A 4-lens framework to turn overwleming options into a confident choice. How to make impossible decisions fast.

Overwhelm doesn’t come from having no options. It comes from having too many options, and feeling like the “right” one is always out of reach.  

Today we open up a grounded way to choose when the stakes are high and the clock is ticking, using a 4-lens framework that cuts through noise and surfaces what actually matters for the life you have right now.  

With that foundation in place, we walk through the 4 lenses: Values, Joy, Success, and Impact, borrowed from Decisions That Matter and refined through coaching experience.  

Values asks what truly matters this season, not in theory but in practice. Joy identifies the energy sources that keep you moving under pressure, enjoying the journey no matter what. Success demands a clear target. Impact clarifies who you want to reach and how your environment either enables or blocks that reach. By scoring options against these lenses, trade-offs stop feeling like failure and start looking like strategy.  

There’s no perfect world, only the world you’re building from where you stand.  

The easy choices are gone; what remains are the ones that shape trajectory. This conversation helps you act with alignment and peace of mind.  

Listen, apply the prompts, and pick the best available choice for who you’re becoming, not the imaginary version of you with endless time and resources.  

If this resonates, tap follow, share the episode with someone stuck at a crossroads, and leave a quick review so more people can find tools that move them forward.  

Your next aligned step starts here.  

