Life is full of distractions, isn’t it?
It’s easy to remember what we’re doing on the outside, like completing tasks and projects, sending emails, driving to appointments, and having conversations.
Thanks to that busy-ness, sometimes we forget about everything we carry around on the inside: myriad thoughts and emotions, plus all the decisions we must make. It’s no wonder many of us suffer from decision fatigue—and it can be debilitating.
On a recent episode of The Kim Gravel Show, Kim welcomed author and podcast host Emily P. Freeman, who talked about her new book, How to Walk Into a Room: The Art of Knowing When to Stay and When to Walk Away. Emily shared some ideas for clearing out your internal clutter to make the space for discernment as you make clear, wise decisions.
Emily is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of five books all together, including The Next Right Thing: A Simple, Soulful Practice for Making Life Decisions. As a spiritual director, workshop leader, and host of The Next Right Thing podcast, her most important work is to help create soul space and offer spiritual companionship and discernment for anyone struggling with decision fatigue. Emily holds a master’s degree in spiritual formation and leadership from Friends University.
On The Kim Gravel Show, Emily said researchers say adults make more than 35,000 decisions every day.
“That sounds like, ‘You’re telling me stories. That can’t be real,’” Emily said. “But when you think about it, there are a lot of involuntary decisions that we’re always making, sort of knee-jerk responses. We might not call them decisions, but that’s what they are.”
These kinds of decisions include choosing what to wear or what to eat, when to leave for an appointment, what to cook for dinner, or where to go to lunch.
Sometimes, though, we experience seasons of life where we are more consciously aware of the decisions we must make: where to send our kids to school, whether to take a big opportunity or new job, whether to move to a different city.
During those times, Emily said, “we have to enter into what I call a process of discernment, where it’s not just the daily decisions … but to make a decision that might actually be a series of smaller decisions.”
“There are times in our lives where we have a lot of those and we can get really fatigued,” she said. “This is a real thing, where I am a decisive person normally, but I have this huge decision I’m making on top of all these smaller decisions. And if someone asked me, ‘What’s for lunch?’ I’m going to fall over because that’s one decision too many.
It can make a person feel crazy—you’re an adult, a boss, a parent, whatever, and you make big, important decisions all day long. And then deciding what to eat for lunch can exhaust you.
Sound familiar?
That’s because just as we often collect things externally, from keepsakes to mail, we collect internal clutter.
Emily said: “There a lot happening beneath the surface that maybe you haven’t had the time or space to sort of declutter on the inside, so you have space to not feel wild when it’s time for lunch.”
When it comes to big decisions, Emily refers to the metaphorical space you’re in before and after a transition as “rooms.” So if you’re facing significant choices about a life change—taking a new opportunity, moving into a new home—you’re considering a move from one metaphorical room to another.
If we don’t take time to declutter, enjoying our new room can be difficult, even if it’s something we’ve dreamed about and worked for.
So how do you declutter internally to leave space for clear decision making, so you can walk into a new room with confidence? Emily calls this process discernment.
The first step: get quiet and still.
“Silence, solitude, and stillness are to your soul as decluttering is to your home,” Emily said.
Here’s the thing: silence, solitude, and stillness don’t come naturally to everyone. You must experience them on purpose during life transitions.
Before we can discern our next right thing, Emily said, it’s really important to be still and quiet and look at the last right thing—the room we’ve previously occupied. This can be deeply informative. Sometimes the existence of the new room—which you want—means the absence of something else you may have enjoyed.
It’s important to give closure to your previous room and say good-bye to those parts you enjoyed (for example, you might have to close out a comfortable chapter in which you feel like you’ve mastered everything as you step into a new, uncomfortable chapter where you’re a newbie).
Emily recommends you take the time to release the room or season you’re leaving. Mark its ending and name the gifts that you’ll bring with you into your new room—because each season has gifts and burdens. This empowers you to enter your new room with renewed energy and confidence.
Recognize that as you transition from one room to the next, you may have to make many decisions along the way. Know that you might not know every step when you begin. As you leave your previous room, look for arrows directing you to your new room.
Emily illustrated this idea using the example of traveling from her home in North Carolina to Montana. When she leaves her house, she won’t see a sign directing her to Montana—it’s too far away.
But what she will see is the first next step, and then the next one after that.
That’s what discernment feels like.
Instead of receiving immediate answers to our question as we enter a new phase or room, we might ask a question and then pray, or talk to family, friends, and mentors. We might think deeply about who we are and what we most value. We must also think about what we want (these are all considered arrows).
Tapping into what you want is an important part of discernment.
What you want will inform your next right thing. It will inform your decision making. Do you want your desire to inform your next right thing with your eyes open or with your eyes closed?
Tapping into your desire is opening your eyes. Many people are afraid to admit or confess what they want, perhaps because of the way they grew up, what their friends do or believe, or other reasons.
But confessing what you want is different from demanding. In the process of discernment, admitting what you want is naming it, but not demanding it go a certain way. And what you want absolutely should be a data point during the discernment process.
Once we’ve said good-bye to our previous room and named what we want, how do we step into our new room with confidence and lead ourselves? We learn to trust ourselves.
Emily said she realized that in many cases, she’d sit down at a table with several other people, and her instinct would be to trust everyone else’s voices and ideas over her own.
Over the past decade, and especially over the past four or five years, she learned to tap into the home she carries inside her—because she’s going to be with herself for the rest of her life.
“Who are we going to be with for the rest of our lives? This girl right here. I’m going to walk into every room with me, so I may as well get comfortable and I may as well begin to listen to what I have to say.”
This comes back to knowing what we want, Emily said.
The space inside of you that doubts and distrusts your own desire is the space that doubts and distrusts your own voice. It comes from the same place.
Learn how to honor your own voice, too!
Each time you enter a room, do so as your own friend. Often, we doubt ourselves more than we doubt our friends or our partners. Honor your voice at the table and continue to offer yourself compassion when you’re not showing up like yourself. We all change and grow and sometimes we experience growing pains. Offer yourself the grace and compassion to make different choices the next time.
Once we’re in a room, how do we know if we’re in the right place?
Emily said it’s important to ask ourselves: is this a room I chose, or did it choose me? Who is in this room right now? Who has left it, and who is entering? Can I be myself here, and to what extent?
The answers to these questions may not determine whether you stay, in and of themselves, but they can be arrows pointing you in the right direction.
Emily recommended creating a practice where you sit for five minutes in silence, stillness, and solitude: hear your own inner voice, look for your arrows, and get rid of what you don’t need—on a soul level.
The Kim Gravel Show is a top women’s lifestyle podcast where Kim shares her message of confidence and encouragement with a side of laughter and fun. The show features inspiring, topical conversations with thought leaders, CEOs, and celebrities tailored to give listeners the insight they need to help them discover their purpose, find their confidence, and love who they are. On each episode Kim tackles the topics that women care about in a way that will make you laugh, make you think, and help you see your life in a new, more positive way.
The Kim Gravel Show is a celebration of the stories that shape us. It's about laughing together and not taking ourselves too seriously. It's about the wisdom we've gathered and the hardships we've overcome. It's about looking at the woman you see in the mirror and remembering that she is beautiful inside and out. This is a show about remembering that no matter what you’ve been through you can love who you are right now.
Y’all, life is hard, but we can do it together.
