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From Decision Fatigue to Decision Fit
29 Plays7 months ago
Do you feel like you're drowning in decision overwhelm? Mom-exhausted by 5pm, and you still need to feed, bathe, help with homework, drive to sports and get the kids to bed? Maybe this leads to another decision - make dinner or door dash and crash on the couch at 8pm watching Survivor?
The average adult makes over 35,000 decisions a day, and when you add "Mom" to that - watch out! No wonder we are exhausted!
Tune in as Amy Day,mom of 3, decision making queen, and CEO of Clarity 4 Action and I talk about how to make decisions with ease and teach our kids to do the same so when they are up against a major choice as teens/young adults, they are confident decision making dynamos!
Find Amy here - clarity4action.org
Free download - https://clarity4action.org/what-we-teach/
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome back to Mom Tabulous. I'm your host, Sharla Mander. And with me today is Amy Day, co-founder and executive director of clarityforaction.org. She's a board member of the Society of Decision Professionals, which I didn't even know there was one of those, and an expert in teaching decision-making skills to young people, adults, and families.
00:00:37
Speaker
With over two decades of experience and a Stanford University Continuing Studies certification in Decision Education, Amy is dedicated to empowering individuals and families to navigate life's choices with confidence and clarity. Welcome, Amy. It's so great to be here. I love what you're doing. I love what you're doing. Thank you. Me too.
00:01:03
Speaker
These conversations are really fun. I love having the guests. I was like, when I started the podcast, I kind of thought, maybe I'll just do some
The Decision-Making Landscape for Moms
00:01:10
Speaker
myself. But I really love having the guests on because I think it's such good conversation. And we were talking about the goal. The goal is the moms feel seen and they feel understood. And I love what you do with decision making because moms make decisions all day long. It doesn't end.
00:01:34
Speaker
And you know, I think if you just look at the average human, they're making about 35,000 decisions a day. Okay. Big and small, like it's exhausting to even think about. And then you like frost that with mom. It's like, these are sometimes like high impact, high stakes decisions that we're making for other people. Yeah. And we're in this position of constantly
00:02:05
Speaker
Like actually a lot of times being focused on other and not even on ourselves or what we want or like being able to slow down, right? we're just executing executing executing and uh That's just a lot. That's a lot. I have three kids. I get it. They're all in their 20s and and it's just um
00:02:28
Speaker
Yeah, my hope in this conversation is to give people some just simple upgrades to their decision making so they can walk away with some really good tools they can start to implement right away to help just recognize what's going on, diagnose what's happening in their family and for their kids, and just get the support they need.
Strategies to Simplify Decision-Making
00:02:50
Speaker
Yeah, so when you talk about decision making, are you talking about like, what's for dinner? Or is it like,
00:02:57
Speaker
Who's the pediatrician? What college are you going to? What level of decision making are we talking about? Right. We're in decision soup. And there's little decisions and big decisions happening. And so I just want to make some distinctions. Yes, there are in the moment decisions that are what's for dinner. That we have habits around those decisions about what maybe we eat or don't eat.
00:03:27
Speaker
how we eat, what time we eat, those kinds of things are behaviors that are wired into us that make decision making easier. And so those are decisions that are great to just automate as much as possible, right? Just let ourselves make those decisions. But what happens if we decide the family's gonna eat vegetarian or maybe one child wants to be a vegetarian? That's now become a policy decision that you actually have to think about. It's no longer a habit, right? I'm like,
00:03:57
Speaker
Okay, what can they eat? What can't they eat? What am I buying at the grocery store? All those things that you're used to doing that were just automated and easy suddenly aren't, right? And the more we're doing that kind of decision making, the more decision fatigue we get. Yes. Lesson number one is recognizing for yourself
00:04:24
Speaker
recognizing for your kids when they walk through the back door after school and drop a backpack, whatever kind of learning they're doing out in the world, right? They come in and you can guess that they are decision fatigued and actually not decision fit. They've had a long day. They're tired, right? It's a great acronym from AA called HALT.
00:04:52
Speaker
hungry, angry, lonely, tired, which means stop. And those are great umbrella words for hungry. Does my body need something? Do I need water? What do I need? Angry could be frustrated, can be just feeling unsettled or a little pissed off. It's kind of this umbrella to just say, wait, am I in this angrier zone?
