Standing at the Crossroads: When You Can’t See What’s Next

I made a decision last week that I’ve been postponing for years. A career change I’d been contemplating, analyzing, and talking myself out of more times than I can count. And now that I’ve actually done it—now that I’ve stepped off the familiar path and onto something new—I’m sitting here feeling a strange cocktail of excitement and absolute terror.

I’m a control freak. I’ll admit it. I like to see the whole map before I start walking. I like to know the consequences of my actions before I take them. I like my comfort zone because, well, it’s comfortable. And yet here I am, having just done something that violates every instinct that usually keeps me safe and predictable.

So why am I writing about this now, when I don’t even know if this decision will work out? Because I think there’s something valuable in capturing this moment—the moment right after you’ve leaped but before you’ve landed. The moment when you’re still scared but you’ve already jumped.

The Tyranny of “The Right Time”

For years, I told myself I was being strategic. I was waiting for the right time to make this career change. I needed more savings. More experience. More certainty about what I wanted. More clarity about the path forward. The list of “mores” was endless, and conveniently, it kept me exactly where I was.

But here’s what I finally realized: I wasn’t waiting for the right time. I was waiting for a time when making this change wouldn’t feel risky. A time when I could see all the consequences laid out before me, when I’d have everything figured out, when the fear would be gone.

That time was never going to come.

We spend so much energy trying to eliminate uncertainty from major decisions. We make pro/con lists. We consult mentors. We run scenarios in our heads until we’ve imagined every possible outcome. All of this in pursuit of one impossible goal: to know what will happen before it happens.

The uncomfortable truth is that some decisions simply cannot be de-risked. At a certain point, you either take action or you don’t. And “waiting until you’re ready” is just a sophisticated form of not taking action.

The Illusion of Control

What finally pushed me to act wasn’t courage or confidence or some sudden clarity about my path. It was the dawning realization that I was never going to feel in control of this decision because it’s fundamentally uncontrollable. I can’t oversee all the consequences. I can’t predict every outcome. I can’t plan my way into certainty.

For someone who likes to have everything mapped out, this was a hard pill to swallow.

But here’s the thing about being a control freak: we think we’re controlling outcomes by staying in our comfort zone, but we’re not. We’re just controlling our experience in the present moment. We’re choosing the familiar discomfort of staying put over the unfamiliar discomfort of moving forward. We’re not actually avoiding consequences—we’re just choosing the slow, invisible consequences of inaction over the immediate, visible consequences of action.

I finally asked myself: what’s the consequence of still being in the same place five years from now, having spent another five years “waiting for the right time”? That answer scared me more than the uncertainty of trying something new.

What the Stories Don’t Tell You

We hear a lot of stories about people who made big leaps. Changed careers. Started companies. Moved across the world. And in the retelling, these stories get smoothed out. They become narratives about brave people who knew what they wanted and went for it.

But I’ve talked to enough people who’ve made major changes to know that’s not how it actually feels in the moment. In the moment, it feels like stepping off a cliff. It feels like you’re probably making a huge mistake. It feels like everyone else who did this must have been more certain than you are.

Right now, I’m excited. Really excited. This is something I’ve wanted for so long, and finally taking action toward my goals feels incredible. But I’m also scared. What if I’m not good enough? What if I’ve romanticized what this change would be like? What if I’ve just made my life significantly harder for no good reason?

Both of these feelings are real and valid, and I’m learning that they don’t cancel each other out. You can be excited and terrified simultaneously. You can believe you made the right choice and still be scared of the consequences.

Getting Out of the Comfort Zone

Here’s what no one tells you about comfort zones: they’re not actually that comfortable. They’re just familiar. There’s a big difference.

My comfort zone was slowly becoming uncomfortable. I was good at what I did, but I wasn’t growing toward anything I actually wanted. I was safe, but I wasn’t satisfied. I was in control, but I was controlling my way into a future I didn’t actually want.

Getting out of that zone didn’t happen because I suddenly became brave or stopped being a control freak. It happened because staying in it started to feel worse than the fear of leaving it.

I think that’s the secret that finally unlocks these crossroads decisions: it’s not about becoming fearless. It’s about reaching the point where the fear of staying outweighs the fear of going.

The Practice of Uncertainty

I’m writing this not from a place of having figured it out, but from the middle of the uncertainty. I don’t know if this career change will work out the way I hope. I don’t know what consequences I haven’t foreseen. I don’t have the comfort of hindsight to tell me I made the “right” choice.

What I do have is the experience of finally taking action after years of contemplation. And that alone has taught me something valuable: the paralysis of overthinking is often worse than the discomfort of moving forward.

All those years I spent analyzing this decision, I thought I was being careful and strategic. And maybe I was, to a point. But at some point, careful becomes cowardly. Strategic becomes stuck. And the only way forward is to accept that you’re never going to have all the answers before you start.

What I’m Learning Right Now

I’m learning that taking action creates its own kind of clarity. Not the clarity of knowing exactly what will happen, but the clarity of knowing you’re moving in a direction you chose rather than defaulting to wherever life was already taking you.

I’m learning that excitement and fear aren’t opposites—they’re often two sides of the same coin. Both are signs that something significant is happening, that you’re in territory that matters.

I’m learning that comfort zones are seductive specifically because they require nothing from us. They let us be who we already are, do what we already know how to do, get what we’ve already gotten. Breaking out of them requires tolerating the discomfort of becoming someone slightly different.

And I’m learning that you don’t have to stop being a control freak to make a leap. You just have to recognize that the illusion of control you get from staying put isn’t actually serving you anymore.

For Anyone Standing at Their Own Crossroads

If you’re contemplating a big change right now—if you’ve been thinking about it for months or years, if you keep talking yourself out of it, if you’re waiting for some sign or certainty that never seems to come—I want to tell you something from the perspective of someone who just jumped:

The fear doesn’t go away before you leap. It comes with you. You don’t suddenly become certain about your decision. You just decide that you’re okay with being uncertain.

There will never be a perfect time. There will never be a moment when you have complete information, when all the pieces are aligned, when the risk has been eliminated. That’s not how significant decisions work.

What there will be is a moment when you realize that the cost of waiting has become higher than the cost of trying. When staying safe starts to feel like the riskier option. When you understand that you can either take action toward your goals or you can keep finding reasons to wait, but you can’t do both.

I can’t tell you that making this change was the right decision. I’m too close to it, too deep in the uncertainty to have that perspective. But I can tell you that taking action after years of postponing feels like finally exhaling after holding your breath for too long.

The View from Here

Right now, I’m standing on a path I chose, not one I defaulted into. I don’t know where it leads. I can’t see around the next bend. I’m still scared, still fighting my need to control things I can’t control.

But I’m also alive in a way I haven’t been in years. I’m working toward something instead of away from discomfort. I’m learning instead of stagnating. I’m uncomfortable in a way that feels like growth rather than in a way that feels like slow resignation.

Maybe that’s all any of us can really ask for at these crossroads: not certainty, but movement. Not fearlessness, but courage. Not control, but commitment to finding out what’s possible.

The crossroads is waiting for many of us. Both paths have merit. Neither is risk-free. And the only wrong choice might be the one where we’re still standing in the same spot years from now, having spent all that time building a perfect plan for a leap we never took.

I don’t know what’s next for me. But I finally took action to get closer to my goals, and that feels like enough for now. The consequences will come—ones I can foresee and ones I can’t. But at least they’ll be consequences of trying rather than consequences of waiting.

And from where I’m standing right now, terrified and excited and committed, that makes all the difference.