Mindset Favorite: Decision Making

These are short , little snippets of thoughts , reflections that I share with you on a weekly basis , that are focused around mindset things that we can do to live our best lives , to live an intentional life , and I invite you to not just listen to these for yourself and how they apply to you in your life , but consider sharing them with other people too .

Consider sharing them with your students every Monday and having a conversation about it and doing a reflection together , because I think a lot of these thoughts , these topics , these questions are just a part of being human , and sometimes being human can feel lonely and to know that other people are struggling through some of the same challenges that you are and are

benefiting from having these types of conversations is hugely powerful in allowing us to get to be the best version of ourselves , to take who we are and who we be and who we show up in the world as to that next level . So I really hope that you enjoy these Monday Mindsets and , if you do , let us know over on our Instagram at Evie Academics .

Thanks so much for listening and let's dive into our Monday Mindset . So , on today's podcast episode for Monday Mindset . I want to talk specifically about decision making and I think sometimes , as a teacher , there are certain decisions that need to be made that can be very difficult . Is it the right decision ? Is it the wrong decision ?

Is this the right path to go down ? Do I say something ? Do I not say something ? You know we're constantly making decisions and I find this happening to myself even more in the role of CEO , of running EB Academics .

And it was interesting because I had this conversation with a couple of my friends recently about how do you know if you're making the right decision for kind of anything in life , and it got me thinking about , like , what is my decision-making process ?

And as I was talking through that , I also realized how beneficial that decision-making process would be for anyone , and especially for a teacher who is in the day-to-day of dealing with students and children and parents and your admin and colleagues and all that stuff .

So I wanted to share with you some things that I consider and kind of the process that I go through when it comes to making a bigger decision or sometimes even some of those smaller decisions . I will quickly kind of pass through these kind of lenses , these litmus tests , if you will .

And so the first thing that I start with at least for the company , in making decisions and , I think , for you as a teacher in making decisions is to always come back to your why and to your values .

And if the decision that you are going to go forward with doesn't align to your why for being a teacher or to your values and integrity as a person , then it's probably not the right choice right now . It would be out of integrity to who you are as a person and to the values that you care about and the things that you uphold .

If you make an emotional decision that's not aligned with your best interests of your values and your why and that's huge when we are out of alignment in that capacity , we are… making decisions that might ultimately bring harm to us or to the situation or something like that .

So I invite you to really think about what are your own personal values , what are the things that you hold dear , what is your why , and use those things as kind of the litmus test to pass decisions through .

The other thing that I take into consideration is if I'm too emotional about it , if I'm too angry , or I'm even too happy , or I'm too excited or I'm too fearful , whatever that emotion is . If there's too much of an emotion , either high or low , I don't think it's the right time to make that choice .

What I like to do is I like to get to a place of kind of neutral emotion of I've maybe experienced the fear , I've experienced the excitement , or I've maybe experienced the fear , I've experienced the excitement , or I've gone through the anger and now I'm at a place that's much more neutral with my emotions , before I move forward with that decision and that can

be really helpful in terms of dealing with a disgruntled parent or a difficult student or whatever it might be .

The second thing that I do is I ask myself a lot of questions , largely in addition to like my why and my values and that litmus test , I also think about what this decision that I'm going to do is going to say yes to or is going to say no to .

So , in terms of thinking about saying yes to another thing that you're going to take on at school or no to another thing that you're going to take on at school , how is saying yes or no to that going to impact you , going to impact your family , going to impact your capacity right , all of that stuff .

So I put a lot of time into thinking about , like , all of those various angles . The other thing , after I kind of work through all of that , is I sit with myself and I sit with my intuition . And what is my intuition telling me in this moment ?

So in that regard , I have both logic those questions that I've gone through and I have intuition on my side when making decisions . And the last thing that I want to say is you know , we get to come from a place of we don't know , at the end of the day , if this is going to be quote unquote the right decision .

It might be the quote unquote wrong decision , but you're going to learn a ton from that bad choice which , at the end of the day , almost makes the wrong decision the right one , because you're going to have learned from it . And all this to say like you won't ever know whether or not you're quote unquote making the right or the wrong decision .

But we can't get stuck not making choices because we're afraid of the what if ? Because if we are afraid of the what if , then we're not gonna go very far in anything that we do . So I hope that this helps you and provides you some insight into the process that I use .

That's really helped me in some of those bigger decisions that I've had to make in my life and have a great week living intentionally . This is a new year and I'm excited to see where things go . Let us know over on our Instagram at EB Academics whether or not this message landed for you . I would love to hear from you .