#16: 3 Techniques To Make Big Decisions And Stop Second Guessing Yourself
Episode Shownotes
Whatever path you take in life, you will encounter hard decisions—but that’s GOOD news.
From your career and relationships to where in the world to live, when you live a life on your own terms, you will encounter numerous tricky situations. Decisions that are made by you, for you, build a life you can love.
In this episode, I discuss the three practical techniques you can do to overcome indecision. As a digital nomad, business owner and creative, I use these techniques to make the BIG decisions in my everyday life.
The key question is: What problems do you want to have in 3 years' time?
Who your next hire is?
Where to spend your summer?
What house to buy?
Explore making decisions for your future self and feeling decisions physically in your body. Start small, and integrate these techniques into your decision-making toolkit. Use these to make choices for you in 6 months, 12 months, and 5 years' time.
Let’s continue the conversation at https://www.instagram.com/emilypeilan/
Meet fellow Freedom Nomads on a unique retreat experience, join here: https://www.freewildsouls.com/retreats
Create more freedom by learning how to attract more website traffic and ideal clients with my free Website & SEO checklists: https://www.arohavisuals.com/resources
Episode Transcript
What problems do you want to have? It might sound like a bit of a funny question when it comes to making decisions.
But really, when we're making any decision, what we're really doing is choosing which set of problems we would rather have, no matter which decision we make, where we choose to live, what kind of job we have, or what which partner we end up with, we will always have problems.
Tip #1: Be honest with yourself and decide which problems you’d want to have.
So the trick to making decisions and to stop second guessing yourself, it's not so much like, oh, which is which option will be, will give me the least amount of problems. It's not so much like the least or the amount of problems, it's like the quality of the problems, and what kind of problems do you really want to have, there are good problems, and there are bad problems to have, you know, they're not all equal.
So to make big and difficult life decisions, or business decisions with more confidence and ease, I think it's really important to reframe the question in itself and ask yourself, you know, what kind of problems do you want to have? And this kind of ties into this idea of like, regret as well? Like, what? Option or decision? Would you regret the least?
For example, would I rather a stay here in a place or, let's say that the example here is you're considering moving somewhere, because you don't feel like the place you're in is, I don't know, helping you nourishing you, inspiring you. So you're, then to decisions. It's like, your problem sets. Sorry, is what I rather stay here feel lonely, misunderstood, and kind of held back by my environment that people around me, for example.
So there's one set of problems, or what I rather have the problem of starting fresh from scratch, not knowing the place or the area, and taking intentionally taking time, and taking longer to kind of start from scratch to curate a new friendship group. And so yeah, I mean, between the two, totally up to you, as long as you understand that both deceit with both options present their own set of problems, then you have to ask yourself, which one would I rather have? Which one would I regret more?
Let's take another example. It's like, you're considering, you know, quitting your corporate job and maybe starting this digital nomad freelancing lifestyle, and you're really stuck. So perhaps one set of problem, it's like you would you rather stay in your corporate job?
Earn a steady income, but feel perhaps a soul drained, uninspired and stuck? Or would you rather, start your own business have the freedom to manage your time how you want have no ceiling as to how much you can make, but you have the problem of like, having more risks, and having a really volatile, not steady income.
If you want to grow and scale, then you'll have to start hiring people maybe take on the role of managing people as well, you will be wearing lots of different hats at the beginning. And you're always trying something new and failing, getting back up and doing it again. So it comes with a whole set of its own problems.
So you have to really get real and honest with yourself, like what problems do I want to have and really like think about it, write it down, and and go through and then feel into it. So my, that's like tip number one that ties into then tip number two.
Tip #2: Prepare for the worst case scenario.
And be consequence-aware. So basically, same thing, but slightly different. So once you are aware of the different problems that you have, then the next step is to be like Okay, so if I was to go with option A, and that you really go Who and visualise it? What would happen if you did x y z, and then you write down or you visualise, okay, this is what my life would look like, if I did this.
And if I chose the set of problems, this is where I will be in one year or six months time or five years time or whatever. And then with Option B, you're doing the same. So you're already aware of the set of problems that you have. And okay, you so you say to yourself, I commit to these set of problems. Yeah, I'm gonna go with this path.
In six months, time a year, whatnot, like this is these are the longer term consequences, or this is what life could look like. And really, really like looking a bit more further out into the future.
