#163. Decide with Clarity: 3 Steps to Better, Faster Decisions

So many decisions to be made as a business leader. Do we use this vendor? Do we buy some product? We buy some new technology? Do we terminate a relationship, terminate an employee? Who do we hire? This back and forth that goes on in our minds can cause tremendous anxiety. We can do some things to get out of this drama. And in fact, not making a decision causes drama in our lives as well. So the process both can cause a lot of drama, a

struggle, a common struggle. We're going to address this today. Some current decisions that I am struggling with and that I've had recently for me is just something simple like when do I schedule my workouts? Should I join this club or should I not? Do I go on a date with this person or do I not? Do I hire this company? Do I work with this client? Do I hire this specific employee? Those are big, weighty decisions. Even the structure of the organization, do we hire an

administrative assistant or somebody in sales? They have a lot of weight to them. So. Welcome to the Decide youe Legacy podcast. Today's episode is called Decide With Clarity. Three Steps to Better Faster Decisions so you're not stuck. And by the end of this episode, you're going to see that, well, not making a decision is often more costly than making one, even if it's a mistake. And you're going to get excited about how you can improve your decision making process.

I have recently made some decisions that have taken some pressure off. You can do the same thing and you can see that even if you make the wrong decision, you're gonna learn from it. And recently one of those decisions was to hire somebody and then realize that for them it probably wasn't the best fit. For me, it may have not been the best decision. I think it was a win, though, because the win was that we learned and we grew and we're growing each day.

Kind of cool. So you're gonna learn a simplified process to making decisions and then you're going to see how you can do this in a way that is going to be productive. I'm your host of the Decide youe Legacy podcast. I am a legacy coach and family therapist over 25 years. And the purpose of Decide youe Legacy is helping businesses and individuals live courageously. That's our purpose. That's our focus. I faced a fear recently. It was a decision. It was a

tough decision. And I went on a vacation for 10 days with my extended family and my daughter and we went to California and the beach. I went to Yosemite. Great time. But during that trip, I Decided to go and see my cousin Stan. And because I was leaving family for a period of time, I got a lot of pushback from people in my family about going on this trip. It was a four hour drive and I was going to be gone for the majority of a day. I left early in the morning.

But I'm glad I made the decision. I'm going to walk you through how I made it and I and share with you the outcome of that as well. So as I go along in this content, there is a blog post that I wrote years ago and I've refined and republished called it's on 17 Tools for Making Decisions. This content you're gonna wanna check out, hit the link to check it out or go to the website decidedyourlegacy.com, you can read through that content and access it as well. So

these are three steps to better faster decisions. And the first step is to list out all the facts. So two activities I like to take clients through that help them to see the facts rather than the fear. One is called five, five and five. And I learned this from a version of this from a book called Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath. So you decide, you make a, you make a pseudo decision. So you decide I'm going to do go down

this path. You're not actually doing that, but you're deciding in your mind to go and make a decision. And then let's say you just a

simple decision could be you decide to go eat at a certain restaurant versus another restaurant. Or even a bigger decision could be, you know, you decide to join a golf course, country club and it's expensive, or you decide to purchase plane tickets to go visit a friend or people in your family. And then you can analyze that decision

and say, how am I going? How do I think I'm going to feel about it five minutes after I make the decision, five days after I make the decision, and five years after I make the decision, or five months after I make the decision. So it can be 5, 5, 5 and 5. But then you write down some of the feelings you would have. And those feelings are not facts, but they're gonna help you identify some facts about the situation. One could be that it's not gonna ruin your business

or it's not gonna make you go bankrupt. You're gonna learn from it could be a fact, because that can be a fact that you're gonna learn even from the bad decisions. You're not gonna make a horrible decision though, if you go through processes to make the decision so you wanna. Another tool that I like clients to go through is to just list out what you believe will happen if the worst result occurs. And

