How long do you need to stay stuck in indecision before you decide it’s worth changing?

I had a conversation with a friend the other day about the idea of “thinking about it.” She was wanting to make some changes in her life, and when faced with an option, she said she wanted to think about it. The thing is, she’d been thinking about it for years now. She was in a constant state of indecision.

Our discussion got me thinking about a time when I was stuck thinking about things in my life.

The timeline is impressive– and maybe not in the best way.

I stayed stuck for far too long.

In year 3 of practice, I felt like dentistry wasn’t improving for me. Up until then, I could justify that it was hard because it was new. I began exploring other options. But, my hopes were silenced when others told me I’d be wasting my education if I did anything other than work in private practice.

I always thought year 5 would be the special number. It would be the year that everything would begin to get easier in dentistry. That never happened. I began to wish that a patient would sit in my chair and magically offer me a job, saying I’d be great at _________. I wanted to be rescued.

By year 7, I said, “this is my final job. If this doesn’t work out, I’m outta here.”

In year 8, it wasn’t working out. I was depressed and hopeless as can be. I was paralyzed with nowhere to go.

Two more years went by before I was able to free myself from this mental torture of my indecision.

In the 10 years of my unhappy career, all I’d done was think about it. It was all talk and no action. At the time, no one was talking about burnout or career change in dentistry. I thought I was the only one, and I had the wrong support from my community.

I became so desperate that I had to stop thinking about it and do something. That’s when my life changed forever.

If this sounds familiar, what else is there for you to think about? You’ve thought about it for years, and how is that working out for you?

What will change if you continue to think about it a little more? Probably nothing.

When you begin to get out of your head, the world opens up for you. It doesn’t have to be massive– even tiny action steps get the ball rolling. That movement creates momentum. That momentum helps us shift, and it guarantees that things won’t be exactly the same a year from now.

Action does that, not thinking. One of my favorite movie lines ever is from Forgetting Sarah Marshall. The main character, Peter, is heartbroken from a recent break-up. He begins to form a friendship with Rachel, the new love interest. As he’s wallowing in his sadness and his indecision, she exclaims, “Dude, get out of your head! It’s really nice out here!”

It’s true. Get out of your head. Join me on the outside. It’s really nice out here.