Empowering Your Decision-Making Skills for Success
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[00:00:00] Hello, welcome to the Productivity Genius Podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Fifield. And in this episode, we're talking about becoming amazing at decision making. Now, if you listened to last week's episode, I said that this week was going to be all about habits. And, uh, I guess I lied because I want to do this week on decision making.
Based on everything I observed this week with clients. So there were so many clients in the program that I work in and my own personal clients and my friends who are entrepreneurs that we're getting a little bit stalled out and It really all comes down to looking at how we make decisions and how to become better at decision making So before I give the steps, the protocol for making great decisions.
Let's first look at the way that we're thinking about making decisions. One of the things that I see just stopping so much progress in so many of my entrepreneur clients and [00:01:00] friends is this idea that there is a right decision or a better decision or the best decision. This is a really unuseful way to consider your options when you're making a decision.
You'll never really know how something's going to turn out in the future, right? We don't have a crystal ball. There's no way to know if you make this one decision versus this other one, how either of those is going to turn out. So we actually inadvertently just stop all progress by believing that there is a best decision.
And that there's some way for us to know that in advance, the best decision is the one that you make. There really is no other decision. Follow me here for a second. Like you're going to make a decision, right? That's the one you make. And then there was this other thing that you were considering that you didn't decide to do.
So that was never the decision. It literally doesn't exist. So, when you make a decision, it's [00:02:00] just the one decision you made, right? To decide, I forget exactly what that means, but it's something about cutting, right? So you cut off that other option, like it doesn't exist anymore.
So to think about that other decision in the future, like, Oh, I should have decided this or that. Well, you didn't. Right. That didn't exist. And you really don't know how that would have turned out. And it's really not even useful to imagine how it would have turned out because you really have no idea. So many things interact with us and our ideas and things happen during the day that we have no idea are going to happen.
So we might like make up this make believe world where had we made this other decision, things would have worked out beautifully, but you really don't know. And it's really unuseful to spend time imagining that. Another great thing to look at is how you're going to decide in the future if a decision that you made was a good or bad decision.
Sometimes things are not going to work out the way we planned, right? A lot of times they don't, and [00:03:00] we can choose to make that mean an infinite number of things.
Right. There's lots of ways to think about this. Like when things don't go the way you planned, things like take a turn for the worse. So a couple of options are, ah, this is a plot twist, like, huh, I know this all works out for the best in the end. I didn't see this coming. I didn't realize this was going to be part of my journey,
I wonder what I'll tell myself about this when I look back from my future where everything has worked out and things are going great and I've reached my goals What am I gonna make this part of my journey mean and sometimes I think it's just a plot twist Huh?
I thought that I was gonna take this step then this step then this step to get to my final goal Turns out there was a plot twist in there that I didn't see coming, but really that was the thing I needed to ultimately get me to where I was going. Had that not happened, if I had not gone this way, I wouldn't be where I am.
And of course that's true, right? The, the life that you're leading up [00:04:00] to your future life. are all of the steps you need to get there. So that plot twist is the thing you need to get to the next step, right? To get to your future. So I like thinking when things don't go well, I like thinking of that as a plot twist.
Again, we don't want to go and look at, say, the other thing we were considering as our decision and say, Oh, had I gone this way, it would have worked out. better, right?
There is no bizarro world, right? Like, remember that episode in Seinfeld? There's no bizarro world where Kelly is making that other decision and I get to go and look at where she got with that, right? There isn't another version of our life where we get to see where that other decision would have taken us and what results we would get.
We can make that up in our head. It's just not useful.
And then the last thing I would love for you to consider believing, because it is so useful for me, is that every decision you've made, you've [00:05:00] made from the best thinking you had available in the moment.
You're always doing your best. Now, sometimes your best isn't that great, right? Maybe you're sick, or you're tired, or cranky, or feeling frustrated, down, or discouraged. If you make a decision from that place, my guess is it's not going to be as good of a decision as if you were feeling like, inspired, and powerful, and amazing.