so let's say that you decide to hire somebody. Well, the worst result that could occur is that they steal from you and your business has to shut down. And then the fact is, you could write down is that you will go on. You have a family that loves you. That can be a fact. You have kids that you cherish. That's a fact. You're healthy. That's a fact. You're still. You're not going to prison. Well, that's a fact. I mean, hopefully not going to prison. I mean, I guess it could be a really

bad situation that ended you up in prison with a bad employee. But the facts are that you're. You're going to survive, you know, you're going to get through it. The worst possible outcome, you're going to actually be able to handle. I decided spontaneously to go out and visit some college fraternity, Pratt Brothers, a weekend

ago. And it was a spontaneous decision because I was invited to this birthday party, and I don't think his wife thought a bunch of us were going to actually fly in from out of town to go celebrate with him. And we all turned 50 about the same time there. A year younger than me, many of the guys. But Anyway, we celebrated 50th and 51st birthdays. So I listed out the facts of the

situation. When I made the decision to buy the tickets to go out. One of the facts was that my daughter's 18, I don't have to be around every weekend. It wasn't a weekend that I had plans with her. One of the other facts was that I had the money to go on the trip. I had the time to go on the trip. So another fact was that, well, that. That flying on a plane was fine. You know, I could get plane tickets. It was fact. So I could use those facts also to

justify my position, which is not what I'm advocating here. I'm saying that just look and analyze the facts. It's one aspect, one step of making good decisions, you know, Shortly after I got the invitation, my buddy Jeremy called and said, are you going? You know, so that emotionally impacted me, but it was a fact that some of my other friends were going to go as well. And it was an opportunity that I could actually attend this party and

make some connections. People I hadn't seen in 10 years. Pretty cool. So another way you can get facts is listen to experts. So you read content on that topic for which you're making a decision. You talk to your friends who have more expertise in an area than you. It'll probably build the friendship. Because people love to help when they feel valuable in that situation, especially if they have expertise. I mean, that's why they got the

expertise to help. So. And they're your friend. I mean, it's not the stranger asking you for advice. You're wanting to get advice from people that have more expertise than you do. So kind of a cool thing. I listed out the facts when I went down to see my cousin Stan. I mean, one of the facts is that he's 95 and his wife is 78. And one of the facts is that I had the time, I

could make it work. It wasn't going to interfere with any other major commitments with my family, except tick them off that I was going to be leaving them and trigger their abandonment fear, which I wasn't abandoning them at all. It was just a situation where I wanted to see this guy. He's been a business mentor and a personal mentor in my life. And it was an opportunity to go see somebody I care about a lot. I was only four hours away from Balboa island and it worked out

well. So I listed the facts. I saw it, I could get. I've rented a car. It was going to work out. So the second step to making a really good decision, fast decision. And some decisions you don't want to make quickly. Some decisions you have to take time to gather the facts. It's going to be spread out. But the second step is to filter that specific decision. You filter it through your core values. You filter it through whether it adds balance to your life or takes

away balance. You filter it through your life purpose. You filter it through your even, even your vision.

You know, does it lead you towards that vision? Your vision? This ideal is a way to establish the right goals, a way to establish making good decisions. Because they're, they're leading you towards that vision, that big picture vision, which is super critical as a business leader to be casting vision, to be focusing on it yourself, to be talking about it, to be getting feedback on it, to keeping it at the forefront. Or else you'll forget it, you'll leak. So you create filters.

I mean, a filter works when you decide that you make a pseudo decision, like again, you're deciding to hire somebody and then you're filtering it through your core values. Do they align? I mean, the core values of decide your legacy Intentionality crucial. Are they intentional with their lives and their Disciplines, courage. Are they a courageous person? Are they willing to make courageous steps in their life? That's a core value. I want that to ooze out

of every thing we do at Decide youe Legacy Crucial. Another one is hope. Do they have a sense of hope? Then we have these aspirational values that we filter things through as well. And that's connection and fun. And there's a couple other ones that I'm forgetting right now because they're not core values or aspirational values. I'm just kidding. I could pull them up, but they're important as well. You want to filter your decisions through your

