How do you figure out what to do after you graduate from college? In this episode, I show a college student how to clarify what she wants, reduce the stress of finding the perfect job, and avoid getting overwhelmed by uncertainties.

Key topics we cover:

• 2:27 - How to reframe "I don't know what I want"
• 5:58 - How to use the "Happiness Pyramid" to clarify what you want
• 8:48 - What to do with advice that tells you to follow your passion
• 13:50 - Why feelings can be super useful in the process of clarifying what you want
• 14:40 - How to shift your thinking so that it's easier to recognize the options you have
• 16:24 - How to think about options
• 18:33 - How you should approach generating new options if things don't work out
• 21:05 - Why it's critical to learn how to deal with uncertainty
• 25:26 - How to design exercises that make the job search less overwhelming

To learn more from Michelle about decision making, check out

• The Ask A Decision Engineer website
• Her Stanford Continuing Studies course
• Her self-paced course Decision Toolkit for Personal Decisions
• Her Decision Toolkit for Coaches and Counselors virtual workshop on Maven

Michelle Florendo is a Stanford-trained decision engineer and executive coach who is on a mission to teach people how to make decisions with less stress and more clarity. Over the past decade, she has coached and taught hundreds of leaders across tech, healthcare, and financial services, in organizations ranging from pre-IPO startups to major tech companies like Amazon, Google, and Salesforce. 

She's been an adjunct lecturer at Stanford, helps train coaches as a faculty coach for Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute, and hosts the podcast, Ask A Decision Engineer. She earned her engineering degree from Stanford and her MBA from UC Berkeley.

For those interested in exploring Michelle's coaching and speaking services further, additional information can be found on her professional website at poweredbydecisions.com.