But it's the best decision you could make based on the thoughts and feelings you're having in that moment. You always make sense. There's nothing wrong with you You're always doing your best and it totally makes sense that whatever decision you make from the thinking you have Is the decision you made and it's totally okay
maybe things don't work out the way you plan just because of something you totally couldn't have seen coming or we're just Unaware of something or maybe you were ill informed. You just didn't have all the information to make a decision based on some things that were [00:06:00] true, but you just didn't know.
Well, it would make sense that you would make the decision that created the results. That you did because you didn't have that other information. It's not a problem.
You were doing the best thing you could with what you had. And now you can make a new decision to support yourself and your goals going forward.
This isn't to say, that when this comes up for me, right, I make a decision, I don't see the results that are coming, right? Usually, you know, you're trying to make a decision for the best things. Things work out crappy, It's not like I'm like, yay, I was making the best decision and I feel good about this,
I don't live in Unicornville and it's not like I never get disappointed or bummed. In fact, I don't try to immediately start thinking these positive thoughts, I don't want to rush through negative emotions. I actually want to feel negative emotions. I want to get really good at processing them.
And even though I know that I'm always creating my own negative emotions with the way I'm thinking and what's going on in my [00:07:00] body and that I can change it if I wanted to, I still definitely want to allow it to be there, process it and continue to prove to myself that I'm capable of feeling all of those crappy emotions.
That's where self confidence comes, right? Your overall sense of self worth, your ability to trust yourself, and knowing that you have the ability to feel any emotion. But once I've given myself the space to feel crappy, to go through those emotions, whatever they may be, disappointment, anger, whatever it is that comes up from the results of my decision, then...
Once it's processed all the way through, then I want to access that thinking that, okay, there was nothing wrong with that wasn't what I expected, but
I made the best decision I knew how to make at the time with the thinking that was available to me. And this is where we are. And now what can I do going forward?
Okay, so some optional ways just to review of thinking about decisions are one, Try not to [00:08:00] think about there being a right or a better decision. It's really not useful. You're going to make a decision and then that's going to be the only decision that was made. So there, once you decide, there is no other decision.
There's just the one that you decided on.
Also, remember that you are the one that decides whether that was a good decision or not. So just take on that responsibility. You can choose to think about the results of your decision however you want. When things don't turn out the way that you had initially hoped, you could look at it as a plot twist
or a learning opportunity. You don't have to necessarily decide. It was a terrible decision. And then the last thing that we've already looked at is every decision that you make is coming from the best thinking that you have available to you in the moment.
So now that we've looked at some optional ways to think about decision making and results that we get from our decisions, let's look at some of the ways that we might already be thinking about them that we don't even realize that we're thinking. So let's [00:09:00] explore a little bit your current thinking about decisions.
So one, one of the reasons we often avoid making decisions, me too, is that we think That there is a good or there is a bad decision and there something bad is going to happen if we make the bad decision. So if you have that, that idea, and I know I have this too, right, where you're trying to make a decision and you're a little bit stressed about it because you're thinking, Oh, I don't want to mess this up because I don't want the bad thing to happen.
But in reality, most. Most of us don't go down that road, right? We start to feel that like nervousness, that anxiety about, uh, what if this goes wrong? And then we usually Stop thinking about it, or we punt the decision to the future because we start to feel bad. But when you're trying to make a decision, you may want to actually go down that road.
Not, you probably won't want to. But it is useful to actually follow that whole path through. Like, What are you thinking? The worst case scenario is here.
We probably don't initially want to look at that, [00:10:00] right? Because we're like, oh, that makes me nervous to think about the worst case scenario. But it's usually actually super helpful. play that whole scenario out in your head and be realistic, right? So worst case scenario could be like a nuclear attack or a catastrophic tsunami or something, but most of us, that's not actually what we're afraid about in our decision making.
So it's usually something like fear of failure or embarrassment or like shame or losing time or wasting time, what are you afraid of? If you make the quote unquote Bad decision. What would be the result of that? What are you afraid is going to happen? once you define that, then think, all right, if that happened, what would I do?