values. And now I'm going to drive myself crazy by not being able to remember those other two. But they are crucial as well. And we've done, as an organization, some clarification of values recently, and that's why they're not fresh in my mind. The core values, intentionality, courage, and hope are pretty crystal clear. So I decided to go to Portland, filtering it through my values. I mean, intentionality is one of them. Courage is one of them. Intentional with my relationships, great

having hope. Even though I could have focused on things that could go wrong, seeing friends I hadn't seen in a while, I still had hope. It was going to be fun, gonna make great connections. And it really was fun. It was adventurous. There were some crazy, crappy, not crappy. There are crazy things that happened. Great memories that happened. So I filtered it through my core values. And recently I turned down a business opportunity working, doing a couple projects for a big company. And I

turned it down because there was a misalignment in our. In our target market, in our niche. And there was also. It was a valuable opportunity, but I didn't feel like it aligned with my core value of intentionality. I've decided that we're going to focus on an organization and say no to the things that can be good, but say yes to the best opportunities. So I knew if I took on this engagement, it would have taken

a significant amount of time and energy. It would have taken away a lot of focus from growing from hiring and building up new parts of the business. And I would have been excited initially. So

thinking of that 5, 5, 5 and 5. I would have been initially excited because I said yes and didn't have to let somebody down, which I don't want to do. Five minutes after I made the decision, I would have felt that way. Five days after I made the decision, I might have still felt that way. But five months after I made the decision I would have potentially looked back and said I could have invested my time and energy into something that was moving the needle

where we want the needle to move. Not that that was a bad opportunity, but it was a decision that as I look back even now having made it, it was a good decision, it was the right decision. And I hope I don't change my mind on that. I could, you know, because I'm all over the place sometimes, but that's how I made that specific decision. Does it align with who you want to be in the future? That's alignment with your values. So you have this, this assessment that it's actually adding

opportunity to your life for more balance. It's not taking away and detracting from balance in your life. That's how I encourage clients to make decisions. That's how I want to make decisions myself. Step in Making faster, better decisions is the most important step in the entire process. And it's your intuition, it's learning to trust your intuition. Now if you have been burned in your life, you may second guess that inner gut level voice

that's saying, go here or don't go there. It's different than your emotions. It's something that rises up with inside of you. It's something that you get and you can develop in your life. And I find that I develop it when I have solitude, when I go on a walk, when I read, when I engage in the hobby. Not thinking about making that decision. I find that's very helpful. And that's one of the things that can connect you with a good, with this good decision

making process is just step away from it. Maybe step away from it, clear your

head, go play golf, go on a walk, go on a run, do something different. And then just trust, trust that your intuition is going to guide you, that something's going to come up inside of you. And it's not based on what other people think, it's not based on what you think you should do. It's based on what you want and it's based on your intuition. And then go in that direction. That's why it's the third

step and the most important step. You can make decisions that are great looking back and know in the moment that you did not have much support because people that you trust in, your friends and your family, they may not have been in support of that decision, but you knew intuitively that it was the right decision to make. Only you can make that decision. So everyone might think you should, you should date this specific guy in your family and you and your gut think he's a great guy, he's quality,

he's solid. But intuitively you're just not at that place. Maybe you get there in the future, but that lack of desire to make that decision to go date and to be all in is there. And you want to trust that. Now, as you talk to friends and family, you may reassess and maybe something rises up inside of you that changes your mind. And that is fine. It is fine to change your mind. I think you're changing your gut reaction. You're getting somewhere deeper. And maybe you don't have enough

information. That's why I start with the facts. And then we go from getting the facts to actually filtering it through your core values and your vision and your balance so you're not compromising. Crucial. And I did that. I did that with my friends going into Portland, this party, and I did it with Stan because it aligned with the intentionality and the courage, the courage to not do what my family wanted me to do in that situation. Interestingly enough, when I came

