76 The Myth of the Right Decision

Well, welcome to the Great Leader Great Mom podcast, where we trade in mom guilt and burnout for courage, calm, and a whole lot more joy in your life. I'm your host, Liz Jolly. I'm an engineer turn life coach. I'm a mama three, and I'm the founder of the school of Here we talk about leading at work and at home without losing your sanity, your sense of humor, or yourself. Because being both a great leader and a great mom, it's not about doing it right. It's about being courageous. And if you're Ready to drop the guilt and grow your own courage, you're in the right place. So welcome. This is episode 75. And we are in the midst of our Curge series where we are unraveling all of these myths we learned growing up and we often don't even question. Today is all about the myth of making the right decision. And this is unraveling the belief that every choice has a right and a wrong answer. And this myth comes from school and our performance culture and really our fear of failure. So here's the truth. There's no right or wrong decisions. There's only choices you make, and ideally you want to make them with clarity, with courage, and having your own back. That's the goal of today. So recently I have two friends that are, in a sense struggling with some big decisions. One of 'em it's a big move and trying to decide where should they live. They have the choice in houses in two locations and they really want to determine what's the best quote unquote place to live. Another one is a job change in the point of her career where she has a current job and she has a job offer that is also really cool. For some of you, it could be something as small as like, do I want to host Thanksgiving coming up? It could be, do you want to apply for a job? It could be, do you want to lean in and have a tough conversation So many of us are stuck in the decision-making process because of this fear that comes from thinking there's a right decision and there's also a wrong decision And let's just be clear in the beginning, we have all been conditioned to believe that there's a correct answer. That's what we got rewarded for growing up. It's either right or wrong. Don't make the wrong one. Make the right one and you get an A But life just doesn't work out like that, right? And we all have this ridiculous expectation that if we just looked into things more, we would get the right answer. And so today I want to show you why the myth of the right decision keeps you stuck in how to step into decision making with clarity, courage, and freedom. So I'm glad you're here Here's why the myth of having a right answer and avoiding the wrong answer causes us so much pain. When we believe that there's a right answer, we're constantly gathering more and more information. What does that look like? Well it's us going around and asking our twelve closest friends, including our mother, maybe your favorite coworker, and maybe other people that you look up to. What should I do? They'll know the right answer for me. And when we outsource our decision making, we erode our trust with ourselves. We've told ourselves you don't actually know what to go do, so you should go ask all these other people that may or may not kind of know you. And here's the reality, nobody knows you like yourself. And if you feel like others do, then you need to work on your relationship with yourself The other thing that happens when we're worried about avoiding the wrong answer is we find all of these ways in which we look for examples of somebody making the same decision and when it went wrong and we try to learn from it. But a lot of times it just creates more fear for us. So in this loop of the myth of the right decision, we end up endlessly researching and data gathering. we end up asking all kinds of people in our lives what we should do, as if they know better. We end up waffling and delaying the decision until the very last minute. And the consequence of showing up that way in your life when it comes to decisions is really you overthink it and it leads you to analysis paralysis. And that can look like what I call numbing or buffering, where when you're trying to avoid the decision You do things like buying things or going on trips because you're trying to delay. And what we do with this is we just avoid it. Straight up, maybe we go on vacations or you keep yourself constantly in motion So you never actually stop and dig into the decision about what is it you really want. The other thing this creates for us is regret, where we beat ourselves up when the outcomes aren't what we thought. They're not perfect. Here's the trap When we're seeking a perfect answer, we're trying to avoid pain. And this is rooted in our culture conditioning where in school tests, it's like there's the correct multiple choice answer and then there's the incorrect multiple choice answer. And it's like we get to this place in our lives when it comes to decisions that we base our competency as a human on how we make decisions. Like if you would have been smarter, you would have made the better decision. And we assume that had we made the right choice, we would have avoided pain. We would have avoided failure, and we would have avoided all this awful feeling of regret And here's the reminder is that life is 50% of the time negative, and 50% of the time it's great. So even the good decisions come with the hard parts. Look back over your life and maybe there's times in the moment when you feel like you made the wrong decision and yet it made you a better person. It made you more compassionate. It showed you how to be more courageous when things got really tough. So life isn't always about it panning out because you followed the right decision path. There's also a trap here where if you go