I'm Emily P. Freeman and welcome to the next right thing.

You're listening to episode 249.

This is a podcast about making decisions but also about making a life.

If you struggle with decision fatigue, chronic hesitation, or if you just need a few minutes

away from the constant stream of information and is sometimes delightful but also distracting

hum of entertainment, you're in the right place for discerning your next right thing.

Look at me learn about listening from other listening professions.

I'm not talking about counselors or therapists but those whose job it is to hear on behalf

of someone else.

As a former sign language interpreter, turned writer, turned spiritual director, I'm reflecting

on how some of my learned skills in one area of study are now informing my life as a listener

in a different way.

Perhaps some of these same principles can help you in your own discernment process.

Well, they say only a small percentage of college graduates end up working in their chosen

fields of study.

Don't you love my very specific and scientific they?

Well the actual number depends on where you look and who you ask but even casual conversation

with just friends and acquaintances reveals that it's rare to find someone these days

who went to college to study a thing and then ended up doing that thing for the rest of

their working lives.

It's ironic now being my age sending two of my own kids to college walking with them

as they painstakingly decided where to go and what to study because I know from my own

...