Ep #66: How to Decide

You are listening to episode 66 of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where you learn how to decide already. Alright, let’s go.

Welcome to The Confident Coaches Podcast, a place for creating the self-confidence you need to do your best work as a life coach. If you want to bring more boldness, more resilience, and more joy to your work, this is the place for you. I’m your host, Amy Latta. Let’s dive in.

Hello, hello my confident coaches. How are all my Latta loves doing out there? I am just sending you guys so much love. I realize that Valentine’s Day isn’t until this upcoming weekend, but this’ll just be a little bit of a love episode and not maybe necessarily the way that you might expect.

It’s not an episode about love, but the episode I’m getting ready to deliver you today is coming from a place of nothing but love. That should be an indication to you that I’m going to kick your ass. I might be calling you out on some stuff because this episode is all about how to decide.

And it sounds simple, but I know, listen, I see you out there. I’m in your earbuds, I’m in your headphones right now. I’m the background music while you go do something else. You, yes, I’m talking to you.

I know that those of us who struggle with confidence or who are generally confident people but for some reason can’t figure out the best way to put our stuff into the world, or if you are clear enough on your message, or can you articulate who you speak to clearly, or there’s all these different things I could do and I’m not sure what the next best thing is, this right here, the difference between where you are right now and what you want to create in your business is your ability to make a decision, to act on that decision, to evaluate that decision, and to move on.

This is the work that I have done so much around. So I know that one of the biggest confidence boosters, confidence-producing actions you can take is to make a decision already. As my dad would say, “It’s time to shit or get off the pot.” I’m going to teach you how to do that today. Not literally, but you got me. You know what I’m talking about.

Alright, but before I dive in, I want to give a little love to a podcast listener. Podcast listener Chelsey Paxton. So a couple weeks ago when I dropped the episode How to Unbelieve, this is kind of a three-part series. How to unbelieve, how to believe, how to decide. So the first of these three episodes.

Every week on Instagram, you can find a little episode note every single week. If you don’t follow me on Instagram, make sure that you do. And Chelsey dropped this very short by incredibly loving and sweet comment and I wanted to share it with you here.

She said, “I loved the calls coming from inside the house so much. Reminded me of all the scary movies I watched in the 90s and to manage my own brain.” And I responded to her, “Of course. It’s why it’s so perfect because we all know that horror movie trope.” So Chelsey, thanks for your little podcast love. I would love to share any notes, comments, direct messages, emails, reviews on Apple Podcasts that you guys have out there. So Chelsey Paxton, great to have you here, and thank you for chit-chatting with me on the Instagrams.

Alright my friends, so I promised you a little love, or rather, nothing but love. And that’s what’s happening in this conversation today about how to decide. Because again, I can’t state it enough. Your ability to make a decision, to act on that decision, and then to keep moving forward, and then go it again, and then do it again, and then make another decision, and then act on that one, and then make another decision and act on that one, and repeat, over and over and over again, that’s actually how you’re going to get from where you are now to where you want to be.

And it’s kind of a third part into this three-part series. We talked about how to unbelieve all of the crap in your brain, all of the things that keep stopping you, all of the things that have you not feeling confident, all of the things that you are thinking about yourself, about your business, about other people and their opinions, unbelieving is required.

And then how to believe, that’s what we talked about last week. Believing the new thoughts that are going to serve you. And let’s be honest, believing new thoughts and sitting in the belief of those thoughts and feeling in the good juju energy, like, it feels pretty damn good and it’s pretty fabulous, especially when you remember to do that, where you keep coming back and you bring yourself back into belief and then go out and do something, and come back and do something.

But you notice what I just said right there? Now you got to do the something. You can’t just unbelieve the crap and practice sitting in the positive. Now you got to actually act on this. Belief without action is just dreaming. Do you hear me? Remember that. Belief with no action following up is just dreaming and visualizing.

This is kind of one of those things that when The Secret came out – y’all remember The Secret? Or am I just dating myself? This was early 2000s and that was the whole Abraham Hicks and that was the first time I was ever introduced to Esther Hicks and all kinds of big names and that kind of world and it was all about – it was the first time I was ever introduced to like, manifesting and law of attraction. It’s very much a law of attraction kind of thing.