00:05:17
Speaker
Am I lonely? Am I sad? Do I feel isolated? Those kinds of feelings. Or am I tired? Physically, am I just exhausted? To start to think, to observe yourself and the people who walk in your door as a mom and say, what does this person state? What can I do to support myself or them in becoming more decision fit?
Personal Experiences with Decision Fatigue
00:05:46
Speaker
So I always, my kids would walk through the door and they'd say whatever they said. Like, I need to make a decision or I don't even know, right? They just don't even know how they feel sometimes. And I'd be like, I'm making a snack. Would you like something? Because I know what I'm doing is teaching them an important skill of self-reflection of like, do I need something right now that's not supporting my, like,
00:06:14
Speaker
that's outside of decision making that's gonna help me be a better decision maker. So how do I support my body or my mind first, improve my decision fitness, and then tackle something, right? I'm curious, have you ever had a child wake you up in the middle of the night? No, I don't know what that's like. Never happened as a mom before, yeah. Right.
00:06:43
Speaker
I had a policy, I made this policy a long time ago, that my kids have 24-7 access to me in the sense that I don't know when their needs are going to suddenly spike and they need to feel support for whatever. And so my middle son, wonderful, he's always the one who shows up at 1 AM and says, I have to make a decision. And literally, I would say to him,
00:07:14
Speaker
Listen, we're going to sit down. I'm happy to listen and support you thinking about this and processing. We are not making a decision right now. I'm not decision fit, and neither are you, right? Yeah. So we're going to decide tomorrow, not tonight, because we're not decision fit. So just calling it out. Fast forward. He's in his 20s, and I'm mad at somebody, and I'm writing an email, OK? And he walks up to me and sets his hand on my shoulder and says,
00:07:44
Speaker
I know you're really frustrated, mom, and you have every right to feel frustrated right now." He said, you're not
Science and Rhythms of Decision-Making
00:07:51
Speaker
decision fit. You need to step away from the computer.
00:07:54
Speaker
It's like, he used my own voodoo against me, right? I know. When they use it against you, you're like, well, man, I made you so smart. God. Right, right. So recognizing decision fitness, recognizing decision fatigue, people at some, I think it was Stanford or Harvard, someplace they did this huge study on just making a decision.
00:08:25
Speaker
burn energy and make you tired? Okay, I'm like pretty sure the answer is yes. They actually found out yes, absolutely scientifically it does. And so as our day goes on, we get more and more fatigued, right? From making all these decisions throughout our day, we're just more and more fatigued. Our brain gets like burns energy and is tired.
00:08:49
Speaker
So if you have a really important meeting to, to get something accomplished, like as an adult, maybe 10 30 in the morning, it's a better time for that. Right. What's better for you personally for teenagers? I know actually they're, they peak at a different time. They're, they're primed maybe later in the evening. Like we all have different rhythms. So recognizing when is somebody primed and better and
00:09:19
Speaker
shape and better shape for making a great decision. So just be a great observer and get curious. Get curious about what's happening. But my gosh, use it on yourself first. Put your oxygen mask on. My decision fit? No, pretty sure I'm not. Right? I love that. I love this, you know, I'm a fitness person, so I love this decision fit.
00:09:43
Speaker
that you talk about. It's so true. And they're definitely like, yeah, in the middle of the night, or like, I might hold my high schooler likes to melt down at like 1130 school night. And I'm like, girl, and then it's maybe I should just stop doing this. And I'm gonna drop that. And I'm just gonna quit school. And you know, and it's like, okay, let's just not make that decision right now.
00:10:11
Speaker
We are very tired and we've been working. She's been working all day, right? So yeah, it's like, this is not the time. Drop the favorite thing that you love at school because you're super tired. Right.
Connecting Decisions to Aspirations
00:10:28
Speaker
I think also in those moments, I know with all my kids, some of them are huggers. Some of them just need a hand on their shoulder.
00:10:37
Speaker
Uh, usually I make contact with them. They still have that experience sometimes in their twenties, right? Um, to just say, I know it's really hard right now. And I know that one of the best things that's going to serve you is to sleep. Yeah. Could you, could we, maybe we both sleep and then let's talk about it first thing in the morning.