When we ask ourselves this, and we really think, okay, let's say this happened. What would happen next? We usually don't take ourselves that far down the road we usually just say or this could go bad this bad thing could happen and then we stop thinking about it But take it all the way through if that happened, what would you do?
You've already survived your worst [00:11:00] day, right? So you've been able to handle that worst thing for sure You can handle whatever the heck would come about if you made a quote unquote bad decision It can be really helpful to see that you would be able to move on and move forward if things went south, right?
If something bad happened and this doesn't turn out the way you planned, it's not actually going to be the end of the world. Do you want that result? No. But you'd figure it out.
That's one thing that is probably going on. I see this all the time. So at least someone who's listening is gonna be like , Oh yeah, totally. As soon as I start thinking about it, I'm like, Oh, what if this happens? I start to get nervous about it. And then I stop thinking about it because I'm scared to make that decision because I don't want the bad thing to happen.
So that's one thing that's very common. I, of course, do this too. I have a human brain just like you. So this is why this is so familiar to me. I see it in coaching, but I also of course see it in my own brain.
Another very common thing that we do is we just keep all of this [00:12:00] floating around in our heads, How many Undecided things are there floating around that keep pulling at your attention . We like don't set a deadline or anything for the decision We don't follow a process for making a decision, which I will share with you in this episode.
We just think of all the possibilities. And then we start to feel overwhelmed or confused, feels crappy. And so we decide we aren't going to decide. And we just punt the decision to some undisclosed time in the future, right? This is super common. This totally makes sense because when we start thinking about something and we start feeling either confused or overwhelmed or crappy, you know, it's like starts, it gets like.
Anxiety feeling and we decide, you know what? Um, I, I can't decide on this now cause I don't have enough information or whatever we decide. We get immediate relief, As soon as you stop thinking about it and decide not to think about it, it feels much better. So it makes sense that we do that.
Unfortunately, though, it just transfers that anxiety and that overwhelm and that feeling and actually just kind of extends it, It doesn't help us get past it. We just punt [00:13:00] that into the future and then most likely revisit that with some regularity over and over again. So actually making the overwhelm or the confusion or whatever the negative emotion is.
Even bigger, 'cause we just keep getting to experience it and also carrying that like weight of those unmade decisions as they keep coming up and swirling in and out of our consciousness, pulling on our attention. It just drains our energy. So we really do pay a long-term price for that short-term relief of not dealing with the decision at the moment.
And then additionally, kind of sadly, we don't make any progress on the thing that we're trying to decide on. It would be way more efficient, like on average, just make the decision, move forward, and learn, even if it doesn't turn out great. Just make the decision, course correct, and go, right? That would keep us moving.
Even if sometimes it's going to be a little step back, we'll be able to make so many more steps in the same amount of time.
If we continue on our regular [00:14:00] system for decision making, which may not even be a system, then very likely we're gonna just slow our progress down on our goals. We want to get really good at making decisions. Here is the process that I suggest you go through for any decision you are trying to make.
So the first step, and I will print these out in the show notes, but the first step is to brain dump all of your unmade decisions, Go through, just give yourself maybe a time or five minutes, what are all of the things That are floating around your brain that you haven't decided on, like things like when you're going to do things, if you're going to do things, how you're going to do things,
What are the decisions that you haven't made and that you keep thinking, Oh, I got to decide that I've got to do that. And it just keeps pulling on your attention and draining your energy. I'm sure you've heard of decision fatigue. the more decisions a person makes over the course of a day, the more like physically, mentally, emotionally depleted you become.
And the [00:15:00] decision to not decide is yet another decision. Continuously having that thing come into your consciousness thinking, oh, I gotta decide on that. And then not deciding, deciding not to decide is just one more decision that you're adding to your day. It's just so not helpful. so step one is to brain dump all of those unmade decisions and then we're gonna go through this process one at a time.
I do find this personally kind of taxing, so, you may want to decide to break those up You may want to also rearrange those in the order in which you want to make those decisions and put those on your calendar. Like, here's where I'm going to deal with this decision.