And of course there’s nothing wrong with law of attraction. That’s kind of what we’re doing here, right? But you can’t neglect the most important piece, which is then to act on that work. And I remember thinking that was one of the big criticisms of The Secret is they focus more on the power of your mind and what your mind can create, which is absolutely true. And they didn’t focus a ton on actually following up that visualization and that manifestation, which now you got to go do.

Now you got to go do. And yet, I know that one of the biggest confidence killers is our collective worry that we’re going to do something wrong. That’s what stops us from doing the thing. We might do it wrong, and it prevents us from making decisions and it prevents us from moving forward. And you can literally spend years indulging in overwhelm and confusion and indecision.

You can do the how to unbelieve, you can do the believe, you can sit there and you can manifest and you can visualization, you can law of attraction yourself all day long and there’s nothing wrong with that. But you can literally spend years there if you don’t take action from that place.

The real kicker is it takes so much energy to indulge in overwhelm and confusion and indecision that you will actually think that you’re doing a lot. You will think that all that energy that you’re putting towards that is action, but it’s not. Always thinking about what you could or should be doing might feel like action. I mean, surely you’re doing something, you’re exhausted all the time, right?

And Helga will convince you that you are busy working in your business when you actually aren’t moving forward at all. And that right here, this is the nothing but love energy that I’m giving you right now. Helga will convince you that you’re so busy but all you’re doing is you’re spending busy time in your head thinking and worrying and wondering and I’m going to go sit in belief, and then I’m going to go do, but then you never do because you start to worry again,

And you aren’t actually moving forward, so let’s get you moving forward. So what stands between you and the big hairy audacious goals that you have set for yourself is a series of decisions, implementing those decisions, and evaluating those decisions, and then making a new one. Rinse and repeat, my friends, for the rest of your life. That’s how we’re going to do it.

Confident coaches are ultimately powerful decision makers because confident coaches don’t need every decision to give them the exact result that they want. In fact, confident coaches understand that some decisions they make will give them the opposite result of what they wanted. And that’s how it’s supposed to happen.

Confident coaches evaluate their decisions, what worked, what didn’t work and why, and they decide what small change they’re going to make next time. Confident coaches are powerful decision makers because they treat their business like a scientific experiment. I want you to think about that. We are all scientists here.

You already know your hypothesis is true. We go in believing. That’s the unbelieving and the believing, that I will achieve my goal, that I have something of value to offer, people want what I have to offer, and they are waiting for me to offer it. That is how to sell coaching 101 from my coach Stacey right there.

So when you believe in that, now it’s just finding the just right experiment that’s going to create those results for you. It’s this mindset of oh, okay, I made a decision, I did not get the result that I wanted, that wasn’t it, but I know there’s an experiment out there that does work. What small tweak can I make? Let’s try this next thing.

I want to be honest with you. You don’t need coaching and lots of time before a decision is made. This is what we do. We will spend so much time before we make that decision, we will get all the coaching, we will ask our peer coaches. I see this happen all the time inside the mastermind, where you will ask me for coaching, you’ll ask peers to coach you, you’ll go in the private Facebook group, you’ll ask for coaching there so that you can make the “right” decision.

But the right decision is the one that you make and you go put out into the world and you test. That’s the right decision. You don’t need all that coaching and a ton of time beforehand. You make the decision and then you coach the hell out of yourself to make the best decision that you could have possibly made by taking one next best step after another.

The best decision isn’t the one that gets you the exact result that you want. The best decision is the one that you make, that you implement, and that you learn from, so that you can move forward. And so I’m going to give you the three things that you need to do, that you need to know so that you can decide what to do next.

So first of all, you got to get in belief. Step one and step two, you have to decide what your destination is. You need to set that goal. What are you working towards? How many clients do you want to sign this month at how many dollars? How many people do you want to attend your webinar? How many people do you want into this free training? How many people do you want to reach in your podcast? How many clients do you want to sign in the next six months?

We need to know what your destination is and then you have to believe that you are going to get there. This is that part where you believe your hypothesis. I believe that there are four clients out there who want to work with me on confidence coaching. And then you got to believe that you’re going to get there and unbelieve all the reasons that your Helga brain will tell you that you won’t get there.

That’s the process that we use in Confident Coaches Mastermind and it’s a snippet of what – I gave you a snippet of that in the past two episodes right there. We set the goals as a means to unbelieve and to believe. To stir that pot up, to shine the light into those dark corners of your Helga brain, right?

