Ep #26: Decision-Making Obstacles

You are listening to episode 26 of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where you get over yourself already with making decisions.

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 my confident coaches. How are you guys doing out there? I am doing – well you know what, I’m going to be honest. I’m a little chill today. I’m actually super chill, so we’ll see just how fired up I get on this podcast episode. Because the topic I’m going to share with you today gets me a little fired up, but we’ve had storms all day and my husband and I were watching a documentary about Miles Davis and I’m just very chill right now.

So let’s see what happens, where we go with this episode. Because the topic is not something I’m chill about. It’s something that I’ve struggled with. It’s something I see so many of my clients struggling with. And I have some solutions for you. I’m going to let go of my chill for you guys.

And I also just wanted to send out a reminder to everybody right now that this episode is coming out in the first week of May of 2020. There’s still interesting and different life stuff going on. This is the first week where depending on where you live, you may or may not have some restrictions lifting.

The Latta family has essentially been isolated for two months and lots of FaceTiming and Zoom messaging and only going to the grocery stores when need be and not getting haircuts. Everybody in my house right now looks like a mad person.

All of these kinds of things. And just a message out there to everybody again that no matter what you are experiencing, just allowing yourself to take what life is offering up to us as we go. We don’t have to make any of this mean we can’t still move forward, that we can’t still create the things that we want in our life. And just make sure that you’re checking in with yourself and with your thoughts.

If you’re brand new to this podcast and you have no idea what I’m talking about, like check in with your thoughts, start from the beginning and just see the type of work that we do here and how this work can so help you through this time right now. Alright, so maybe I’m starting to feel a little bit of the fire in my belly right now.

So this podcast episode that I have today comes from something that I do in all of my consult calls. So I have learned through the course of my own confidence journey because if you all haven’t figured out by now, if you haven’t heard me mention it enough times, the reason I’m the confidence coach for coaches is because I used to be the least confident people.

And I went on my own confidence journey and so much of what I share, a ton of what I share is because this is the exact work that I did and that worked for me. I took what I learned from my mentors, I mixed it with my own brain and I figured out what worked for me, and now I’m sharing it with you guys.

One of the biggest parts of my confidence journey was around decision-making and becoming a powerful decision maker. Because I’ve always been a terrible decision maker. For most of my life, I’m the kind of person that when you go to the restaurant – remember when we used to do that kind of thing?

When we used to go to restaurants and we used to look at menus. I would sit down and I would be the first person to open their menu and the last person to make a decision because my brain was always like, “What if I make the wrong decision? What if there’s something else that’s going to be so much more delicious? I want all of the things. I don’t know what I want.”

That’s just going to a restaurant. So think about the decisions that I would have to make about what we’re going to eat tonight as far as around the house, what am I going to do next week? Do I want to do this family activity or that family activity? I don’t know, what do you think?

Imagine taking that kind of energy into owning a business. It doesn’t work very well. It doesn’t work very well at all. And so here’s what’s interesting is you have two kinds of people and yet they can still show up in their businesses the same way.

Someone like me who would struggle to make decisions as to what to eat and what to go do this weekend, and then sometimes who didn’t have a struggle with those kinds of decisions in their personal life, but something happens when we go into our own business and we are the decision maker. There is no one else to help us make a decision.

We can go ask for advice, we can hire a coach, but if you’re hiring a life coach, they’re not really supposed to be telling you what you should and should not do. A life coach should be holding space for you so that you can get clean in your thoughts and your feelings so that you can make the decision.

You can hire the kind of coach that tells you what to do, but that doesn’t actually help you become a powerful decision maker. And really, so much of your growth as a confident life coach is becoming someone who is not 100% sure what the next best action is, but becomes a person who makes the decision anyway, so that they can move forward.

So the reason that this is so important is that when you don’t decide, when you don’t make a decision, you are choosing something. You are making a decision. It’s a decision by default. It’s a decision not to move forward. It’s a decision to stay stuck.

And then we’ll look around and we’ll be like, “Why am I in the same place? Why am I not attracting my ideal client? Why am I not getting more consults? Why am I not signing more clients?” Because you’ve made the decision not to make key decisions that would move you forward.