You don't have to say, this is what I'm going to have it decided by, that's our next step. But say, okay, here's the things that I'm going to deal with making decisions on today. Maybe you pick two. Maybe you have 10 other things that aren't decided on then put that on your calendar for some day in the future say, okay at eight o'clock on Wednesday morning.
I'm going to pick my next two things to make [00:16:00] decisions on and go through this process on the next two things. And then you could just keep putting those out and say, okay, and then I'm also going to put on my schedule at that time. When I'm going to deal with my next undone decisions. First get all of the decisions that aren't made onto a piece of paper and choose one to go through this process.
Step two is to set a deadline for this decision. You can just decide. In reality, all decisions are made in an instant. So you actually don't need any time. You literally could look at that list of decisions to be made and just make them all right now. But that probably sounds horrible, so I'm not going to suggest you do that.
Because most of them, there's a reason why you haven't decided. Probably because we're thinking that these are really important things or something like that. Or some of the thoughts that we've mentioned earlier. But when we look at this first decision, you're trying to decide them, we're going to set a deadline. How do you [00:17:00] know how long to give yourself to make this decision? Again, decisions are made in an instant, so you actually don't need any time, but if you want to give yourself the space to like do some research, if you would feel better making the decision after researching or maybe getting advice or doing some self coaching or maybe getting some professional coaching, then say, okay, I'm going to.
book, a coaching session, or I'm going to give myself time to reflect on this journal about it. Whatever research it, I'm going to do that Tuesday morning from eight to nine or something like that. Give yourself the research time, put it on your calendar
and give yourself a container for that portion of decision making. You don't want to say, well, I'll make the decision after I do research. You could be researching this for the rest of your life. You want to decide how long you're going to give yourself a research, and then if that's the only piece that was missing, I need to do research, and then I'll make a decision, put a block of time on your schedule [00:18:00] to do your research, and then give yourself a block of time to make the decision based on that research.
Put it on your calendar and decide now I'm going to honor it.
If this is a big decision, if you're telling yourself, this is such a big decision, something that maybe you've been trying to decide on for a long time, you may want to get a coach for something like this. This is how I love to use my coaching sessions is to make decisions because decisions are so powerful.
And sometimes I have a human brain. I totally get stuck.. And I get confused and I'm not sure what I want to do and working with a coach, the coach doesn't tell you what you should do, right? The purpose of the coach is to show you your thinking and to help you access what you really want to do, They're not going to tell you what you should do.
They're going to help you find your answers. One of my clients that I worked with said that working with me was so intense, and I wanted to check in with her and make sure she meant that in a helpful way, and she said, yeah, it's absolutely amazing, because I make so many decisions, and I make so [00:19:00] much more progress, because I get so clear on what I need to do, and I get dramatically more done, because I don't waste any time Just going back and forth on these undone decisions so she can move forward with a clear mind.
That's what's great about getting a coach. It's not that they tell you what to do, but you're just so much more clear when you go through this work with a coach.
So in this second step where you're setting your deadline to help you set that deadline, you might want to ask yourself, is there any information I want to get before I make my decision? How and when will I get that information?
And am I giving myself too much time to make the decision? Sometimes for things that feel hard to decide on, I might give myself extra space and it's really just procrastinating on the decision. So do you really need the amount of time you're giving yourself or are you just procrastinating on it?
The third step is to decide that you are going to support yourself in your decision. One of the main reasons we delay making decisions is to avoid making the wrong decision, But remember, ask yourself, [00:20:00] how are you going to know that this decision was right or wrong?
What if every decision you make is the decision you were supposed to make to get to your final destination? What if there are no wrong decisions? What if either you made progress or you learned something? What if decisions other people would deem as bad are actually decisions that allow us to learn the most and give us
the most clarity for our future decisions? One of the worst parts of like getting to our results is what we tell ourselves. So we beat ourselves up. I know for me, I used to be so mean to myself when I made a mistake.
