Ep #106: Indifferent Decisions

You are listening to episode 106 of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where you stop making okay decisions. Let’s do it.

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.

Hey, coaches, how you doing today? I hope you’re doing fabulously. I have just, just gotten back from New York City. And can we all just talk about the greatest city in the world? Oh my goodness, it’s been 20 years since I’ve been. We went with two friends who have been multiple times. My husband has never been.

If you follow me on social media, if you follow me in my Instagram Stories, you were able to kind of follow along as we explored literally 35 miles over the course of five days, on foot. 35 miles on foot over the course of the city. This is why you need to be following me on Instagram because I shared all kinds of good stuff. All kinds of stories of what we explored and what we saw and the food that we ate. Oh my goodness gracious, the food that we ate.

Now, here’s a fun story for you and it leads to today’s topic. And I’m going to get very vulnerable with you guys here. In fact, I could see this topic, expanding further into a larger decision making– We talk a lot about decision making, but I want to talk specifically about a decision that I had to make while I was in New York City.

And this is going to get very vulnerable because I discovered something that I didn’t know about myself. And it’s something that I suspect many of you fall into, this indifferent decisions energy.

So one of the things that I had to do in New York City, like first of all, New York City was a complete week off of work. That was the entire point, I’m not working during this week.

But I did actually have to do a little bit of work. First of all, there was an email I forgot to write before I left town. I was like, “Oh yeah, that Thursday email.” So I did have to get that done. I brought my iPad with me and so I did get an email out to my team so that I could get that out to you.

And one of the things that I had to do was I had to decide what I was doing next for my own mastermind. Now, if you guys are new here, my name is Amy Latta and I’m the host of The Confident Coaches Podcast and I run a Confident coaches mastermind. So if you want to work with me, you can listen to this podcast, you can take my free trainings, or you can work with me in a mastermind format.

I myself am in a mastermind and I have been in one for the past four years. And it was time to renew. Now, I have worked my way up through my coach’s masterminds, I’m in her top level mastermind. And I had a decision whether or not I was going to continue to stay in that one or if I might go back to her middle or to her lower level mastermind. Which lower level is still a multi-six figure mastermind.

And I was kind of like on this cusp of looking at the results that I’ve created this year. They aren’t the results that I was expecting and I still qualify for the mastermind. But it wasn’t quite the experience, I wasn’t quite the experience in that mastermind that I had been expecting. And it was presented to me this possibility of going back to the previous mastermind that I’ve been in before.

So I’m currently in her $2 million group. I could stay there, I could go back to her 200K mastermind which I did multiple rounds of. Or there’s always the option of do I take six months and not be in a mastermind? I’ve been in one for four years, what would that look like? And I needed to make this decision while I was in New York City because enrollment for two of those three options was during that week.

And so I want to tell you a little bit about something, and this has been a good two weeks of coaching here, what I’m getting ready to share with you in this podcast. But I think this will be very powerful because it occurred to me. Now, just so you know, my coach knows all of what I’m getting ready to tell you. This is not proprietary information, it’s not secret information.

She knows, my peers in the mastermind know, many of my mastermind peers coached me on parts of this. I’ve been working through this for the past couple of weeks. But what I realized was this, was that my decision to move from one mastermind into the next level was not a conscious decision that I had made.

Now, I’ve talked about decisions before on this podcast, different types of decisions. And I teach in the mastermind how to make decisions from a place of future you. How to make next best step decisions. Future you is guiding you long term, next best step decisions are what you need to do in the next five minutes.

Just a few episodes ago, what was it? Episode 99, 95, not that long ago, I did an episode on default decisions versus conscious decisions. So how to make conscious decisions, how to make decisions from a place of full awareness. Because decision making ultimately is what builds confidence in yourself. And decisions are what are going to get you from here to there.

So if you’re wanting to be a coach on your path to 100K, which is what we do in the Confident Coaches Mastermind, it’s their path to 100K, it’s going to be a series of decisions that get you from where you are now to making six figures as a life coach. You don’t get there without making decisions, without making those future you decisions, those next best step decisions, those conscious decisions.

And yet, so many of us will move into default decision making, which I’ve talked about before. And that is where you’re making decisions from a place of people pleasing, or other people think I should do this so I guess I will do it too. Or a lot of times default decisions are not making a decision, that no decision decision. And those are the kinds of decisions that don’t build confidence.

So future you decisions, next best step decisions, conscious decisions, whether they get you the result that you want or not, you evaluate them. They were decisions that came from a positive energy, you learn that you don’t die. You learn that you can make a decision and not get the result that you wanted and not beat yourself up. I teach you how to have your own back, that you can feel any emotion. And this builds so much confidence in yourself.