And I’ve really thought about what I’ve seen in my clients, what I have seen in me, the things that I have learned, that I have seen firsthand, literally myself or my clients. The things that we will allow to get in the way of making powerful decision.

So first and foremost, understand that the reason that becoming a powerful decision maker is so important is because that’s what’s going to move you forward. Not making a decision because you’re not sure what to do next does not move you forward. Making a decision, even if it’s not the one that gets you the result, at least that moves you forward.

So it’s so important to become a decision maker, otherwise you stay stuck. So let’s not do that, okay? So here’s what I have found. I realized that I kept seeing the same five obstacles come up in myself and in my clients that these hurdles that we would keep coming up against when it came time to make a decision and move forward.

So I wanted to share with you these decision-making obstacles that I have found pretty consistently across most of my clients and definitely with myself to see if you identify with them and even more importantly than that, how to get over them. How to get over these obstacles.

What’s the point of pointing them out if we don’t have a plan for getting over them? Don’t worry. You know me. I always got a plan for that, right? There’s always an action plan for that and I’m going to share that with you today too.

Okay, so the first decision-making obstacle, I’m going to be honest with you. I’m pretty sure it’s the number one across the board. I don’t think I’ve met one client who hasn’t struggled with this obstacle before. And this is the fear of making the wrong decision.

When it’s time to make a decision of what you’re going to do next, what’s the action step you’re going to do, what’s the niche you’re going to attract, are you going to build an online funnel or are you going to do an organic marketing funnel, are you going to launch a podcast, are you going to write a weekly blog. It doesn’t even really matter, right?

Are you going to do A or are you going to do B? And the first obstacle is we’re afraid to make the wrong decision. Sound familiar? It’s going to be the wrong choice, it’s going to be the wrong decision. Just somebody tell me what to do so that I don’t make the wrong decision here.

Now, here’s why this obstacle doesn’t make any sense to begin with, which is hilarious because we all freaking indulge in this one. Am I right? Here’s the thing; there are no wrong decisions. What? What do you mean there are no wrong decisions, Amy?

It’s true. It’s true. What if there are no wrong decisions? There’s no such thing as a wrong decision. The number one obstacle we all struggle with doesn’t even make sense because it’s not possible to make the wrong decision. Now, here’s what your brain is all doing right now.

No, I can look back on my life and I have made some hilariously wrong decisions. That decision to start dating that one guy, no. Pretty sure that was a bad choice. That decision to quit that job for this job over here that then bombed a year later, pretty sure that was a wrong decision, right?

What if it wasn’t though? What if every single decision that you’ve made has not been a wrong decision? But instead, has either been a decision that creates the result that you want or created a result that you didn’t want but you learned something from it. Right?

It’s impossible to make a wrong decision because no matter what decision you make, you’re going to implement it and you’re going to move forward. Remember, making no decision is a decision. It’s a decision to stay stuck.

At least when you make a decision and you implement it, you put it into action, you’re either going to get the result that you want or you’re not going to get the result that you want but that’s okay because I’ve taught you the art and the need, the skill of evaluation.

You’re going to evaluate your decisions, you’re going to evaluate the results that you got, right? What worked? What didn’t work? What can you do differently next time? How can you tweak this? I have my members in my Confident Coaches mastermind do this every single week where they report Monday morning of everything that they did the week before.

What worked, what didn’t work, and what’s their best guess why and what small tweaks, what big pivots can they make to help get them closer to the result that they actually want. Understand how liberating this is. The number one obstacle to decision-making isn’t even a thing. The number one obstacle to decision-making is that you’re going to make the wrong decision and it’s impossible to make the wrong decision.

Because you’re either going to make a decision that gets you the result that you want or you’re going to make a decision that doesn’t, and that’s okay because you’re going to evaluate it, you’re going to make a tweak, you’re going to make a change, and every single time you decide and implement and decide and implement and then you decide and implement, the more that confidence account grows. The faster you accrue that interest in your confident account. The faster you feel confident that you can handle no matter what comes your way.