00:11:04
Speaker
You have an opportunity when they're in their right mind sort of in the morning to actually talk to them about what is the person in the future going to want to have done? Sometimes that helps people get, like pulls them out of the moment, gets them connected to what they want, which is a really key part of decision-making.
00:11:32
Speaker
What they want, what they care about, the life they want to create. So I did foreign exchange in high school. I was terrified. I threw up on the plane on the way to Costa Rica. I was like sent to Costa Rica. I was going to be like, who knows where you're going to go in here? I'm going to Costa Rica. I'm like, I don't even speak Spanish. And it was terrifying. I wanted to do it, right? But I wanted to be the person who had done it.
00:12:02
Speaker
If I just relied on my character in that moment of losing it, being really scared,
00:12:14
Speaker
That's not what pulls us through. It's actually connecting to the future and saying, what person do I want to be? What do I want to say that I had accomplished? It's a way of flipping the narrative, but it's also getting them connected to what they value as a noble purpose. Maybe you have a child who's a performer and feels stage fright or is exhausted from all the rehearsals in that moment.
00:12:44
Speaker
But what helps pull them through is to get them connected to, I just, I love that feeling after a performance of like, I just left it all on, like I put it all out there on the stage, right? That future, that's what helps pull them through and gets them into creative decision making. Yes.
00:13:08
Speaker
Sorry, I didn't mean to like go off on that whole woo. I mean, this is so good and juicy. And I know we could go on. Yeah. Yeah. About this. And I love, I love helping the kids make this, like we're talking about mom's make decisions all day long, but yeah, how do we prime our kids, right? To see that they have power in this decision making, right? Right.
00:13:32
Speaker
Right, right. I think what's really, I just breaks
Learning from Decision Outcomes
00:13:38
Speaker
my heart all the time when I look at society and I go, okay, our power isn't our decision making, right? We're the decision maker. Even recognizing, am I the decision maker? Or what role do I have in this decision? So as a parent, are you the decision maker? Are you sharing a decision with your kids?
00:14:01
Speaker
Are you supporting a decision maker? If you have a teenager, how can you walk alongside them and support them in making great decisions? Of course, that would mean you'd have to know what it takes to make a good decision. That's a deeper conversation, right? But let's just start with how society has set you up to feel like a failure.
00:14:30
Speaker
The anatomy of a decision. We make a decision, okay? I've decided to, I don't know, apply to college, go to trade school, whatever the thing is. I've decided to do this thing. And then we have an outcome, like a result that we experience, okay? And in the middle of that, that nobody talks about, is this thing called uncertainty, okay?
00:14:59
Speaker
So I can make a decision to apply to these three colleges and uncertainty happens. For whatever reason, the wind blows a certain way. COVID is the perfect example of uncertainty. Nobody saw that coming. It's like, what? How is that possible? I mean, sure we know pandemics exist, but did we expect that? No. To have uncertainty and then you have
00:15:26
Speaker
an outcome on the other side. So it's like the swirl happens when we release a decision. We don't have control over the outcome because uncertainty is there. Guess what? There is a downside and upside to uncertainty. I buy a used car and it's got 150,000 miles on it. It seems like a great deal. I've made a great decision. I feel good about it. And it's an awesome car and I get 300,000 miles out of it.
00:15:57
Speaker
I could also make a great decision to buy that car. And I start driving it a month later, it just keeps breaking down. It's a lemon. It's a lemon. Our society says if it's a lemon, it's a bad decision. If it's an awesome car, it's a good decision. It was the exact same decision, right? So we spend our time swirling in the space of outcomes.
00:16:27
Speaker
of what happened saying that means this about the decision. You fail a test means you're a bad student, you didn't study. You get a great grade on a test. It means you did study well. I know people who didn't study at all.
00:16:42
Speaker
and did well on a test, right? So we're pointing to the wrong place. We're pointing to outcomes to say, this means this was a great decision. No, it's going to take like, you got to really think about this because the temptation is there because that's how society is built. Think about it. People in business, you get a bonus if whatever you execute it on works out. Yeah.