Default decisions don’t build a lot of confidence in you because you aren’t making decisions or you’re asking other people, what should I decide? And then you’re deciding. or you’re like, “Well, my mom really wants me to do this, so I guess that’s what I’ll do.”

And in the process of enrolling, for my next round of the mastermind that I am in, I realized that there’s a different kind of decision that we can default into, and I call it an indifferent decision.

It’s the decision where you’re kind of like, “Okay,” kind of energy. It’s not inadequacy so much. It’s not people pleasing so much. It’s more along the lines of, “I am at point A, and 99% of the people who are at point A go to point B. So I guess I’m going to go too.” You know what I mean? Are you picking up what I’m throwing down?

So I have a habit of this kind of decision making. I can even remember when I was in college, or actually when I was in high school and I was applying to all of these colleges. I actually didn’t end up applying to that many colleges because I really wanted to go one place.

I wanted to go to DePaul University in Chicago. I don’t remember why. At the time, I just thought it was like the Lincoln Park campus, I was really excited about going, the big city. I had all of these big ideas of what life was going to be like when I was there.

And my dad was like, “Okay, but you’re also going to apply to this other school.” At the time, it was called Northeast Missouri State, it’s now called Truman State. It’s in Kirksville, Missouri, a couple hours from home in my state. I didn’t want to move to Kirksville, Missouri. I did not want to go to Northeast Missouri State University. But my dad was like you’re going to apply there.

And so I only applied to two schools. I absolutely got into both of them. And Northeast Missouri State of Kirksville, Missouri gave me a full ride. Whereas DePaul University, which was significantly more expensive, actually gave me more money but it still only covered half of the cost of college.

And my dad basically laid the two things out and he was like the decisions obvious. And this is where that indifferent okay energy came in. I didn’t challenge him. I didn’t question the obvious choice. I didn’t look at those two college offers, and say, “I understand that I can get a full ride here and then I don’t have to worry about it. But let’s explore what it would look like to do the other option.”

I didn’t explore options on how to pay for the other half. I didn’t challenge my dad’s opinion in any way. He basically laid it out on the line for me, you can go here for free, or you can figure out how you’re going to pay for the other half of this. The answer is obvious. And I was like, “Yep, that’s just what you do.”

This was a circumstance to me. I did not see at all that this was a choice I had any say so in. And I moved into a very indifferent energy because that’s just what people do. When you get a full ride to a college, you go there. It didn’t occur to me that I could challenge that. That I could explore other options in any way, shape, or form.

Now, that doesn’t make the decision bad. I have no regrets. I had a wonderful college experience. I want to be really clear, indifferent decisions don’t lead necessarily to bad experiences. But the energy with which that decision was made and then how you subsequently show up will be very different than a conscious decision.

And while I can’t remember all of the different decisions I’ve made in my life, I distinctly remember that college one. And it formed a habit in my life of doing just what people in this position do. When you are offered this, you take it. When you find yourself in this position, the obvious choice is to move into this position.

And not from a people pleasing energy. But like a this is just what you do. I want you to kind of imagine, it’s like my hands are kind of like thrown up in the air like, “All right, this is what to do, right?” It just didn’t even occur to me that there were other options. And this was the energy with which I moved from one mastermind into another this year.

That when I first joined the $2 million group, it was not a conscious, “This is what I know I want to do.” I didn’t actually decide to join, I was invited. My coach believed in me, I met the criteria, she knew I could do it. But I didn’t actually say, “Is that really the best thing that I should do right now? Is that where I want to be? How will I make this the best decision possible?” Instead it was, “Oh, I’ve been invited. I should go to there.”

Do you see that? It doesn’t in any way, shape, or form make it a bad decision. But I want you to look at this model. Now if you’re new to me, I work in a system called the model where it’s circumstance, thoughts, feelings, actions, results.

And so here is my model. The circumstance was I received an invitation to join a mastermind because I qualified for it. And my thinking, now that I’m aware of it, I didn’t necessarily know this at the time. Hindsight is always 2020, right? My thinking was, “This is what people do so I should too. And the feeling, it wasn’t inadequate. It wasn’t people pleasing. It was indifferent. “Yeah. Okay, this what you do when you are in this position, you take this next step.”

Now let’s look at the A line. And I had to get really honest with myself here. I got into that indifferent energy, which had me kind of going along for the ride. I didn’t ask a whole heck of a lot of questions of myself, of my peers, of my coach. When my coach said, “All right, everybody in this room, you should be hiring this, this, and this.” I didn’t challenge her. I didn’t challenge the people that she told me to go interview. They just said, “Here’s what I think you need.” I said, “Okay,” because this is what people do when they’re in this room.