So going back to that example of like corporate job, versus starting your own business, it's okay, maybe right now you're like, actually, I kind of want to have a steady income, I would rather choose the option of having steady income, because I need that right now. Okay, cool. But then what about three years from now? You know, you're still here, doing the same thing?
Is that a problem you'd like to have in three years time, or if you decided to go for having your own business, and having that freedom, and sure your choosing, you kind of don't want to have the problem of like the volatility and all the hard, upfront work that goes into starting a business.
But then, in three years time in five years time, like what is the freedom that you're able to have? Is that worth it. And so it's really kind of taking the shorter term problem approach, enlarging it, looking a bit more further into the future, and making a decision for your future self, not just the comfort of your current present self.
Tip #3: Try a meditation visualisation exercise for clarity!
And then lastly, so once you've kind of gone through the first two sort of exercises, the last exercise for me as always, like the determining factor, it's so fast it for me anyway, it's so far, it's visceral, I feel into it, and I just, it's gives me a lot of clarity.
So it's a meditation visualisation exercise, where you feel into your body. And so taking the previous two, you've got present problems, long term possibility of what life would look like. And you sit with you visualise option A, go all the way through. And then as you're going through it, you're you're meditating, you're visualising it, you're kind of sitting in whatever position you feel most comfortable in. And then what I want you to do is what I do, and it's really helpful if I just feel and notice the sensations in my body.
The easiest way to explain this, it's like, I feel either contractive or expensive. By contractive. I feel like my muscles tense up a little bit, I kind of kind of curl inwards, and kind of a bit of a cold repelled kind of feeling to this option or to this visualisation.
And quite on the other hand, when it's a decision that feels aligned for me, that even if it's scary, even if I'm like, Oh, I don't know if I can do this. But if it feels expansive, then it feels like your heart is opening up, your chest opens up you you kind of you feel bigger and more expansive, and you take up space and you feel a rush of warmth. At least that's how it feels for me.
The difference between this contract of inexpensive is massive. And it's instantaneous. It's not something you think of or make your body do it just boom, like Scenario A. Not a good feeling misaligned. Nope, Scenario B. Okay. Feeling good. Let's go back to Scenario A, how do we feel? Is it still feeling contractive? Okay, yes. Then go back to Scenario B. Is it still feeling expensive? And I kind of go back and forth, back and forth and just be like, Okay, are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure? And it never changes.
And there have been times where I didn't listen to this feeling and I think I highly regretted it. So Your body? Yeah, it's it's like the biggest and fastest decision maker for me. So, yeah, this is currently how I make decisions, if you're not so in tune with your body, like it took me some time actually, when I first heard of this exercise, I was like, I don't know if I'm doing it right. And so what you can do is a test it out on on smaller things, like say, you know, going out for a restaurant or you're you're not sure what to pick on the menu, you could kind of just feel into it, do I want, I don't know, Option A, or do I want option view and feel into it. And, and it's a little things like that, as you it's like a muscle that you flex that you train.
And over time, it can take on bigger, bigger decisions. And really, when you get to a point where, where you have a you're constantly met with dilemmas, and decisions, like tough decisions to make. And especially if you have your own business, or you're an entrepreneur, like you know that you are faced with problems all the time, it's basically solving problems. And you have difficult decisions to make all the time who to hire who not to work with, should you put your energy in this project or that project? Should you do this or that should you commit to this, or or scrap it, you know.
And there are people who have decided to scrap their most profitable offering just because it felt contractive it didn't feel aligned with them anymore. But then, you know, looking further into the future, they're able to have the space to create a new offering that feels even more aligned even more expensive, and have even more value to the world. And so it's like sometimes, the decision that we're meant to make that feels most aligned isn't always the decision that feels comfortable, it challenges you.
And it really stretches your comfort zone. And you grow so much as a person when you are able to tune in to this kind of bodily, visceral reaction and to make big decisions from from this kind of mindset of this framing. So yeah, I hope that was helpful for those of you who struggled to make difficult decisions. I know I used to struggle massively. And these are the three techniques that I've used whenever I'm faced with problems, which is often like every day. And so I just really wanted to share this. It helped me a lot.
Let me know what your biggest takeaway was, if this has been helpful, and I'd love to continue this conversation over on my DMs. If you want to shoot me a real little love note at Emily Peilan. I'd love to hear your how you make decisions. And if you want to give this a go, let me know if it worked for you. And yeah, feel free to reach out if you have any questions. I always love responding to my DMs personally, I respond to every one of them so definitely reach out.
Have a beautiful, fabulous day, and I will catch you in the next episode!
