Ep #2: Decision Impotence

Decision Impotence
 

Hello and welcome back to the podcast, it’s great to be here!

 

This week, I’m talking all about decision making. Do you have difficulty making decisions? Have you ever wondered why you feel exhausted when trying to decide on something? Decision impotence is the inability to take effective action, and it can be draining! When you’re unable to make decisions in your life, it can impact you in ways you don’t realize.

 

We’re often afraid to make decisions because we think we have no control over how the decision will work out for us. But once we make the decision, we have full control over how we live, and we get to prove it true with our actions. The more effective you become at decision making, the more amazing results you’ll create in your life!

 

Tune in this week where I’ll be sharing some tips and advice on how to make effective decisions. I’ll talk about why you should value growth over comfort, and why committing to big decisions will always be rewarded in the end. It’s time to stop living on default and commit to having your own back, and I’m here to show you how!

 

To celebrate the launch of the show, I’m giving away an amazing surprise gift basket filled with all my favorite things to three lucky listeners! It’ll have some headphones, some books I love and some other fun things that I know you’ll love too. Click here to learn more about the contest and how to enter. 

 

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

     

  • How to make effective decisions.
  • Why you can create anything in your life you want, by making a new decision now.
  • What it means to be comfortable in discomfort.
  • Why so many people choose to stay safe rather than take risks.
  • How your thoughts and words create your reality.
  • Why making a big decision will enable you to be the highest version of yourself.
  • Why painful decisions are an indicator of growth.
  • How you’ll get better at decisions the more you make them.

 

Listen to the Full Episode:

 

 

SUBSCRIBE FOR WEEKLY INSPIRATION ON

APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | STITCHER

 

 

Featured on the Show:

 

  • To celebrate the launch of the show, I’m giving away an amazing surprise gift basket filled with all my favorite things to three lucky listeners! It’ll have some headphones, some books I love and some other fun things that I know you’ll love too. Click here to learn more about the contest and how to enter.
  •  

  • If you’re ready to dive deeper into your career mindset and start making a serious impact in your industry,   I can help you get started.
  •  

  • Check out my  YouTube Channel!

 

 

Full Episode Transcript:

 

DOWNLOAD  TRANSCRIPT

 

Welcome to the Get a Better Job in 30 Days podcast. I’m your host Natalie Fisher. I’m a certified career mindset coach who also happens to love dogs, lattes, and most importantly skipping the small talk and getting right to the conversations that matter. On this podcast, I will coach you on how to use your brain to build a wildly successful career and make a real impact in your industry. If you want to do more than just work for a living, you’ve got to start by making the right decisions now. Are you ready? Let’s go.
 

Hello, hello everyone. Welcome to episode two. I’m excited today to talk to you about this topic that I’ve been dealing a lot with lately. In this episode, I’m going to talk to you about some of the really tough decisions that I have made recently, how I made them how decisions are shaping exactly what you have right now, and how you’re going to create more through the decisions that you make or don’t make.
 

So lots of good stuff coming up in this episode, so stick with me. I think you’re going to really, really get something out of it, especially if you’re having trouble making a decision right now, or if you generally go back and forth on decisions.
 

Alright, so let’s dive in. So I named this decision impotence because the word is kind of powerful because of what it brings up, but also because it has a different definition. So the definition that I found was inability to take effective action; helplessness.
 

So the power of the words and how we use the words and the thoughts that we create in our mind equal our reality. So I wanted to use this language around it because as I talk about it more, you’ll see how when you’re unable to make decisions for your life, it actually impacts you in a way that you don’t even know until it could be potentially too late.
 

So I’ve seen this happen with a lot of people. They really wish that they had made different decisions earlier. The decisions that they’re making are not in line with what they really wanted for their life. So that’s why I’m talking about it in this way.
 

So what happens when you’re in this decision impotence, you can’t make a decision? It means you’re not taking action and you’re staying in one place. And the problem with this is you’re using up so much of your brain space going back and forth on the decision that it kind of paralyzes you because you can’t then make all the little decisions that you need to make in order to move forward.
 

So I’m going to give you some examples as well. But it’s basically sucking energy from your brain going back and forth, like should I do it, should I not do it. Meanwhile, you’re not moving forward and it’s never serving you to be there because you’re not able to make all those little decisions, and then you’re not able to actually move forward.
 

So when you’re in the land of I don’t know, and in my coaching relationships with my coaches, I’m not allowed to say I don’t know, and sometimes I really want to. But saying I don’t know, thinking I don’t know, I’m thinking about it, blocks the possibility of the answer coming in.
 

And I’m of the belief, after doing this work for a while, that you do know. You have an inkling somewhere if you dig deep. You do know. But you can never get the answer when you’re in I don’t know energy, and staying in I don’t know is safe. Staying in I’m thinking about it or I’m going to think about it, that’s very safe.
 