00:17:08
Speaker
And maybe you get a really bad review if it doesn't work out. It could have been the best idea, the best execution, uncertainty happens, some market fluctuation happens, no control over, and all of a sudden, you're in a different ballgame, right? So with our kids, to point back to the decision, which is what they can control,
00:17:37
Speaker
How was your decision? So fail the test. I'm so sorry. You know, like how was your decision? How was your studying? How did that go? I studied really hard. I don't know why I failed the test. Then you start to have a cycle of learning, right? The cycle of learning is maybe I studied the wrong things. Maybe I could talk to my teacher.
00:18:08
Speaker
Maybe the teacher tested you on something that they never lectured on and wasn't in the book. That's happened to me before in college, right? I didn't do anything wrong. They didn't teach me the material. So to take back your power is to stand in your decision making and say, how was the decision?
00:18:33
Speaker
Then you can release some of that fear of outcomes and regret and all of those things because you know where your power resides in the decision and you get to just let it go and support yourself. If it's a bad outcome, just support yourself in that. It does feel bad, but if you've made a good decision, congratulations. How would you like to do it next time? Yeah.
00:19:00
Speaker
Yeah. No, I love that, right? I was looking at not the decision, but like the outcome for the feedback of like, well, this is what the decision was the decision. Here's the outcome worth repeating or worth trying a different way. Right? Right. Right. I had my son, one of my sons called me from college one day and said, um,
00:19:25
Speaker
I am really upset I made a great decision and I had a terrible outcome. I was like, okay, well, let's talk about your decision. He's like, I did this, I did this. I said, great. Do you know anything today that you didn't know that would make you make the decision differently next time? No, I think it was a great decision. I think I executed, I think everything was great about it.
00:19:52
Speaker
Did you get feedback from other people? They thought it was a great decision. Okay, and it didn't work out? He said, yeah. I said, great. Do it exactly the same way next time. Because you're building good luck. It just happened to go sideways. You 100% have to just look at that decision and say, do I know something new today? That's learning. Great. Right? Yeah.
00:20:21
Speaker
But honestly, if it actually, you made a great decision, if you do it the same next time, your chances of having a good outcome go up. So let's think about the opposite. Let's think about texting and driving. Kids think they're invincible, right? Yeah. Texting and driving. Statistically, you're as likely to get into an accident as if you were drinking and driving.
00:20:50
Speaker
And people text and drive all the time and they get home safely and they say, oh, good, I'm magical. They're not magical. They're actually stacking the deck for bad luck. If they keep executing on that decision over time, statistically, you know, over time, they're way more likely to have a car accident and actually hurt somebody or themselves.
Decision Quality vs. Outcomes
00:21:14
Speaker
Right? So it's important. So that good outcome I got home safe does not tell you how their decision making was. So get them anchored to decision making so they can be making safe choices, so they can think about the future that they want to create and to just support them when things go sideways and nurture learning no matter what their age, encourage their learning.
00:21:42
Speaker
Yeah. So how do we help them to like make the, the good decisions, like don't text and drive, right? Like, like don't take that drink at the party when you're 15 and you're at your first house party and you're right. Everybody's drinking and you're in, you know, or tell your parents, um, yes, their parents will be home when they won't be home and you know, right. That maybe.
00:22:12
Speaker
You get away with it once, but maybe the second time the cops show up or something. Or your parents find out or something. So how do we prime them and help them to make good decisions even in the face of peer pressure? Yeah, it's a great question. I think there's really some great conversations about policy decisions.
00:22:41
Speaker
So in my childhood, I was raised in a decision laboratory. I don't know if you know this about me, not like a lab coat kind of thing. My dad was one of the pioneers in the field of decision analysis, who's at Stanford University. And he and his friends were creating an entire field that you can now get a PhD in and all of these things.
00:23:12
Speaker
It was for business, operations research. Little did they know the unexpected byproduct was their kids were actually being raised talking about decision making in a completely different way. So I just naturally, we would talk about policy decisions. Like I had a policy at a young age that I would not drink and drive.
00:23:39
Speaker
I had a policy that safety was most important to me. And so I was actually the kid who didn't drink at the party and who gave kids rides home so they would be safe. That was my identity. That's just the person I decided to be. So I would encourage
00:24:04
Speaker
I would encourage parents to think about a policy decision as a high level decision that's a filter, right? We might think about that as parents. Safety is a high one for parents, right? Yeah. We have a safety filter. Oh yeah, that's out. That's in, right? And there may be some things like downhill skiing. Okay, can be dangerous, but gosh, it's fun and athletic and all these things, right? We're going to say yes, probably, to that.
