What To Do When You Don’t Know What To Do: The Power of Movement in Moments of Overwhelm

How much of your life have you spent standing in place simply because you didn’t know the next “right” move?

I stayed in a city many years past knowing I no longer wanted to live inside its borders. I stayed in a career long after I first vocalized to many that it wasn’t what I wanted. I stayed in relationships that I could have told you at any point in time were, without a doubt, headed no where.

But why? Why was there an extended (and often bumpy) runway between the “I’m out of here” realization and the moment of “lift off?”

I know the answer now, and if I’m honest, I knew it then. My failure to launch was rooted in the belief that I should not move until I had a satisfying answer to the question, “what now?”

For me and many leaders I work with, the search for the answer to that question—essentially, “what do I do now”— often involves boarding a ferris-wheel-ride-of-delay (pleasantly disguised as “analysis”) so I can gather information on the options, weigh the pros and cons, argue with myself about what matters, question what difference any change will make anyway, and then eventually settle into a quiet resignation that I just don’t know the answer. At least not today. I make it tomorrow-Laura’s problem to figure out and settle in for another loop.

I know I’m not alone. I meet a lot of leaders stuck on this same ride-to-nowhere.

We take our knowledge and data and we analyze, ponder, and debate until we are paralyzed by the options in a world in which so much could be done but the path forward for us is not clear to us.

In recent years, I’ve been hunting for the exit off of this ride.

During the height of the pandemic, and after more than a decade of climbing the ladder in the legal industry, I intentionally disrupted my life by leaving my work as a corporate trial attorney. The work was demanding, challenging, and well-compensating, but ultimately not what I wanted so many hours of my life to be about. I didn’t know what was next, but I knew I needed a decision point in order to face the “what now” question that I’d been avoiding in the pursuit of the next available achievement.

Now, that kind of dramatic leap is not always what is required to shake an analysis paralysis, but it did help me realize the power of movement in moments of overwhelm. I didn’t have the answers but I made a move anyway for the kinetic energy movement would create. One bold step led to another and now I find myself living in the change I longed for as I rocked for years on that damn wheel.

Since that time, I’ve decided to continue on in this experiment of turning knowledge into action quickly by taking just one strong step.

Here is the practice:

• Notice that you’re feeling stuck because your brain wants the “right” answer or the “perfect” next move.

• Acknowledge that this is an avoidance strategy.

• Ask: Who do I want to be and how do I want others to experience me?

• Choose an action, any action, that aligns with the answer to 3 and start there. Take one strong step.

Your resulting actions will offer you new information, creativity, and momentum for finding your next strong step. As an experienced mentor of mine likes to say, “Something will happen.” And if you get stuck, start back at number one.

What do you do when you don’t know what to do? Don’t overthink it. Resist the temptation to live in the land of unused knowledge and endless debate.

The point isn’t landing on a grand solution, the point is a habit of movement. What now? Strong step. What now? Strong step.

Let movement beget movement and paralysis will soon be a mere memory of the past.

This article is loosely based on a speech Laura gave to the Leadership Denver Class of 2022. You can watch the speech (and tolerate the inside jokes) here.