It doesn’t involve you to take any action at all. So you could stay there for the rest of your life. So let’s take a job for an example. Say you’re in a job that you don’t love. You know it’s not for you anymore, you know in your heart that it’s not for you.
 

And you’re thinking about leaving and looking for a new job. You’re thinking about what job you might want, but you haven’t fully decided or committed. So you have to either, at this point, if you’re in this stage, and this is the example, many of the people that come to me are in a job where they know that they could be doing better, earning more money.
 

You need to either decide that you want the job you have and that you’re going to give your all and make that amazing and that you’re going to stay there, or you need to decide to change it. Decide and commit to change it.
 

But don’t live in the purgatory of I’m thinking about changing jobs, I might, I might not. It’s not serving you. And so many people do this. And as a result, they’re not living the highest version of themselves. They’re not living to their highest potential and capacity because they’re living in this inability to take action and nothing gets done.
 

So when you’re living in decision impotence, nothing gets done. So decisions move you forward, and they’re where your power lie to create your life. So you can create anything new in your life that you want by making a new decision now.
 

And big decisions especially will be uncomfortable, and sometimes they can be painful to make. And I’m going to share one of mine. That’s an indicator of growth because you always have the option to stay comfortable where you are.
 

So if you’re in a job that you know how to do and you’re getting a paycheck, it’s “secure,” you always have the option to stay there. Nobody is making you get a better job; nobody is making you move forward. It’s called being comfortable in discomfort.
 

And so many people are comfortable in discomfort and they get the secure paycheck and they just know what’s going to happen the next day, there’s no uncertainty, or there’s less uncertainty because no job is really truly secure. Security really comes from within you.
 

But it’s more secure than say, venturing out and finding a new job. But that discomfort is not for everybody, right? Some people would prefer to take the growth. My people are the people who are willing to go through it, make the decisions that are hard, but that they know are right in their heart.
 

And trust me my friend, when you make those decisions, you are rewarded for this in the end. And I can tell you because I’ve been through many of them myself. And the mantra that I have for myself has been I value growth more than comfort. And I can tell you that not everybody does and that is okay.
 

So I’ll tell you about one of my decisions. So re-deciding, instead of defaulting to old decisions. So what many of us are doing without even realizing it is we have been in a decision for a really long time and we just kind of default to that. We think that’s just our life.
 

So I just recently about six months ago made one of the biggest decisions of my life, which I was defaulting to for a long time. So this decision was leaving a relationship with a man that I’d been with for 10 years. We owned a house together, everything was intertwined.
 

The decision that I made to leave was then made me able to create a new life for myself. So I re-decided and I used this one powerful question, and it was – I asked myself if I were to meet him now again today, as he is, would I choose to be with him again? And the answer was very clearly no.
 

Painful, yes, but it was the truth. And you can use that question if you are in a position that maybe you’re defaulting to and maybe you just thought that was how it was going to be because honestly, that’s kind of how I thought my life would be, which is be with him forever because I thought I had already committed and I thought this is just how it is, I have to make this work.
 

But it wasn’t really what was true for me in my heart, and that question opened that up for me. So ask yourself, if you’re in a job right now, in a relationship right now, in a situation right now and you were to re-decide again today to choose that same thing again, to live in the house you live in today, what would you say?
 

Then once that decision is made, I could then go about making all the small decisions to complete the relationship. So sell the house, move my things, create how my new routine and my new life would look, what I wanted for my business. Those were all the little decisions from that big decision that I made.
 

So then I could get on with it, but I had to make that decision first. And that is what opened up so much more for me already in the last six months. That is going to be one of the biggest turning points of my life was that decision, where I’m now going to create something new for myself.
 

I already have because I was brave enough to not live on default and just default to the decision that I made 10 years ago when I was a completely different person who had a much lower opinion of myself than I do now. I had a completely different brain. I thought completely differently, and now I am a different person and I needed to make a different decision for myself.
 

So some fun tricks that you can kind of adopt to make the decision. So that was a serious decision and that’s a very powerful question. If you were to decide again today, re-decide, would you as it is now? Not hoping it’ll get better, not hoping it’ll change, not contingent upon anything changing. Just would you choose it again now. Yes or no. That will make it very clear for you.
 

And then here’s some other ways that you can go about helping yourself to decide. So there’s the coin flip. So one of my friends was having trouble deciding on what kind of a business she wanted to start. Her options that she had for herself were she either wanted to go and become a personal trainer and help women with their fitness, or she wanted to become a weight coach and help women lose weight.
 

And so that was going to involve two different certifications, it was going to involve two different paths. And so what we did was we flipped a coin and it landed on personal trainer. We were like, heads is personal trainer, tails is weight coach.
 

It landed on personal trainer and she was so bummed out. She was like oh, and in that moment, we knew what she really wanted to do. So sometimes by seeing what you don’t want, you get clarity on what you do want.
 

And then there’s more questions you can ask yourself. So when you think about making the decision, when you think about say, getting a new job, getting out of where you are and taking a new position, deciding to look for a new position and going after it, does it feel expansive for you or constrictive for you? How does it feel in your body?
 