00:24:34
Speaker
Riding a motorcycle, that might start to get on a threshold for people. Everybody has different value systems. So to say, if I have a safety policy as a young person, what is my safety policy? To spend some time thinking about what that is, who is the person I want to be? Who's the person I want to look back on and say, I'm really proud of myself for being that person?
00:25:02
Speaker
For me, in my upbringing, we just talked about that stuff. Who's the person you want to look back on and have been? I wanted to be the person who made sure people got home safe. I didn't want to ... I lost friends in high school to drunk driving. They were hit by a drunk driver, right?
00:25:28
Speaker
I don't want to have been able to have done something about that and not have done what I could have done. But that took me connecting to my value of safety and about love for my community, a sense of supporting my friends.
Values and Identity in Decision-Making
00:25:48
Speaker
And even I gave people I didn't even know rides home, this sense of
00:25:54
Speaker
of loving the people around me, right? Those are deep core, noble purpose values. When you get your kids talking about their life, start to notice what they care about. Do they care about the teams they're on? Do they talk about team all the time? That team and community are really important for them, right? You start to get these little clues, right? My kid loves to just study and learn stuff and they're obsessively on like,
00:26:22
Speaker
the internet researching stuff, pretty sure intellectual curiosity is a core value for them. So when you can start to connect to those things and talk to them about those things they care about, that's when you can start to create policies. But they have to own the policy, right? Yeah. It's their filter. So when that pressure comes to say, here, have a drink. You're like, I drove here.
00:26:50
Speaker
I'm the person who, my brand, like my brand as a person, I'm the person who drives people home. Right. Right. No, I love that. Yeah. I had, yeah, as you're talking, like when I was in high school, I had someone very close to me make a comment. I tried out for cheer and I became a cheerleader and someday I'll share the story more publicly what they said.
00:27:20
Speaker
Um, someone made a comment about like stuck up cheerleaders or whatever. And I haven't even got my uniform yet. Right. And it crushed me and devastated me.
00:27:33
Speaker
And I made a decision at 13, just like this, of like, no one's ever going to call me stuck up. No one is ever going to say that I didn't talk to them. I didn't welcome them. And as a result, I was in every club you could think of. I did cheer all four years. I was captain. I was on homecoming court. We had eighth grade in my high school.
00:27:57
Speaker
Seniors did not talk to the, I talked to the eighth graders. I didn't care because those eighth graders were not going to call me a stuck up cheerleader. Like I made, and still to this day, even with this podcast, like I build community. I have made a career out of building communities of women, of moms for a decade. So it's real. Yeah. As you're talking, I'm like, Oh yeah, I made a decision out of spite.
00:28:24
Speaker
rebellion, not because someone had a conversation with me, right, but out of spite and rebellion, I made a decision. And it did it kind of altered, like, my, I think, I think the course of my life, right. And like, theater is a big community driven
00:28:43
Speaker
you know, thing. And I was in theater for a long, long time. But part of what I loved about it was how close you get with everybody. Right. You know, so are you your motivator was something that was painful? Yeah, like sometimes it does. It's something that's painful. Like for me, it's I knew somebody who was killed by a drunk driver, right? Like, it can be something that's painful that kind of
00:29:09
Speaker
like alerts us to that there's something else going on, but I can guarantee you.
00:29:16
Speaker
that if community building wasn't aligned with who you feel called to be, your own uniqueness, you would have never hung onto it, right? It's because it was in alignment with you because that's probably why you joined cheer was because you wanted to be part of a community of a team with a common goal, right? And even in your story, I see inclusivity as a value,
00:29:43
Speaker
I see service as a value. I see love as a value, right? I see these, did you guys, if people are watching it, her face is lighting up. I'm like, ooh, I'm on the right track. Well, creativity for sure, yeah. So then you notice, I mean, it's a perfect example. Here you have somebody who is 13 years old who had this thing happen.
