What if staying where you are is actually the bigger risk?
When we’re thinking about making a big change, we tend to focus on everything that could go wrong. What if I leave the job and regret it? What if I end the relationship and realise I made a mistake? What if I try something new and it doesn’t work out? These are fair questions. But I think there’s another one worth asking too - what happens if you don’t change anything? What if another year passes and you’re still thinking about exactly the same thing?
I’ve made some pretty big changes in my life. I moved from the UK to Singapore and Hong Kong, even when people close to me told me not to go. This might sound slightly woo-woo, but both times I just knew I needed to do it. I didn’t know exactly how everything would work out, but the decision itself felt right.
I’ve also had the opposite experience. I stayed in a relationship that looked perfectly good from the outside when somewhere inside, it didn't feel right. I came up with plenty of reasons to stay - it’s secure, nothing terrible has happened, other people think I'm lucky. But actually living in the relationship and knowing deep down it wasn't right, made me unhappy.
To be fair, I’m not suggesting that every uncomfortable feeling means you should immediately change your life. Big decisions deserve some thought. You need to look at what you might gain, what you could lose and whether the decision actually makes sense. But there’s a point where thinking it through turns into waiting for certainty. And that’s where people can get stuck, because complete certainty usually isn’t coming.
If you’ve been thinking about the same change for months, or even years, it’s worth asking yourself what you’re really waiting for. Are you looking for more information to reassure you that you're making the right choice? Are you hoping something will happen that makes the decision completely risk-free? Sometimes life doesn’t really work like that.
This is where trusting yourself matters. Not trusting that everything will go exactly as planned, because obviously you can’t know that. It’s trusting that you can make the best decision you can with what you know now, and if it doesn’t work out exactly as you hoped, you’ll deal with it. And what I've found, is that usually if an uncomfortable feeling doesn't go away for months, you usually need to deal with it head on rather than waiting longer.
If a huge change feels too much, start with something small. Do something you’ve been putting off because it feels unfamiliar. Make a decision without asking everyone else what they think first. Let yourself try something without needing to know exactly how it’s going to turn out and see what happens. You might find that it goes brilliantly. You might decide it wasn’t for you. You might get something wrong and have to rethink it. None of those things mean you can’t trust yourself. They just mean you made a decision and dealt with what came next.
There’s always some risk in changing something. But staying where you can have consequences too.
