The Waiting Place...
When Wanting Something is Enough
I fell in love with Oh, The Places You’ll Go after high school. I loved that I got to build one of my final college group projects around it. My kids each got a copy. And this week, when my niece graduated, the card I picked was anchored to the messages in this book.
At the graduation ceremony, the class president read from it. I was reminded of the section I find most interesting. Not the triumphant parts about soaring and succeeding: The Waiting Place.
Dr. Seuss describes it this way:
You can get so confused that you’ll start in to race down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace and grind on for miles cross weirdish wild space, headed, I fear, toward a most useless place. The Waiting Place... for people just waiting.
He goes on. Waiting for a train. For the mail. For the snow to snow. For a yes or no.
Everyone is just waiting.
What strikes me now, reading it as an adult, is what he’s actually describing. Not people who don’t know what they want. People who won’t decide.
That’s different.
I’ve made a few bold decisions in my life, choosing not to take the safe, sensible path.
Early in my Accenture career, I had already decided to turn down a role that would move us to Delaware, where we knew no one. When it came time to make the call, I couldn't.
I chose to leave Accenture without the next thing lined up because I knew it wasn’t my end game. Even though I could regularly change my role, I knew it was time to see what I could do in a new environment.
I left EPAM to start this business because I didn’t want to regret not trying something that would let me do the parts of the job I loved most.
None of those decisions came because I had to take action. Nothing was on fire, but they all had a catalyst moment that triggered the action to make a change.
I remember sitting at our Belarus office, realizing how much I loved my job while traveling. Not because I got to experience new places, but because I was fully focused on creating or advising on strategy and spending time with people who were focused on accelerating the company's performance. The operational parts of my job, the ones that drained me, had fallen away. And I thought: this is what I want more of.
I came home from that trip, and the deciding process started. The final catalyst was a weekend discussion about regrets with a neighbor who had recently lost her best friend. This idea of having my own coaching and consulting business was something I didn’t want to regret not trying.
None of these decisions was made overnight. My head would run a million what-if scenarios, like, what if this business fails, and we end up poor and destitute on the side of the road. My husband, who had a good job, talked me off the ledge on that one. But once I made them, I was all in.
As I look back on these life-changing moments, my decisions weren’t easier because I was crystal clear on what would happen…in fact, it was quite the opposite. What drove me was deciding that wanting something was enough to choose it.
I’m sitting with a decision right now that follows the same pattern. I want to spend a few weeks in Europe this fall. New places, new people, new ideas. Something outside my normal. The kind of thing that shifts how you see what you’re building.
My heart has been clear on this for months. My head keeps auditing it. Revenue isn’t certain in the second half. Is this the right time? Shouldn’t I wait until things are more settled? What might I miss if I go?
But I can afford it. And I know that I want to do this.
I’ve been in the waiting place on this one. Not because I don’t know, but because I keep letting my head dictate the next step.
The leaders I work with know this waiting place well. Not the version where the decision is unclear. The version where it’s already made underneath, and the head keeps building the case against it. Wanting conditions that will never be perfectly aligned. Wanting the risk to feel smaller. Wanting something external to make the internal decision for them.
Dr. Seuss called it a most useless place.
He wasn’t wrong.
The question I keep coming back to: when is wanting something enough?
I think I already know the answer.
Thoughts for Reflection
"In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing." - Theodore Roosevelt
"A real decision is measured by the fact that you've taken a new action. If there's no action, you haven't truly decided." - Tony Robbins
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Thank you again, Melissa. I think you have captured pervasive human issue creatively and with personal meaning. We can each ask ourselves “What decision is already made that in the waiting place? And why?”
One of my favorite books. I also got my first copy as a high school graduation gift. Now I give it to others when they graduate.