00:30:09
Speaker
that felt bad and think about how you made that your brand and your mission and how it's totally aligned with who you are today. Like the future you, that you would become, right? You look back on that and say, that was really, that built this policy for me and I practiced it. So when we practice a policy, it just becomes a habit, right?
00:30:32
Speaker
It's like when you have tall grass and you walk through it the first time, it's like you might trip over some little logs and there might be a rock and a stick and whatever, right? But over time, as you practice that, you're wearing a trail and then you can see all the stuff that might be in the way, right? It's like, oh yeah, I step over here and then I go to the side here and then you have this nice,
00:31:02
Speaker
this nice trail. That's what's happening in habit formation. So when you have a policy, you're just wearing that trail. So when you're encouraging people to stick to your guns, have a policy,
00:31:16
Speaker
That's what you're doing in the long term, is then you have Sharla now today. That's just automated for you. Of course you're gonna be inclusive. And I teach my kids too. I've always told my kids, I used to teach a stroller fitness program and I said, when there's a new mom and they have a new toddler, right? And even at three years old, my kids knew, hi, my name is Delia, will you play with me? Because even at three years old, the kid is like, I don't wanna go
00:31:45
Speaker
You know, some of them, some of them will jump right in, but some of them might not want to insert themselves into this group of kids that have been playing together, you know, forever. And so, you know, my kids and I've watched them at school or activities or after school or dances or whatnot, or I've heard like.
00:32:03
Speaker
There was a new kid in class and I knew that I could put Serella with her because she's always so welcoming. I knew that I could say, well, can you invite her to eat? Or your daughter just went up and asked her to eat lunch because she knew that they were going to need a friend. It makes me so happy to hear that that got in them, that the teachers saw that my kids were the ones that
00:32:33
Speaker
went up to the new kid. And notice as the parent, you have values and there's going to be overlap. It's like a Venn diagram. There's going to overlap with your kids and there's going to be things that are separate. But to really recognize that you hold these values dear and by you living authentically to what you value is such a great example to your kids.
00:33:01
Speaker
to have them living to what they value. And it's not that universally, if I say community, we don't all think the same thing. It's actually the statement that comes after community. I care about community because. It's the because that's the driver. Right?
00:33:23
Speaker
because I get to have a common cause with other people. For some people, it's because, well, my community, I care about my community because it's not just my friends, it's my family, it's my extended family, right? They have all these different because statements behind that label. And so get connected to what the because is, like the why.
00:33:47
Speaker
But I think as a parent, to be connected to your own values, to be connected to your experience of decisions and outcomes is what's key. I have a download on my website called The Four Outcomes, and it's a download and a video. It's a short video. It's to help you recognize for yourself when you've experienced
00:34:16
Speaker
a good decision with a good outcome, a bad decision with a good outcome, right? To recognize these moments in your own history, to say, that's what that looked like. That's what that felt like. That's what that experience was like. To then be able to move forward and go, oh, when do I see this happening in my own life where I'm judging a decision on an outcome, not on the decision?
Coaching Children in Decision-Making
00:34:43
Speaker
And when we anchor our learning in ourselves,
00:34:46
Speaker
That's actually when we can coach other people. I'm sure you see that all the time, Charlotte. It's like, oh, when I got it, then I can recognize it happening, right? So start with yourself. And then you can say, huh, I could walk through something that's happening for my child in real time to my seven-year-old.
00:35:09
Speaker
to my 17-year-old, to my 27-year-old, right? And say, what happened? Wow, you made a good decision and you had a bad outcome. Or you made a bad decision. What made it a bad decision? And unpack, no matter what happens, unpack what happened, show compassion and curiosity, because that opens up learning. How would you like to do it next time?
00:35:40
Speaker
They're the decision maker, ultimately, in their lives. You're teaching them that. So learn how to be a great decision maker. Yeah. I love it. And this goes so, this like, for people that are more like strategically minded, I think this goes really just a great way. What am I trying to say? Just like it's a better way for them than like, listen to your gut. What is your instinct?
00:36:08
Speaker
right? Because that then then what if my guts wrong? And what if you know, I don't know. And we overthink that sometimes. And so I think sometimes for sure, right hair in the back of your neck starts sanding up, run the other way.
00:36:23
Speaker
Analyze outcomes. Right. Sometimes, right. What college am I going to go to for my oldest?