Remember how chill I said I was feeling at the beginning? I think I lost that. I think I got a little fired up. It’s still raining outside. I can still hear Miles Davis in the other room, but I am fired up. Alright, so what’s the second most common decision-making obstacle?

And that is, “Yeah, but I might disappoint someone.” Now, I know all about not wanting to disappoint people. I’m a recovering people-pleaser. I am well versed in the language of worrying about disappointing other people. And I have a firsthand experience with this right here in that I was working in a program with my mentor.

And she gave me an opportunity and I needed to make a decision on was I going to take the opportunity or was I not going to take the opportunity. And the bottom line was as great as the opportunity was, it was taking where I was going in a direction that I didn’t want to go. I got a lot of coaching on this, but at the end of the day, I was afraid to be decisive.

I was afraid to make a decision because I was afraid I was going to disappoint her. And to me, that would be excruciating, right? Of disappointing someone. The last thing that I would want to do is disappoint someone. So guess what I did? I didn’t make a decision. I never got back to her.

And then of course, she has to reach out and be like, “Hey, did you see this message? I’ve not heard from you. Have you decided what you’re going to do?” And I was afraid to tell her because I was afraid of disappointing her.

So here’s the interesting thing and here’s why this decision-making obstacle isn’t even real either. Just like the first one, this one isn’t real either. Do you want to know why? Because you can’t disappoint anyone. What? Come on, Amy, what do you mean? I guarantee you, I disappointed my mom back in the day. I guarantee you that I’ve disappointed friends or my husband or whatever.

Now listen, follow me very closely on this one and why it is impossible to disappoint someone else. So think about this. If you’re feeling disappointed, where does the feeling of disappointment from come? Does it come from what someone else does or doesn’t do? Does your feeling of disappointment ever come from a decision that someone else makes? No.

Because if you follow my podcast and you understand my main coaching tool that I use, which is called the self-fulfilling prophecy model, CTFAR, circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, results. The F line is a feeling. Disappointment is a feeling. Where do your feelings come from? They come from your thoughts. Your thoughts about the circumstance.

So someone makes a decision and then I have a thought about that decision. And that’s what creates my disappointment. So it is impossible to disappoint someone else because their disappointment is coming from their thought. Not the decision that you made.

You picking up what I’m throwing down here? Now, to be clear, this doesn’t mean that it’s possible that I will make a decision and my decision becomes someone else’s circumstance and they will have a thought about that and they might feel disappointment. But the disappointment is not coming from my decision. The disappointment is coming from their thought about my decision.

Get it? Yes. So it is impossible to disappoint someone else. Their feelings are their responsibility. And here’s the thing about the I’m afraid of disappointing someone else. We’re taking way too much credit for how other people feel.

First of all, nine times out of 10, no one’s feeling disappointment from their thought about our decision at all. No one’s even paying that much attention. Nine times out of 10, people are not going to think thoughts that create the disappointment for themselves. They’re not even thinking about you or maybe they’re going to end up excited about it.

We have no idea what other people are thinking about our decisions. And then there is that one time out of 10 where we will make a decision and they will have a thought about it and they might feel disappointment. So then what? That’s their disappointment to figure out and you can still love them and they still get to decide how they’re going to think and feel.

This is the coaching I got from another mentor in the group. She said, “Is it possible that our mentor could think a thought based on your decision and feel disappointment? Is it possible she could also still love you too? Is it possible that she could feel disappointment over the thought she’s having about your decision and also still love you and also still be in your corner? And that disappointment is hers to deal with and you can just love her and then she can work through her emotion.”

This is just so important for all of the people-pleasers in the world that we can’t create other people’s feelings. It’s impossible for you to make a decision that’s going to create disappointment for someone else. It’s just not possible. Because our decisions do not direct other people’s feelings. Their thoughts do.

Now, I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m really hammering home these first two things because they are the number one and number two reasons we don’t make decisions. It’s going to be the wrong decision, I’m going to disappoint someone, and those two things aren’t even possible.

So let’s touch on the other three obstacles. So obstacle number three, one reason that we don’t make a decision is sometimes we’re not always clear on the result that we want to create. So in the first two items, we know what result we want. We’re just not sure if that’s the decision that’s going to get us there, or we’re just not sure if we might disappoint someone by going after that result or by making that decision.

