What options do you have?

When we’re in the deep end with something challenging, it’s hard to think creatively. Feeling stressed or overwhelmed—or influenced by someone else’s stress and overwhelm- we often can’t come up with more than one or two ways forward. And often, neither seems particularly appealing.

It’s hard to even imagine the situation even being better.

Today’s prompt is more of a brainstorming exercise to keep in your back pocket. Referred to very simply as the “five options” technique, you push yourself to come up with…. yes, 5 options to whatever challenge you’re facing.

First list the options you’ve considered. Then push yourself to come up with more until you get to five. The idea is that we push ourselves into a more creative zone. To get there, you might have to get radical and out of the comfort zone of what you believe is possible. Doing this, you’ll sense resistance coming up that might sound something like, “this is ridiculous but…, or this will never work because….”

While listing, try to avoid canceling out anything based on what you believe right now.

The objective here is to reflect then write out options to help open your mind and just possibly see something you hadn’t seen before.

Once you have your list, you can take a step back and bounce each against your ultimate goals.

How would each serve your purpose?

With some practice, you’ll find this exercise become easier and even fun (depending on the issue.) The benefit to you is that it creates space in your mind for different possibilities to exist AND… that sense of autonomy and control in our lives that we all crave.

Have a great week!

PS: If you’re interested in joining a free group coaching call on what you really want for the holidays, you can register here. If those times don’t work for you, let me know and we can look to set up something separate.