Introducing a Decision-Making Framework
00:36:30
Speaker
Like, am I going to try out for this sport or that sport, you know, next year for high school, like analyzing, well, what, what's important to you, you know, and, and what is, what is the ultimate outcome of who future you, right? Look back and say, I did that thing.
00:36:48
Speaker
Right, right, right. Yes, I think that we can be tempted to say, listen to your gut or just logic it through, and if it makes sense, just force yourself to do it. No, no, no, no. A good decision is integrating your head and your heart. Your gut should say yes, and your brain should say yes. We are given two great mechanisms to listen to.
00:37:15
Speaker
And the idea of ignoring one for the other is not going to create your best decision. If I'm driven by my gut, I'm going to check in with my head. Make sure that it's aligned. If I am logic driven, I'm going to say, wait, I have a feeling. Right? Yeah.
00:37:37
Speaker
Thinkers do have feelings. Feelers do have thoughts. It's just what's driving the bus, right? What's the driver? Lean into the one. Check in with the one that's not the driver. Yeah. So you can have a holistic decision, right? There's six steps to a great decision. And they're easy, and it's easily learned. And nobody's learning it. Yeah.
00:38:07
Speaker
And it could change our whole conversations that we have in solving family conflict, making decisions as a community, making decisions about college or technical school or whatever it is that you want to do after school, after high school. There are big decisions at the front of all of our minds. How do I take care of myself when my child is struggling?
00:38:36
Speaker
Great, big decisions. You can learn how to make a great decision and then you'll never, ever make decisions the same way again. That's awesome. Do we have those six steps somewhere? I do have, I do have, it's a different download, but yeah, I do have the six steps.
00:38:58
Speaker
I do have the six steps for sure. Um, yeah, I have both the six steps and I have the four outcomes. So, um, this was so good. I am going to use this with my teenager because yeah, you know, the, sometimes it is, it's like, it's a, we're in a very hormonal.
00:39:20
Speaker
place of making decisions sometimes and like just, just, just, just flying off the handle and making a jerk knee jerk reaction. Right. So instead of a knee jerk reaction, because that upset you or that is stressful. Like I love, we're going to sit down and we're going to.
00:39:37
Speaker
We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna do this. Are you hungry? Are you tired? Yes, and yes. Right. Fault, hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Are you decision fit right now? I just, I recently wrote a Thoughtful Thursday. I send out Thoughtful Thursday coaching every week to my list with a little video and just coaching. And just last week it was about the pause. This idea of pausing.
00:40:04
Speaker
that when we're in a decision or we feel upset or we feel urgency, sometimes we feel urgency because other people are pressuring us or they're saying, you've got to decide this. They may actually be giving you the wrong decision. It's not actually the decision you need to be making. It might be a little bit different. So the idea of, are you going to get a job or go to college? That's one, right?
00:40:28
Speaker
Either or? No. It's like, maybe it's what are you going to do after high school? Maybe that's a better decision, right? Yeah. But this idea, if you find yourself being the kind of person that's like, oh my gosh, okay, I have this situation. I'm going to take action. I'm whatever. I make a decision. It doesn't work out. I'm like, I didn't even think about a decision. You are the person who needs a pause. So build in a pause between
00:40:58
Speaker
when you're prompted to make a decision and you actually make it. Say, you know what? I have a policy. I'm pause. I'm not gonna decide this right now. Unless it's truly urgent, right? That's a different conversation. But I'm not gonna decide this right now. I'm gonna actually force myself to have a pause. Do I continue to do cheer? Do I do dance? Am I gonna do this? Am I gonna do that? Pause.
00:41:26
Speaker
Pause and get out of that state of either or. That is a cognitive bias that is tricking you. If you see, am I doing this or that? Pause. That's alarm bells for me. You're solving the wrong problem. If you want to know how to solve the right problem, contact me. I can help you figure out your right problem to solve.
00:41:54
Speaker
But if you see that coming up over and over in your life, A or B, yes or no, you have a great opportunity to get way more out of your life and what you truly want than A or B. Yeah. No, I love this. I love this so much. Just putting a different spin on how to make the important decisions, right? What's for dinner? We can decide. Right.
