When I chose to gradually become a coach and an entrepreneur, I was proud of this decision. It seemed to be the right choice for me, the logical continuation of every step I’ve made on my professional path. Like becoming a transformational life coach, eventually becoming my boss seemed the perfect recipe. Having thus decided, I continued living my life, adding social media upgrades, legal and tax-related research, design of coaching offers and full-scale coaching programs, etc., to my already well-packed project list.
Little did I think about the flip side of my choices.
You see, each choice comes with a small print. With every choice to do something, you choose not to do some other thing. Or things. Sometimes, these no-choices are self-explanatory – if you decide to take a train to go to visit your friend, it is self-explanatory that you’ll not be driving a car.
There are, however, hidden choices that you make each time you make a choice; and they might be not immediately visible. You might not even think these are the no-choices immediately.
When you choose to be a business owner, you decide to allocate a chunk of your time to it. Each coaching client takes up a space you could have used for sleep, additional pilates class, new hobby.
Whatever we choose, we also choose at least one “not-to”.
It is called opportunity cost.
My goal list now includes the opportunity cost section. Because when the excitement of the new project wears off and I fall into the old patterns (as we all eventually do), the opportunity costs are what remind me of how I choose not to spend my time for the sake of achieving that goal.