back, they were happy I made that decision. I mean, they were excited that I connected with my cousin Stan, my dad's first cousin, and his wife. They were excited to learn more. So it ended up being a very good thing. But in the moment, it was tough. Now, the day before I left for Portland, I got a call from my buddy Jeremy, and he shared with me that his dog had just recently passed and we had made plans to split a hotel, go on this trip together. He was part of what inspired me to

make sure I went on this 50th birthday party trip. Now, when I talked to him, I could have tried to talk him out of it because he was saying that he wasn't gonna go. I took the call and, and in my gut I felt like, just listen, you know, he's grieving. Just ask him questions, man. Just be there for him. You've had loss in your life, Adam. That was my gut reaction, to want to just be there for him, help him talk it through, because I mean, he loves his dog. I lost a 16 year old dog.

His dog was 13, 12 or 13. I knew Theo, I mean, he was great dog. And so I knew that my buddy was grieving and call was silly. I don't care. My dog has helped a lot of my clients and help me in challenging situations. It's a great thing to have to focus on at times. But just listening to him, that was an intuitive response. And through that it helped me. I wasn't going to cancel. But I was going to be disappointed because he was kind

of a safety person that I that was going on this trip. I mean, I knew all the other guys and stuff, but I'd stayed in better touch with him. So I felt more comfortable with Jeremy going. But I trusted my gut. I didn't try to control him. What we don't trust, we control. Not good. And I just went with it, listened to him, and then he changed his mind and he went on the trip. So you want to try it out

with this intuition thing, you just go. And what I have tried to do recently is if I make, if I realize that my initial thought about something, that initial, I call it the inner roommate. It's loud, it's fear based, it's your ego. You know, I want to write those thoughts down that I have about the decision initially. And then I make. So make three columns and then in the middle column, these are like my

neutral thoughts that I don't know based on that initial thought. So my initial thought would be, you know, if you go without Jeremy to Portland, Oregon, you're going to be miserable and you don't have that safety blanket there. Then my neutral thought was like something that is in between. It's. It's okay, you know, you'll still have fun. You'll get to connect with other people and you'll have time in the hotel alone to do work. I don't know, something. And then you have a

truthful thought. So that neutral thought and the truthful thought, the neutral thought is often more intuitive and something that's not fear based, but it's something you can explore and you can get more information on to get a more truthful, accurate, hopeful perspective on the situation. So you can try that as well. It's an intuitive activity. And you can also say, what should I. You can make a list of things you think you should do and what you want. Often what I find that what I want is

it's from inside, it's inspiring. I mean even the word in spirit versus an intuition in spirit. It's inspiring. It's inspirational rather than informational in form. Information is inform. It's very concrete. It could be something that someone says to you. Read this. You know, it's just

information. It's not necessarily true, just information. Inspiration is going to have much more connection to your intuition. So you want to try this out. You know, if you can think of right now a big decision that you want to make and I know you have them, I know you making big decisions, I Mean, you guys are leaders listening to this podcast. You're making decisions with your personally and professionally. What do I do in my marriage? How do I take care of my aging

parents? How do I deal with the difficult employee? How do I address conflict in a healthy way? Do I become. Do I want to become the president of my company? Do I want to sell my company? Do I want to buy this company? There's so many ways we can get distracted, and then we can get bothered by all the stuff in our heads in that specific situation. So being bothered does not mean you have legitimate bothers. It does not mean you have

legitimate things to focus on that are really disturbing. It just simply means that you're letting yourself go in a path, on a way, in a. In a direction that is distracting you from facing the core issue. So we can make things so bothersome. I mean, perfectionism can be a bother. And if you step back from the situation, you connect with your intuition, you look at the facts, you filter that situation, and then you can do one more thing. You can ask yourself, what

would I do here if I wasn't bothered? And then do that. How? Simple as that. What would I do if I wasn't disturbed in this situation? And then do that. Because the reality is, much of what you're focusing on really isn't the real issue. The real issue is something different. You're just afraid, and you're afraid to do that next thing. I asked that to a client today. What would you do here if you weren't bothered? You know, very different kind of