00:42:22
Speaker
call the shots, moms and or dads. Yeah. Yeah. The dinner. Whatever. Right. Whatever you want to do. Whatever you need to do. Right. Right. We're talking about the big decisions or when the kids are melting down over this what feels them like so it sometimes is right. College, big choice. Good. You know, sport, big choice, you know, leads to college, right? Potentially. So you know, but
00:42:49
Speaker
Do I text this person this or that? Maybe it's a big decision. Maybe you need to just pause on that. Yeah. Yeah. In the moment, people are like, well, in the moment decisions aren't a big deal. I'm like, oh, those can be some of the biggest decisions. You send the texts that you shouldn't have. You get behind the wheel of a car when you're actually impaired, right? Like those are in the moment decisions that are significant.
00:43:16
Speaker
and can be life changing, right? Or relationship, like really have a big impact on relationships. So building in a pause, you know? And it's interesting, I've coached students who have been accepted to like three colleges and they're like, I don't know where to go. And it's like,
00:43:39
Speaker
It's amazing when they start to get connected to who they are and what they care about as an individual so they can make their best decision. And I'll send them off and say, get this information. It sounds like you don't have this information to make a good decision.
00:43:54
Speaker
They go off. They collect the information. We have a follow-up call. They're like, oh, it's clear now. It's like, I can take action. I can say yes to this school because it's clear now. Yeah, that's why my organization is Clarity for Action because you don't have to force. You literally can make a decision and move ahead boldly and know that you're doing the right thing for you.
00:44:21
Speaker
You can get clarity and the action becomes easy. That's to me the evidence that you're doing what makes sense to you, what makes sense to your mind and your heart. Yeah. Oh, this is awesome. I love it. And I want clarity, my decisions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, look, it's going to help in all areas of your life, like to just get connected to how to make a good decision.
00:44:50
Speaker
It makes life so much easier. Because then you're just acting on decisions you're making. You're thinking things through that need to be thought through. You're letting things go. And you're saying, you know what? I'm going to release this decision. I don't have control over outcomes. I can just make the best decision I can. And I know how to make a great decision.
Conclusion and Resources
00:45:10
Speaker
Yay. And then the worry about the future is gone. It's like, you know, what's going to be will be. That's not in my control.
00:45:21
Speaker
how I react, what I do next, that is in my control, because those are my decisions. Yes. What a wonderful space to live in. Wonderful space living, like letting it go and letting it go. This has been amazing. Thank you so much for all this. So we'll put links below, but how can someone get those downloads if they want the
00:45:46
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I have, um, there's links in the description. They can certainly go to clarity for action.org. Um, four it's down below, but it's the number four. It's the number four clarity for number four action, uh, dot org. Uh, you can always email me. It's in my description, my bio as well. Email me if you have a question. Most importantly, get on my email list. That's how you're going to get decision coaching every week.
00:46:16
Speaker
It's free. Like we exist because our mission is to change the world one decision at a time. Right? To empower people to take hold of their own lives and feel like they are the agents for their own future. How powerful is that? Right? So if you don't feel like you're an agent of your own future, contact me. Amy.
00:46:46
Speaker
Clarity, the number four action dot org. That's my email. Reach out to me. I'm here to help. I'm a decision professional. I know exactly how to support you in making your next best decision. It's not my decision. I'm not the decision maker, but I'm going to teach you how to make a great decision. I didn't even know there were people out there that could help me make decisions.
00:47:12
Speaker
They're not for me. Well, I wish I would have met you sooner. I can guarantee you have decisions coming up. Well, yes, we do. Yes. Oh, thank you so much. This was so, so great.
00:47:28
Speaker
And I really hope people get on that email list. I'm going to get on the email list because you're brilliant at what you do. Thank you so much. And this was great. And we probably will have to have a second. A second. Like, let's do more decision making. I know. I know. I know. There's so like I said, there's a whole like the framework for making a good decision.
00:47:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's just such an honor and pleasure. I'm so grateful to be able to reach your audience and support you and your family and all the listeners in making better decisions so that everybody can have the life they want. All right, moms, you heard it. You can make the right decision and let the outcome go. We can live in peace. Not anxiety. We can do it.
00:48:24
Speaker
Thank you again, Amy. This was awesome. And we'll see you in the next episode.