me spread the good system, good toolkit around so more of us make better, more aligned choices and live the most purposeful, fulfilling lives. To sum it up, there is no best candy. And if you are in a candy store, don't try to find one. There is a reason why there are so many kinds of candies and ice cream flavors and all kinds of stuff. People like different things. And yeah, there is no one best thing, but a better or the best thing for you right now. First, the mindset. And then, in order to make the most aligned and fulfilling choices

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  and find your best candy for right now, you gotta understand, not all of the candy, which you get more and more of, but you gotta understand, you gotta know thyself, right? Know yourself. Many of you guys never took the time to actually understand you and learn more about you. And four lenses, four tools that I found incredibly useful and effective to help you learn and understand yourself better and faster. Your values, taking some values assessment and making sure that you align your life's choices with your values. What lights you up? What gives you energy?

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  That's a good sign that those are the right things for you, where you can do your best and live your best life experience. The energy audit journal is linked in the show notes to figure that out, to give you more data. What's your why? The contributing to which causes fills your days with a sense of purpose, even if they make no sense to the rest of the world. Why worksheet is in the show notes as well. What's your ideal work-life integration? What's your perfect life? Do you even know? If not, work-life integration journal is also linked in the show notes. And that's about it, guys. What I wanted to share with you for today.

• 22:48Speaker 00

  In a world of limitless choices, the way to find your best choice and your best candy isn't to dump it all into AI analytics and assess it logically as the amount of choices keeps increasing. No, it's learning to get to know you and what's the right thing for you right now. And the toolkit is here and the worksheets are in the show notes. And thank you, guys, for tuning in, for listening. And till next time, keep growing.