perspective. And I can see them in those situations like

that. And I learned this tool. I actually listened to a book, and I learned this from an inspiring coach. Business coach Dan Sullivan was talking about in his book not being Bothered, which we can link to as well. Very good content. But I noticed in that situation, just asking that question, there was a shift, I mean, away from all the emotion and everything, to where I can take action, to the prefrontal cortex, away from the amygdala to the prefrontal cortex, and

then you can actually do something about it. So if you want to apply this information, just start with something. I mean, start with something simple like where am I going to eat tonight? Or if you and your spouse are arguing or your friend about where you're going to eat, just start with something like that. How do you make it? List the facts. Fact is, you're interested in eating Mexican food right now. Fact is, they want

Mexican food more than you want Mexican food today. Those could be Feelings as well. But you can list the facts, you can apply the filters. How does it align with your core values? You got to get those core values articulated to be able to do that. You align, you filter it through your vision, you filter it through whether it adds balance to your life and your life purpose statement,

your purpose in your life. And then you make the decision, you make the call, you let go, you go with your gut, then you live with the results, knowing. And I love this quote right here as well. If I can find it, oh boy, I don't know if I can find it now, but I think I can. But it's by, it's from Theodore Roosevelt and it's in any moment, in any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The next best thing is the wrong thing. And the worst

thing you can do is nothing. Doing nothing is a decision. Doing nothing can be a destructive decision. You're not getting any feedback, you're not getting any information on making a mistake. You, you learn so much from making mistakes. So you want to make decisions. I'd encourage you, all of you leaders, you're probably going to need to make more decisions, trust your gut intuitively more. Just go with it more than less, because that's why.

And that's how you're going to learn. And then over time, you'll realize that you can trust yourself more and more. If you've been burned, if you've made mistakes, you have to pick it back up and say, hey, I trusted here, I shouldn't have trusted there. But it doesn't mean that I can't trust anybody. It doesn't mean that it won't work in this situation. That's not what that means. It just means

you got to learn from it. What's the meaning in that situation? So you want to list out the facts, you want to filter the situation, and then you want to go with your gut. So if you found this content helpful, you're going to love the content and Shatterproof yourself. Light. 7 Small Steps to a giant leap. And the giant leap we're going to talk about here is going to give you clarity on your filters. It's going to give you clarity on your perspective.

It's going to help you start establishing balance and it's going to help you start establishing healthy relationships so you can get more facts by connecting with people. It's going to be helpful to you in many ways. And It's a brief 20, 25 minute video on a worksheet. You fill out, check it out. Download the worksheet, go through it. It's totally free. You will not want to miss that. Share it with your friends and as well. If you like this episode,

give it us a rating and review on Apple or Spotify. Wherever you get podcast content, give us a review. Share it. We will love you forever for that. And I want to close the way that I always do. Remember that nothing will make my day better than knowing you have taken action. What is something from today that you are going to take action on? Do it right away, like in an hour, within an hour, even. Write it down. I'm going to apply this decision making tool.

I'm going to make this decision based on this content. I don't have it all figured out. Like I wrote this episode because I'm struggling with making decisions. I that's why I was thinking about this content. I mean, I don't have it all figured out. I'm a fellow traveler. That's not what I'm talking. I'm not saying I'm a guru here. I'm not that at all. I'm a fellow struggler. I do know one thing though. There's no positive change

unless you decide to do something new and take some kind of an action. Because your legacy, which is. Which is the way people will remember you. The impact your life has on others, it depends on you making decisions to live that legacy. To decide means you're eliminating other options. Great word. Your legacy is your impact on other people's lives. Live the life today that you want to be remembered for 10 years after you're gone. So if you

died today, how would they remember you in a year, in two years? Live that life today. You decide your legacy. Nobody else. I appreciate you greatly and I'll see you next time.