Do you see that? I didn’t have ownership. I didn’t take responsibility for those decisions. I thought that I was. I didn’t think because I wasn’t in people pleasing, because nobody bullied me, because I wasn’t feeling inadequate. I didn’t think it wasn’t a conscious choice. But it was just very indifferent and I wasn’t asking questions.

I wasn’t asking for a whole lot of coaching that I could have used. Our container that we are in, and my mastermind is set up this way too. Where we have not only a private Facebook group where you can ask for coaching, in my mastermind we actually have weekly coaching calls for CCM. In the one that I personally am in, we don’t have weekly coaching calls, but that’s a separate thing.

But there’s a private Facebook group that you can be asking for coaching in all of the time. There are peers that I can reach out every single week, there’s no reason for me not to be on a 30 minute call with one of my peers. This is what I’m working on right now. Here’s where I’m lacking clarity. What am I missing?

I wasn’t asking questions. I wasn’t asking for deeper coaching. I wasn’t asking about other options when I was spending my money. I wasn’t challenging myself and my Gigi thinking to push beyond what was obvious.

I do spend a lot of time, this is a skill that I teach you in CCM, Gigi thinking which is, what do I know? What am I sure of? What more can I explore here? I wasn’t really challenging myself when I was doing that, even when I came across not obvious ideas, I didn’t fully flesh them out and get coaching on them. I didn’t bring those ideas to the group to really see what meat was there.

I was either indulging in the old habit of inadequacy, which even I know is bullshit at this point. Or a newfound thing coming from this indifference, indulging in this kind of victim-y energy of like, “But I’m just doing what I’m supposed to do. I’m just doing what I’m told, because I didn’t choose this decision. I didn’t choose to be here, at least not consciously.”

It also allowed me, when I found myself in a place that I didn’t necessarily want to be, but I’m just doing what I’m supposed to do in this room. It’s very victim-y. I don’t know how else to put it. It doesn’t feel good.

But here’s the real mind blower. So I’m either indulging in a little bit of inadequacy, which literally everybody’s aboard of including me, or indulging in like a little victim-y of like, “Oh, but I’m just doing what I’m supposed to be doing, that’s what we do in this room. I don’t understand.” Or I was attempting to always be in a coaching aha, or transformation, instead of taking lots of massive action.

So that this one right here, this one really blows my mind. I didn’t know where this indifferent feeling was coming from. So if I can be in like constant coaching transformation, like this transformation high, maybe that will help me overcome this weird and different feeling that I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. What? What?

I knew I was feeling indifferent. I knew I wasn’t showing up powerfully. I knew that that wasn’t a conscious choice, on a subconscious level. And so I was trying to overcome that the entire time by constantly seeking out like a big coaching aha, or a big transformation. Maybe that hit of transformation will help me overcome this indifferent feeling.

So when I’m not doing all of those things, remember my thought was this is what people do, so I should too. And my feeling was indifference. And then I didn’t go do any of those things that I could have been doing, which gives me the result of I didn’t learn what million dollar Amy does. And how million dollar Amy does it. I didn’t learn how I would do it. How I would show up. How I would make decisions.

When you are thinking I’m just going to go do what everybody else does because I think it’s what I should do, you don’t learn how you’re going to do it. Now, interesting note, indifference doesn’t not serve me in some parts of my life. There are certain parts of my life, especially in family relations, where I don’t have a lot of skin in the game. Indifference really serves me a lot in my marriage.

Making plans with my in laws, when it comes to that I completely defer to my husband. Because they have much stronger views on when and how family should spend time together than my family does. And indifference serves me very much. It creates so much calm for me. So I didn’t necessarily even recognize it as a bad feeling because in some areas of my life it does serve me.

And this is interesting. This is kind of a side note, it’s not the topic of this podcast specifically, but note here that the feeling of indifference is not necessarily a bad feeling. Sometimes one feeling can create very different results in different parts of your life. It serves me very well in certain relationships to move into an indifferent energy when I don’t personally have a lot of steak on the line.

A lot at stake, a lot on the line, I mixed two euphemisms there. But you know what I mean. When I don’t have a lot at stake, indifference serves me very well. It keeps me very calm. But it just doesn’t serve me in my business.

Which is really funny, I still have created over $300,000, in the first 10 months of this year. So even there, it doesn’t not work. But for what I’m trying to create and for what I’m trying to do in the world, it doesn’t serve me as making a conscious, conscious choice.

So let’s move into that. So the first part of this is just becoming aware of how many decisions you are making because that’s just what people in that position do. It’s very like, I didn’t know there were any other options. Anytime you find yourself going, “Well, I guess that’s what I’m going to do.” That’s an opportunity to ask yourself, “Is that true? Does everybody at point A automatically move to point B? What if they move to point Q? What if they stay at point A?”