And you use those tools of the past two podcast episodes to get yourself into belief before you make your decision. And I want to offer you that inside the Confident Coaches Mastermind, this is the bulk of your work. What is all of your doubt? How can we unbelieve that? What do you need to believe instead and what do you need to do to get yourself back into belief using all of the variety of tools that you learn inside the mastermind?

I gave you just a snippet in the podcast. From the mastermind, you get access to all of those tools. It’s like I lay it all out on the table and you get to pick up the ones and run with the ones that work for you.

So then from that place of belief, then you get into knowing. So while Helga throws all of that bullshit at you, your Gigi brain knows things. Now, let’s remember. Your Helga brain, if you’ve heard me say it once, if you haven’t heard this before, if you’re new to the podcast, your Helga brain is that primitive brain. It’s the cavewoman brain.

Helga is your inner cavewoman. Feel free to name her whatever you want to. Gigi is the forward part of your brain. That’s your prefrontal cortex. That’s the evolved woman that resides in you. Gigi and Helga are going to live with you for the rest of your life. They’ve been with you since you were born, they are not going anywhere, so learning how to communicate between the two of them, use Helga when you need to, but use Gigi when you need to.

And getting into knowing is something that we need Gigi for. Because Gigi is in touch with future you. The you you will become in order to reach that goal. There’s a lot of work that we spend time on this in the Confident Coaches Mastermind of really getting in touch with that future version of you.

How does she think? How does she feel? What kinds of things does she do in order to create the goal that you want to achieve? And Gigi and future you are in talks all of the time, and Gigi knows what you are capable of. She believes in your inherent worth, she believes in your awesomeness, she believes how powerful and understands what you’re capable of.

And you have to seek her out and ask her every day what she knows. My coach calls this intentional thought creation. I call it Gigi thinking. So when your brain says I don’t know what to do next, my first coach Brooke would ask, but if you did know, what would the answer be? And my Helga brain was like, listen lady, I already told you, I don’t know, right?

So many of us who struggle with confidence, we love the I don’t know. Helga will just throw up that I don’t know wall and we just can’t even penetrate it. It’s crickets inside our brain. And I can always spot somebody who struggles with confidence in their decision making when we get an I don’t know.

And so it’s always been fascinating to me to watch other people get coached. I’m like, they’ve got stuff in their head. They know things and they don’t struggle with this. Why do I struggle with this? Oh, that’s right. That’s because I struggled with confidence.

So it’s okay. This is the tool that gets you past the I don’t knows. Gigi thinking solves the problem. It says okay, what do we know? Getting into knowing is getting into the Gigi portion of your brain, that forward thinking woman, that evolved woman that’s in the prefrontal cortex of your brain, and having her remind you of your own genius, remind of what you’ve already learned.

All of those free trainings and all of those paid business programs that you’ve done, you know things. You know things about your current clients. You know things about what they’re struggling with. So getting into knowing is reminding yourself of what you do know. What do I know? What am I sure of?

If Amy was running my business, what would she do? These are very powerful questions because they get you into knowing. So as soon as you say I don’t know what to do next, say, but actually, I do know, I know a lot of things. What do I know? What am I sure of? What would I do if I wasn’t in so much doubt right now?

So getting into knowing is moving yourself out of doubt and into knowing. And once you are into knowing, that’s when you can ask yourself the question, alright, what’s the next best step? So first, we got to get into belief, then we got to get into knowing, and then you ask yourself, what’s the next best step?

What so many coaches think is the hardest thing is actually the simplest thing. You just decide. What is my next best step? I can’t make a wrong step. Every step you choose gets you closer to your destination. Not making a decision, not taking a step is what keeps you away from getting there.

Sure, you might step left when stepping right would have gotten you there faster, but now you know. What’s the next best step is a reminder that the only way to guarantee success is through failure. You are on the edge of a forest. I want you to visualize this right now with me. You’re on the edge of a forest and you know for sure that you’re going to get to the glen on the other side, the beautiful, wide-open glen with wildflowers and amazing waterfall on the edge.