But we know where we want to get to. But one obstacle may be we’re not 100% clear on what we want. Like, how do you decide what road to drive on if you don’t know where you’re headed, right? So there is a relatively simple way to overcome this obstacle, to help you figure out what you do want to create.

And this is my concept around becoming your own best mentor. So I think that was around episode four where I talk about tapping into future you. Who are you in the future? How do you think? Who are you like? What kind of person do you want to become? What kind of goals do you want to achieve? What will your life be like when you become this person?

When you spend time defining this future version of you, like you six to 12 months from now, you start to get a clearer vision. Maybe the exact result you want isn’t super clear, but we can get you there by sitting in that energy of future you, by spending time defining her and thinking like her and starting to get that clearer picture.

And then maybe you start making small decisions that get you closer, and then with each minor decision you make, that bigger end result that you’re shooting for becomes so much clearer. So if this is an obstacle, you’re not sure even what you want, which way you’re headed, tapping into future you is an excellent way to overcome that obstacle.

So the fourth obstacle to making decisions is what we call FOMO. You heard of FOMO? Yeah, fear of missing out. This is so common too. I see this all of the time. So my coaching school hosts fairly regular large meetings, except for right now we’re not.

But a yearly mastermind that’s open just to the certified coaches, there’s a yearly business workshop that’s open to all the certified coaches. Plus, all the people who follow the school, and then there might be some smaller events. There might be some paid private events and things like this. And I notice this comes up so much.

Do I want to go to this event? So many times, people will struggle to make a decision because they have this fear that they’re going to miss out on something. But here’s the interesting thing. We talk about it all the time. It’s a thing of memes. Even people who aren’t life coaches talk about FOMO.

But guess what? FOMO wasn’t really a thing. FOMO is not real. Do you know what FOMO is? FOMO is just a thought. I might miss out on something. I don’t want to miss out. What happens if everybody else is there and I’m not there? I’m going to be an outcast. I’m going to be alone. I don’t fit in.

All FOMO is is any number of possible thoughts that you may be having. That’s all FOMO is. It’s just a thought. So if you’re experiencing this FOMO phenomenon and maybe you might recognize FOMO, I’m afraid of missing out. I’m having severe FOMO, everybody else is going to be there, not me. Maybe I should go, maybe I shouldn’t go, I’m not really sure, I don’t know.

Just be aware that all that is is there’s some sort of thinking going on and that’s your indication. When you notice FOMO, when you notice this fear of missing out happening in your mind, that’s an invitation to find out, okay, what am I really thinking? This is where the circumstance is the event and your thought is what?

I’m afraid to miss out. Everybody’s going to be there and I won’t. What does that mean? What kind of thoughts are you having about other people going and you not being there? So here’s the thing; FOMO isn’t an issue if you know you really want to go to the thing.

FOMO really only becomes an issue when something is preventing you from being able to go. So then you hem and haw and you go back and forth. I should, I shouldn’t. So realize, just be aware of the thoughts you are having that are the FOMO thoughts. Put them in a model. Do you like your reasons?

And then this is your opportunity to do what I talk about in episode three, which is embracing discomfort. I know. Nobody really wants to do that. But it’s such a huge part of becoming a powerful decision maker and a more confident coach is that you make the decision of whether or not you’re going to do the thing based on future you.

Does this decision move you towards the result that you want? Does going to the thing move you towards the result that you want? Or do you just want to go because you’re afraid you’re going to miss out on hanging out with the cool kids? What would future you decide? What would she think is the best thing for you to do? The best use of your time and the best use of your money. And then be willing to experience the discomfort of not being where everyone else is because it wasn’t the best decision for you.

Now, obviously you can use this with so many different things, right? But just understand that FOMO, this obstacle that prevents us from making decision of are we or aren’t we isn’t really even a thing. It’s just a thought process. What is the thought that’s creating this “fear of missing out?”

Do you like those reasons? What would future you do? Does this fit with the result that you want to create in your life? Is this a thing that you really want to be a part of, that you want to be there? And if it’s not, are you willing to feel the discomfort of knowing that people are together and you aren’t there, but you aren’t there because it was in the best interest of the result you were trying to create.