I know, right? It’s like, what, that’s an option? So just really be aware of when you are deciding what to do because it’s what other people are doing. And not from that people pleasing energy, but like you graduated from high school and you go to college. You didn’t question that. You didn’t decide whether or not that was what you actually wanted to do. You were just like, “Well, that’s what this person does.”

This person who joins this corporate job automatically purposefully chooses to move up the corporate ranks, that’s what you do. I don’t know, is it? Is that what you do? What if it’s not? And just be willing to look at it.

So here’s the thing, I did have to make that choice. I actually made the choice before I went to New York City, but I actually had to like implement the choice while I was in New York City. But I got a lot of coaching the week before I left on what different choices I could make.

Renew into the same mastermind I’ve already been in. Go back to the previous mastermind I’ve been in. Go do something entirely different for six months, go out on my own. I got to the place where I decided that all three options were excellent, I could not make a wrong choice. I was safe in every choice that I had to make and then I could just choose.

Now this is the punch in the gut. The next 48 hours were awful. They were awful. When you are used to making indifferent decisions, when you are used to just doing what everybody in that position would do, when you’re used to just going, “All right, sounds good. Whatever.” When you’re used to that, making a conscious choice feels like shedding a completely new skin and being reborn. It’s awful.

It was 48 hours of some of the most extreme emotional discomfort I’ve ever experienced. Because I did not allow myself to just follow what somebody else was doing. And I wasn’t just going to say, “I guess I’ll just renew because I don’t know what else to do.” I was like, “No, I’m going to come to a conscious decision.” Now a conscious decision is a previous podcast that I’ve had. “I’m going to get to that place for this decision here.”

Now, I wish I could tell you that I knew the exact process that got me there. But I just allowed myself to stay in the discomfort. And really, I know what the best decision is. It will become obvious to me. I can make the best decision. I can make a conscious choice. I’m not entirely sure what the purposeful thought was, but there just came this moment, where it was just clear.

It was 48 hours, it did not come to me right away. But all of a sudden, I just had this moment of, “Oh, I know exactly what I’m going to do. I know exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to renew, I’m going to ask for weekly coaching. I’m going to set up A, B and C. I choose to be here. It’s on purpose, it’s not default. This is my choice.”

And in that moment, I knew. Boom, this is what I’m doing. And the decision was done. Now, within the next 48 hours, did a part of my brain be like, I don’t know? Of course it did. But I already had that moment of clarity, I didn’t entertain. I allowed myself to sit in the discomfort of not knowing what to do for 48 straight hours. And then once the clarity was there, I said, “Yes, this is what we’re doing.”

And while I can’t be sure that this was the thinking that got me there, I want to offer this to you. That I’ve been thinking that I am an uncertain and unsure person who has moments of great awareness and clarity. And instead, I choose to believe that I am a person with uncertain and unsure moments, and awareness and certainty is just who I am.

And that’s what I want to leave with you. What if you choose to believe that awareness and certainty is who you are, and you just have occasional moments of uncertainty and unsurety? Not you are this uncertain, unsure person who only has moments of awareness and clarity. That’s what I want to offer to you if you find yourself in this position of frequently making decisions because that’s just what people in that position do.

I think this is what I should do, I don’t know what else to do. This is what everybody does. So I guess this is what you do, I never really thought about it before. If that is a place you have found yourself in, if that is a habit you have developed over the course of your life, as I recently have discovered that I have, I want to offer that to you. That you are a person with uncertain and unsure moments, but awareness and certainty is who you are.

And start working on that self-concept and that belief about yourself. And what decisions might you make differently in the future from that place? But when you’re thinking about making decisions, if you are that person who defaults to indifference, okay energy, remember, you are awareness and certainty. That is who you are. Having moments of uncertainty and unsurety is completely normal and not a problem.

Now go out there and just bring that new level of awareness into your decision making for the rest of this year. And as you’re looking towards 2022.

All right, my friends, I hope you found this so incredibly helpful. And if you don’t remember, I’ve been talking about it on the podcast here, we are still in a 100 days of connection right now. Of all the different ways, I connected the hell out of life in New York City, my friends. My entire Instagram feed last week was all about all of the human connection. All of the beautiful, amazing humans that I got to know in New York City last week, all of the connections that I made.

How are you making connections with yourself, with your friends, with your family, with your clients, and your potential clients? Share that with me, tag me on social media include @Iamamylatta #100days. And in January I am giving away a connection prize pack. I’m going to be giving away some Confident Coaches goodies for those of you out there making connections these last 100 days of the year.

Capture all of your connections and send me a Dropbox or a Google Drive folder by January 12th of 2021. All right, my friends, I love you guys so much and until next week, let’s go fuck some shit up.

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