and ask 50 people because you're looking for a scapegoat on when it doesn't pan out, you can go blame them. That's not helpful at all. That doesn't serve you. So here's how we reframe decision making. It's about getting aligned with who you are and who you want to be. And building that self-trust, not about choosing the right answer so that the perfect outcome happens. So how do you do this? Well the first step is you clarify what your actual decision is So often we merge like twelve decisions into one, which at its core is really avoiding the ultimate decision And this is so true at work, where I meet with teams and I see them struggling on we need to go do this, we need to go do that, we better not do that. But the reality is they don't even know what the ultimate decision is that makes the thousand other decisions clear. So to do this, write down what is it I'm deciding about. Is that the actual decision? Why does that matter? Keep asking why here and you really will get to the ultimate thing that matters. The second step in making great decisions is Go to your future self. Imagine your life maybe three, five, or ten years down the road. Which choice supports that version of you? Really imagine yourself in this ideal state. So for my friend that wanted to decide where she should live between two places, she texted me at one point and said, I've always had this dream of not having a frantic life, and yet I've just been enjoying the moment where I'm at And it's like that's your future self. Imagine a life where you're not frantic, where you're not running around like a chicken with your head cut off. What does that look like? Where do you live? How do you spend your days? Go to your future self And then look back and think, what would my future self decide? Does it lead me towards that future or away from that future? Or is it just noise? So much of our lives we fill with noise that doesn't actually lead us towards where we want to go. Step three is get clear on your reasons. List every single reason You can come up with for a decision or against a decision. Pay close attention to the feelings that are revealed when you write those reasons down. Never make a decision from a negative emotion like fear or guilt, resentment, obligation. We do this way more than we even notice. The fourth step is like your reasons. When you look at your reason and you think, yeah, I really like that reason. With all the information I have right now, that's the reason I want to go with. And it comes from a positive feeling. I would also say in this space Live in that space for a while. Don't actually take any action, but just live with that decision of pretending that you've decided. It's almost like you're trying it on. How does it feel? Kind of imagine how it would play out, not from the standpoint of catastrophizing or fairy talizing all of it, but just kind of living with it like you're trying on a jacket. The fifth and last step is have your own back. So often we look back when a decision turns out quote unquote negative or kind of failed, not turning out like the version we thought it would be And we revisit it and we beat ourselves up and we tell ourselves, oh, I should have known better. I should have done something different. But here's the thing, that you can't go back in the past. You can't change it. And so there's no positive side to that other than just beating yourself up Just because an outcome doesn't match your expectation doesn't mean you made the wrong decision. We know you made the right decision. Why? Because that's the decision you made. And you can't change it. So don't wallow in that. Learn from it. And move forward. The freedom in decision making comes from living this life without the pressure of a right choice or avoiding a wrong choice. And here's the benefit. If you can make decisions from the space, you get clarity and you know what you're actually deciding. You know what matters to you. There's confidence that comes from this. You build your self-trust instead of outsourcing it. There's a freedom where you stop wasting so much time. I am telling you endless hours where your brain is looping all the what-ifs. Once you get rid of that, you have so much more time in your life. I promise Here's the truth. A courageous life isn't about always being right or living the right way. It's about being willing to choose, to learn, to make a decision and move forward and love yourself no matter what. So here's the takeaways for today. Ask yourself these questions. What is the decision I'm really making here? What would my future self want? Am I choosing this out of fear or out of desire for what I actually want? Do I really like my reason? And then practice. Start small. You're gonna make small decisions this week, like dinner or taking a phone call. Or maybe if you should go to a meeting or not. And don't overthink it. Just notice how freeing it feels when you don't make a decision from this crazy mindset of there's a right decision and a wrong decision Be reassured, there's no right or wrong choice in everything. There's only the decisions you make and the commitment to yourself to move forward Stop wasting time on trying to get it right. Start making bold choices and trust yourself to figure it out along the way. So that's what I have for you today. If you want to get my weekly emails, go to lizjolly. com and sign up for my newsletter. I would love to keep you posted about not just these podcast episodes, but future training and opportunities that we can all be more courageous together. Continue to tune in to more of the courage series as we unravel all of these myths that keep us stuck in our life And we step into this braver, freer way of living. I wish you all an amazing week, and with that, take care everybody