So I would go into this irrational tailspin of like self loathing berating myself. It was so over the top. It was quite bananas. Like I really would go. Nuts being so mean to myself and this has slowed me down so much Because I was so afraid for so long to make a mistake because I knew I was just gonna be so evil to myself Like I would say things to myself that I would never [00:21:00] say to another person But knowing that if I made a mistake, I was gonna be mean to myself.
I would Really delay on making decisions and making progress until everything I thought was absolutely perfect, which of course is never going to happen. So everything was just so slow, but once I decided, okay, I'm gonna support myself, I'm never gonna beat myself up again. It just became so much easier to make decisions.
We already talked about this. You're the one that gets to decide that it was the right decision So you could just decide all the decisions I make are the right decisions for my life,
And they are you're the only one living your life. This is the life you're supposed to live. So every decision you make was the right one. You're going to learn something from it. You're going to grow from it. Maybe the decision makes you feel negative emotion. You're going to get better at feeling negative emotion.
Yay. I know it's not something that we really want, but maybe that's what we need. So maybe you don't get the result you were hoping for, but that doesn't mean it was the wrong decision. Remember, [00:22:00] you can just decide that you were making the best decision you could with the thinking that was available to you.
And there's no way to know that it would have turned out better had you made another decision. And it just doesn't matter. The past literally doesn't exist, but in our minds, so we can just choose to support ourselves and think in a way that serves us going forward.
How do you want to use what you've learned from that decision to propel you forward? Maybe it's as simple as being really kind to yourself for the first time when things go wrong. Choose that you're going to support yourself no matter what. And the more times you practice this, supporting yourself, the easier it's going to get to make decisions because you're going to know that that future version of you has your back and is going to take care of you and that version of you isn't going to be mad at today version of you.
They'll know that you're doing the best you could and you were trying to hook them up. And step four, decide you're all in on the decision for a specific window. Your brain is [00:23:00] absolutely going to want to reopen this topic for discussion, especially if things start to maybe go a little bit sideways and you start to indulge in the thinking like this isn't working. When we think this isn't working, we stop working.
We stop getting creative . We stop staying invested in making it work. Give yourself the guideline that you will follow through on this decision until whatever the time frame is. Maybe it's literally time, or maybe it's until I do this thing this many times, and I'll reevaluate at that time,
so pick a time frame, it could be a specific time or it could be until I do a hundred attempts at this or I get a thousand people through my funnel or whatever it is that you're talking about, this many iterations or this many attempts and decide that I'm supporting this decision until then.
After I get through that criteria, whatever I've decided. I will reevaluate then, but for now I'm sticking with it. So it could be like I bought a program, so I'm going to [00:24:00] stick with this program or I'm going to stick with this coach. I'm going to hire this coach I'm going to do everything that this, this course says, or this coach says, I'm not going to buy another product or course.
Until this one ends, that's a decision that I love making, I go into a course or I work with a coach and I'm going to do everything they say until their program ends. And then when it's over, I'll reevaluate and look at what I learned and decide, is that something I want to go forward or do I want to try something new?
But it simplifies everything so much. If I just decide for now, I'm just all in on this. This is my decision and I'm going to learn a lot here.
Just know it's totally normal that your brain is going to want to revisit the topic as soon as there's any sign of doubt or confusion or negativity, things going wrong. That's totally normal. It's just your brain trying to protect you and you just want to remind your brain at that point, Hey, we're just going with this decision.
We decided this is what we're going to do and we'll reevaluate. Okay. I'll listen to you when the [00:25:00] time has come.
So just to review, the four steps are one, to brain dump all of those unmade decisions. Two, to give yourself a deadline for making the decision. Three, decide you're going to support yourself in that decision. And four,
decide you're all in on that decision for a specific window.
If you need help with this. If you want to try working with a coach or if there's a decision you're really struggling on, then why don't you hop on a free 30 minute coaching session with me?
I offer three of these per week, so if you don't see any times on there for this week, they'll open up next week.
I'd love for you to experience the power and the clarity and the calm of making these advanced decisions. And I'd love for you to see how fast you're able to move when you practice deliberately making decisions in this way.
So I hope you are one of the three that gets to grab that free session, and I [00:26:00] hope you have an amazing week.