My Daily Blog on Substack: https://yourbestcoaching.substack.com/  

Transcript

Framing Impossible Choices

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Shurina. I'm your host, I'm your partner in Change, Collective and Personal Transformation, your executive and health and high performance coach 360, and just someone who is driven, passionate about, and super excited about this possibility that we all humans have to unlock, develop, and use more of our potential that we are still yet don't know the limits of to create more impact in the world, more change, more amazing extraordinary things, and to live the most extraordinary life experience. And today, guys, we're gonna learn how to make impossible choices. Choices were which are important choices and that have important consequences. And there are many criteria that you can consider from the objective point of view, and those criteria don't help. Like you still don't know what choice to make. So to set up the contacts, over the weekend I was moving to a new place, a a temporary place until I figure out my long-term place. And I'm gonna be looking at a few places for long-term, but even choosing a place for two weeks feels impossible. It's like what location to choose, where do I want to go at this stage of my life? What's important to me? And there is this option and that option, and I need this and this, and then I have budget constraints like we all have, and in the ideal world, like my ideal place would have all this, this, and that, but then uh the places that I had did not have all of this. So, how do I make the choice? And luckily, I was reading, well, actually, I felt stuck, so let me share this and unable to decide where to move. I was just looking through choices, one after another, after another, but there was a deadline, so I had to move, and that made the choice something that I needed to do for sure. But then again, there were so many criteria that felt overwhelming. And I decided to apply what I've been learning about in this beautiful book, Decisions That Matter, How to Make Good Decisions in the World of Endless Choice. And it was so timely. So today I want to share a couple of things that you probably will find quite useful. Those are also the things that I encountered in other books. I think it's just in this book, uh, the author managed to bring all of these insights from so many resources that she personally learned about and researched in her own life and in her own work. So she managed to bring those concepts that I've learned everywhere else, bits and pieces, into this beautiful four-length framework that I'm gonna share with you to do today, and how that helped me to also make this impossible choice quite easy, and most importantly, in a way that after I made it felt completely aligned with who I am, where my life is going, and it put my mind at peace, right? The most important thing. And again, the point with all of these choices that you might be considering and decisions, not to find the best possible perfect choice out there available in some ideal version of the world with the ideal you and perfect life and everything. No, the purpose of this framework is to help you make choices right now, right where you are, with everything that is happening, with everything that you have or don't have exactly where you are, so you could give your next level self, your future self, the best chance to move closer to this full alignment of who you are and what your life wants to be. So let's get into it. Again, the purpose of this is to help you not to make the best possible choice in some imaginary future, but the best available choice aligned with your life as it actually is. So a couple of things first to consider before getting into four-lands framework stakes. Is this a decision? Like whenever you're thinking about a choice or decision, is this a decision which has high stakes, which matters in your life, which will affect your life in some big way? And yes, for me it was, you know, where you live shapes your moods, your thinking, your energy, everything, like every single day. We sometimes underestimate how much impact and influence our day-to-day environment actually has on us. And if you someone who moved a bit, you know that. Like you changed the place, everything seems to change like this. So stakes, yes, it was high stakes decision, so it was worth considering different options and go through this deliberate thinking process. The second thing was simplify the options. So, what are my real options? Not in some ideal imaginary world, but like right now, what is available? And because I was only looking to move for two weeks before moving to somewhere long term, I stripped down, you know, all my requirements to the essentialists that need to work for these two weeks, no matter what, otherwise my life wouldn't work. And the rest, well, you know, the rest I'll look for when I'm looking for a long-term place. So for me, those things were solid internet for work, quiet for calls, writing, podcasting that I'm doing right now, thinking, doing other creative work, close to the gym, and food so I don't lose time, a place where I feel safe walking, a kitchen, peace of mind, which is a very underestimated value and treasure, so to speak, in the world of constant noise and distractions. So without this, even short-term, everything else in my life would suffer. So I needed those things. And then I looked at my available options, and I'm like, yeah, so that there was actually only one place that ticked all the boy boxes for those two weeks. But then uh when I started considering long-term plays, which I need to figure out in the next two weeks, after all these short-term essentials, I needed to consider like the second layer. The community that I built here that I'm not gonna have, for example, if I move to a new area, proximity to the city for meetings, a space to support my business development, which is crucial for me right now, inspiration for all the content and all the frameworks that I need to be creating, and I love creating my own place versus sharing, you know, that's just the options to consider freedom to work at 4 a.m. without boundaries. Yeah, I'm an early alert, so I love doing stuff at 4 a.m. Most of this conflict, like you can't have it all, at least not where I am right now. So, given the deadline, you know, I chose again convenience and essentials for now, but then to consider long term, I needed to go through this deeper process, which has four lenses through which you need to look at your options so you can make the choice that gives your future self the best opportunity to thrive and grow. So, what are those four lenses? Again, it's from the same book, Decisions That Matter. So, after all the essentials and the stakes are considered, values, like what matters most right now to me? And uh the I think the tricky part about that is we have many values, not just you know, one or two, like there are a lot of things that are important. But at this very moment in life, what are the things that matter more to you? For me, it's freedom and it's growth, making my business work, uh removing friction elsewhere. But the most important is freedom and growth. So those are my values that I really need to optimize for right now. Joy. What gives me energy when things are hard? You know, energy is the currency of life, of our work, of our business, of our relationships. So joy and feeling good in your life, it is important. But what is also again tricky about that is different things will give you the right kind of joy at different times of your life. So, what gives me energy right now? And those are actually walks and sunrises and sunset, space to think. It's not indulgence and it's the future that might be it's the fuel that the future me needs. So joy. Then we have so the first lens is values, like what is really important to me right now, joy. What gives me energy right now? What do I need in my life to have the opportunity to have the best possible energy? Then we have success. What does success look like for me this year? Like, honestly, unapologetically, and for me it's business growth. One clear focus for this year. I woke up and I'm like, this has to grow and improve to fuel the rest of my pursuits in life. And I was kind of delaying and tiptoeing it around it for the past couple of years. So this year is the year where I'm gonna focus on that success vision that is very important to me. So, what does success look like this year? It's growing my business to this 10k consistent per month income, right? So that is what I need this year. So the version of success for me right now is maximizing my business success where I am exactly, not again in some imaginary ideal future, but where I am right now. And then we have the fourth lens, lens number four, impact. Who, how, do I want to affect the most? For me right now, in general, it's speaking in front of more people, it's working with more people, is meeting more people, it's creating more opportunities to do my best work to create the most positive impact. And so being in a place where I can meet more people, being in a place where it is easy and convenient and frictionless and doesn't make me think twice, it is important. And for me right now, it means being closer to the city. I'm not that close, it's a little bit of a drive and also like the traffic, so the times have to be considered, etc. And that is additional friction to the success and values that are important to me right now. So, impact that's the lens number four. And once I looked at my options and and the choice through these four lenses, again, values, joy, what gives you energy, success, impact. Once I looked, honestly looked and asked myself, like what others for me right now, the choice became obvious. Not easy, and I still will have to figure some things out. But I realized I could compromise on size, on how modern the place is, or maybe you know some features for design, or like how far it might be for like maybe my groceries, which I can also get delivered. But the point is those four lenses help me see what I could compromise on and what I absolutely needed to give my future the seed of the next version of me to the opportunity to grow. And that brings us to like this final point is there is no ideal imaginary world, and you're never gonna have all the time, all the resources, and everything you want. And you need to start making choices and decisions right now if you want to start taking action and move your life forward. And those choices and decisions are not gonna be easy, all the easier ones you already made, so only the hard ones remain. Once you realize that and make peace with that, now you can start asking, what can help me to make those hard decisions and choices? And that four-lens framework will help you do so. I'm yet to see a person who I walked through these steps, although I before I didn't have the four-step lens like that, like that clarity. But I would take people through very similar process, starting with their values. Once you understand there is no ideal imaginary world, and you have to make choices right now to move your life forward. The other thing you need to understand is your values, you the something that gives you energy, your success, your impact vision, they will change as you change. So moving forward, ask yourself honestly: what do I want from my life right now? Values, what is important to me, what gives me energy, what success looks like on my terms, and then what impact, positive impact contribution I want to create in the world. And then what are the choices that are the options that are aligned with that? There is no the right choice, there is only the right choice for you right now. And so, again, the job isn't to find the perfect answer forever, it's to prepare the conditions for who you are becoming next with your today's options, with your today's choices. So, over to you, dear reader, dear listener. I'm also reading here from my daily blog that I have on Substack. We have your bestcoaching.substack.com. The link is in the show notes, by the way, if you want to subscribe to my daily blog. So, what is the next level of you need based on your current essential requirements, values, joy, success, and impact lenses? And are you putting those things in place with your choices, the way the gardener would prepare the soil before planting the seed? And that's it for today, guys. By the way, before you tune out and get on with your day, don't forget to share this podcast episode with at least one person who might be struggling with their choices and decisions. Like, I don't know what to do. It seems to there seem to be no right answer. So share this podcast episode with them because yes, there is no right answer, but there is a better choice aligned with you and where your life is going. So share this podcast episode, rate review that helps tremendously to share to distribute this podcast to more people all around the world. We are in 193 countries, 11,000 cities, so let's make it to more. If you have international friends, please share with them. And till next time, guys, thank you for listening, thank you for staying tuned, thank you for working on yourself and growing, and well, most importantly, keep working on yourself, keep improving, and keep growing. And check out the link in the show notes for your bestcoaching that substeck.com for my daily blog like that.