And if you’re a feelings person, you can get connected to that feeling and it can guide you. Another question you can ask is, is the decision coming from lack or fear? Like afraid you won’t be able to do it, afraid it won’t be possible, scared. Or is it coming from the vision of what you want for your life in the future? Is it coming from a vision of what you want to create? Is it in line with what you ultimately want?
 

If either way, it was going to turn out amazing, which one would you decide? So if you stayed in your current job and you knew that was going to be the best it could be, or you chose a better job, you chose to get a better job and you knew that was going to be the best it could be, then which one would you choose?
 

So there are some questions. So I want to talk about having your own back. So we’re taught to have other people’s backs and if say, your friend made a decision and she regretted it afterwards, or she was having trouble with the decision, you would probably make her see why it was a good decision, what she could do moving forward. You would talk to her in a compassionate, kind way that would help her.
 

But what we do with ourselves is we beat ourselves up and we normally – our tendency is to beat ourselves up and say, “Oh, I shouldn’t have done that. I knew this was the wrong decision.” Just example language like that.
 

So when you make a decision, you need to commit to having your own back. And if you get in the habit of doing that, then the decisions become easier. So the reason we’re afraid to make the decision is because we think we don’t have control over the how the decision is going to work out for us.
 

We think that it’s out of our control. It’s up to the outside world to make this the right decision for us. But once we make the decision, we get to have control over how we live in that decision. So we make the decision and then we get to decide, okay, this is the right decision for me because I’m deciding it is.
 

And then we get to prove that true with our actions. We can say this was a good decision and then we can prove it to be the truth for us. We have control over that. And that’s what I do.
 

So that’s what I recommend you do. Whether you decide to do something or you decide not to do something, don’t put the pressure on, oh, I hope it works, I hope this was the right decision. You can decide that it is the right decision and move forward with that mindset.
 

So it’s not like a poker game or a chance, a game of chance. There isn’t like, a you win or lose scenario. You’re the one that has control over whether or not you win the decision because you get to show up every day and live into that decision and create what you want after you’ve made the decision.
 

So you always have control after you decide. And you kind of have to decide to figure out what you want, right? So say you decide you want to get a better job. You do that. You commit, you get the better job, then you’re going to know whether or not that job is what you want.
 

And you could have never known that if you stayed in your old job. You already knew your old job was what you didn’t want, but you didn’t know what you actually wanted yet until you had it, until you did it, made the decision to get it.
 

So the last thing I want to talk to you about is the frequency of your decisions. So if you make a lot of decisions, you get better at making them. And they don’t become such a big deal anymore. So you can either be one of those people who thinks about it and thinks about it and takes a very, very long time to make all your decisions, even the smallest of decisions like taking several days to reply to an email for example, or several days to do a simple task that maybe you know you have to do but you’re putting it off.
 

And everything kind of mounts up and everything kind of moves slower. Or you can be the person who just deals with things as they come in, does them quickly, and the faster you get at making those decisions as they come in, making the decisions faster, the more brain power you have to create from that decision.
 

Then you get to create your life, instead of hanging out in the I don’t know, I’m going to do it later, I’m not sure if I’m going to do that, I don’t know how I’m going to respond, I might respond with this, I might respond with that. When you make a decision and you just respond to the email, you’re going to get a result faster, you’re going to move things forward faster, and that’s the case for everything.
 

So the more decisions you make and the faster you make them, the more effective you become at decision making and the more effective you become at creating results in your life. So if you’re the kind of person who hangs out in I don’t know a lot, it’s safer to be there and it feels more comfortable, but you just need to ask yourself, are you getting the results you want at the speed you want them?
 

Alright my friends, that’s what I have for you today. So to sum it up, what our life is and getting to where we want to go is a process of decision making that we make over and over and over again. Basically deciding, then implementing our decision, and then evaluating our decision. And then going through that cycle over and over and over.  Alright, thank you so much for listening.
 

To celebrate the launch of the show, I’m going to be giving away an amazing surprise gift basket with all my favorite things in it. It will have some headphones, some books that I love, and some other fun things that I know you will love too.
 

And I’m going to go all out on this one, so you’ll want to get in on this. I’ll be giving away three of these to three lucky listeners. To get a chance to win one of these surprise gift baskets, all you need to do is rate and review the show on iTunes. I want to create an awesome show that provides a ton of value, so please let me know if it’s resonating with you.
 

To learn more about the contest and how to enter, go to nataliefisher.ca/podcastlaunch. I’ll be announcing the winners on some upcoming episodes. Thank you so much for listening. I look forward to talking to you next week. Bye.
 

Thanks for listening to this episode of Get a Better Job in 30 Days. If you’re ready to dive deeper into your career mindset and start making a serious impact in your industry, join me at nataliefisher.ca/getstarted. I will see you over there.
 

 

 

Enjoy the Show?