Alright, so the last obstacle to decision-making, it’s not unlike obstacle number one, but I’m giving it its own special highlight here. And that is we’re afraid we’re going to waste money. This is a waste of my money. Wasting money is just like wrong decision. It’s not really a thing.

I know, some of y’all, your brains just twitched. You’re like, “No, I’m pretty sure that if I make the decision to hire this coach and it’s $5000 and I don’t get the result that I wanted, I’ve wasted my money.” I mean, you could choose to think that, but why the hell would you because it sounds so shitty?

What if it’s not possible to waste money in the same way that it’s not possible to make a wrong decision? So even if the decision that you’re making has a financial investment, if you fear I may not get the result I want and I don’t want to waste my money, think about how you’re going to show up in the implementation of that investment.

This constant little nagging fear that it may not work out and you may be wasting your money creates really crappy feelings that are affecting how you show up, which increases the chances of you not getting the result that you wanted. Just even that line of thinking creates the possibility of it happening, of it coming true.

Remember that the model is self-fulfilling. So if you’re thinking you’re wasting your money, if you think that’s a possibility, it just increases the chances of that happening. And understand, even if you don’t get the exact results that you want, if you know that every decision you make, whether there’s money on the line or not, whether there’s money invested or not, that you are going to learn from it and you’re going to grow from it.

This is where I really challenge every single one of the clients that I work with to get what they came for. You have invested money in yourself and no matter the result that you end up with, get what you came for. Sometimes what you came for was to learn how to overcome an obstacle you didn’t even know you needed to overcome, was to experience growth you didn’t even know you needed to experience.

Get what you came for, go all in, see that there’s no such thing as wasting money, just like there’s no such thing as wrong decision. And even more importantly, how much is it costing you not to make a decision? When you don’t make a decision because of one of those five obstacles, how much is that costing you in time, in money, in mental capacity and brain space?

I want to offer you that it costs way more in that currency than any dollars and cents that you may not get back immediately. Alright my friends, so this week, I want you to become aware of these five obstacles that you indulge in. And let’s actually put some meat around this. Let’s actually put these into action.

So it’s the first week of May. It’s the first week of May 2020. So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to decide right now what result you want to create by the end of the month. So establish that. You got it? Do you have an idea in your head? How many clients do you want to sign by the end of this month?

Now, decide, what do you need to think in order to believe you’re going to create that. And if you don’t know how to do that, go back to episode two. I tell you all about how to come up with what do you need to think in order to believe you can create the result that you want to create.

And then sit in the belief of those thoughts. That is also covered in that podcast episode I’m pretty sure. Sit in the belief of those thoughts and now, decide what you’re going to do next. Make a decision of what you’re going to do next. How are you going to create that result? What do you think you should do?

Feel free to counsel with future you. What does future you think? What would she do next? Try this. And then be aware of those obstacles coming up. I might make the wrong decision, I don’t want to disappoint people, I’m not actually sure if this is what I want to create, I fear that I might be missing out on something else, and worry about wasting money.

See if you see any of those decision-making obstacles come up for you and then remember how to move past them. Be aware of them, see how you indulge in them, and be willing to let them go with the tools that I shared with you in this episode.

Alright my friends, remember, we’re going to become decision-making badasses. This is something that will move your business forward. This is something that will help you create so much confidence that you decide and you implement and you decide and you implement. You are aware of those obstacles; you’re paying attention to them.

You go, “Oh, there’s that FOMO Amy talked about. Oh, there’s that fear of disappointing Amy talked about. That’s right, I can’t disappoint people. That’s right, I can’t actually have a fear of missing out. That’s just a thought error. What is that thought?”

Work through that obstacle and then decide and implement. Because on the other side of that is so much stinking confidence, plus you are so much closer to the results that you want to be creating. Alright my friends, let’s go do epic stuff this week. 

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Thanks so much for listening to The Confident Coaches Podcast. I invite you to learn more. Come visit me at www.amylatta.com and until next week, let’s go do epic stuff.