Every step you take gets you there closer. Now, your Helga brain will tell you that the only way is the straightest line possible. Otherwise, it’s not worth it. She’s lying to you because your Gigi brain knows that every step you take on this path that you are going to forge yourself, that it’s super important because there’s learning and there’s life and there’s beauty and there’s experience at every single step that you take.

This is why loving where you are right now is so good and so important. You are getting there. We know that for sure. You know the hypothesis is going to be proven true. Your path may look, and in fact, it should look different than mine. There is no right way, there is no perfect path, there is no perfect experiment. There’s the one that you are going to use.

There is no perfect way. There is only your way. And you get there by asking, what is the next best step, and then taking it. Alright, so let’s put these pieces together. First you get into belief. How to unbelieve, how to believe. We just talked about that in the two previous episodes. Then you get into knowing.

So if you want to feel more confident in your marketing, when it comes to marketing to your ideal client, what do you know? What do you know about what works? What do you know about what you’re really good at? What do you know about what their struggles are?

What are some common things that you know that they say to themselves? What are some common feelings that you know they indulge in? What are some common thoughts that you know that they think over and over again that aren’t serving them? What do you know? What are you sure of?

What are you like, you know what, I don’t know a lot, but I know this for sure? If Amy were in this place, or whomever your favorite coach is, whatever your idealized coach that you love so much, if it’s not me, what? But whoever it is, if they were running my business, what might they do?

Because here’s the thing; that’s also getting into your knowing right there too. And actually, in Confident Coaches Mastermind, I have an entire page of possible Gigi questions that you can ask yourself. Your ability to ask yourself even better questions is part of what we do inside Confident Coaches Mastermind, but these are just some questions that you can start with right here.

And so then from that place of knowing, what’s the next best step you’re going to take? You’re already in belief, you’ve already gotten into knowing. From that place of belief and feeling it in your bones and having asked your Gigi brain what she does know and what she is sure of, ask yourself this; what are five things I can go do right now?

None of these ideas are a bad idea. All you have to do is pick one of them and go implement it. You’ll evaluate it by asking what worked, what didn’t work and why, and then you’ll go pick another one. And you’ll bring yourself back into belief as many times as you need to.

And inside Confident Coaches, we practice a lot of emotional strength training, a lot of feelings work, learning how to feel the discomfort of acting on the decisions that we make, but how to decide is as simple as asking yourself what is the next best step. What are five things that I can do? And now make the decision to just do one of them. That’s how you decide. It really is that simple.

Let the worry be there. Let the wonder be there. But if there’s no such thing as a wrong step because every step you take moves you forward, remember, not taking a step is what keeps you from getting there. Taking the step, whether it was the perfect one or the one that gets you in the exact opposite direction that you want to be going, at least you’re going. You’re moving forward and you’re going to learn from it.

Inside the mastermind, how to decide covers actually three whole confident steps. How to be your own best mentor, how to have your own back, how to keep going. Because life coaches, because we are humans, love convincing ourselves that we don’t know, that we’re confused, and that someone else has our answer, and that’s just simply not true.

You learn to step into your future self more powerfully than you ever have before, you learn to up-level your self-concept, you make Gigi thinking a habit you do every single day, you learn to have your own back when decisions that you’ve made don’t create the results that you want, so that you can stop shaming yourself, you can stop beating yourself up, that it’s okay to be where you are instead of where Helga tells you you should be.

You’ll learn to evaluate everything that you do and stop the mini quitting on yourself all of the time. And you also learn to experience that vulnerability hangover that happens when you take one next best step after another. It’s a thing and it’s also not a sign that anything has gone wrong.

Alright my friends, so there was our three-part series. How to unbelieve, how to believe, and how to decide. You learn these steps in depth inside the Confident Coaches Mastermind. So I would love to have you in there in the next round, whenever that might be. You can always go to amylatta.com/mastermind and if the mastermind is open, you’ll be able to apply, and if the mastermind isn’t open, you’ll be able to get yourself on a waitlist.

So no matter when you’re listening to this, this is the work that we do of the past three episodes, this is what we do week in and week out inside the mastermind. We learn how to unbelieve, how to believe, and most importantly, how to freaking decide. Because your ability to make decisions is what’s going to get you from point A to point B.

And listen, so many of you are already creating such magnificent results in this first month of 2021. I can’t wait to see what you create this week. And remember, until next week, let’s go do epic stuff.

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