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Amanda wanted to make more confident decisions. She is a working mom of 2 and was passionate about her job but she had an overactive brain that constantly told her she wasn’t doing enough or she was doing it wrong. She came to coaching to end the second guessing. She wanted to learn how to trust herself and her priorities. In this interview we discuss exactly what it took for Amanda to become a confident decision maker.
Topics in this episode:
How to make decisions you won’t regret later
Ending the negative chatter and second guessing your head
The first step to becoming a confident decision maker is clarity
Establishing your “mom values” so you always know your priorities as you parent
Learning to redirect your brain when it starts questioning your decisions
Your feelings don’t have any indication on whether a decision is right or wrong
Show Notes & References:
Become the person that makes confident decision, start here by scheduling a free coaching call: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book
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Transcript
Intro
Rebecca: Hi working moms. I have such a treat for you today. I am interviewing one of my clients that just finished up her six months of coaching with me. Her name is Amanda Yann, and we are having a conversation about becoming a confident decision maker, it's so good.
Amanda came to me telling me that she was constantly going back and forth in her brain around making decisions. She was questioning everything. Everything from when she was washing the dishes, her brain thinking, maybe she shouldn't be washing the dishes right now. Maybe she should be folding the laundry, or maybe she should be playing with her kids. And every time that she let her kids watch a TV show, her brain would say, maybe this isn't the best use of their time. Maybe I should be playing with them. Maybe we should be doing a family activity. Maybe they should be cooking with me.
Her brain was constantly telling her that she was probably making the wrong decision. That would then cause all of this internal turmoil within her. Questioning what was right and what was wrong, and it was exhausting her and making her feel really overwhelmed and really bad, ultimately, about herself because no decision seemed to be right in her brain.
Overthinking our decisions.
I know that all of us can relate to this on some level where we are over researching, overthinking questioning all of our decisions, fearing failure in our decisions, needing to make sure that we get to the right decision, and just spending excruciating amounts of time thinking and considering what that right decision would be. And, it is not leading to a very free and balanced and happy filled life.
So, for Amanda, we spent a lot of work talking about what it means to become a confident decision maker. And as she was wrapping up her time with me and coaching, I invited her to come onto this podcast and to share with us her journey in becoming a confident decision maker and some of the really key moments and key tools that coaching provided her in that journey. So I know that you're going to get so much from this interview, you're probably going to want to listen to it twice. So get ready. Here we go. Let us dive into confident decision making.
Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms Podcast, the place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you're looking to feel more confident, decisive, and productive at both work and home, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Rebecca Olson. Let's get to it.
Rebecca: All right, working moms. I'm so excited I have a guest here today, Amanda.
Amanda: Hi, everyone.
Rebecca: I'm so excited that Amanda is here to share with us today. Amanda is a client that I've been working with for about the last six months, and so we just finished up our six months together coaching with me. And I wanted to bring her on this podcast because her story and where she has come from over the course of coaching is just really relatable to so many working moms.
We're going to hear a little bit about where she was at and some of the tools that were most beneficial to her, what is really resonating and sticking with her over the course of coaching. And of course, we're going to talk about where she's landed today because some pretty wonderful things have happened over the last six months and I want her to be able to share that too. So thank you, Amanda for being here. This is so much fun.
Amanda: Thank you, Rebecca, for having me. I'm very excited. I've been your follower for a very long time and have listened to your conversation with other ladies. And I'm just very honored to be a part of the conversation today.
Rebecca: Oh, I love it. It's a conversation about being a working mom and going after the life that you want to have. For me, it's this conversation around not settling. I think that for us, as working moms, we tend to settle in some way. We settle in our career because we don't want it to impact our family. We settle in our health or, the time that we spend with ourselves because we don't want it to impact our family or our job.
What it means to be an ambitious working mom.
You know, like, we're always kind of feeling like something is sacrificing in our life. And I hate that. That's like our internal dialogue and that's a reality for so many working moms. It fuels me and a lot of the work that I do as a coach. And so I love the idea that we're just having a conversation about what it means to be an ambitious working mom and do it really well.
Amanda: Yeah, for sure. You're absolutely right. So I'm passionate about the concept of winning at work and succeeding in life and I listen to a lot of tech podcasts on parenting and leadership. I do believe there is a balance there. Maybe we cannot have it all, but there is a balance we can achieve. Sometimes you may not be able to do it on your own. That's why you need help sometimes to help reach out for help. Just like when we work out, we have a coach.
Rebecca: Yes. We hire personal trainers to help us in our workouts and so forth. And then you hire a life coach to help you figure out how to balance life and go after life. There's a correlation there for sure. Tell me why you decided to come to coaching. Where were you at six months ago? I guess I think it was like in March or April or so when we first connected. And where were you at then and what kind of led you to reach out to me?
Amanda: Yeah, sure. I'm going to give you a little bit about my background.
Rebecca: For sure, introduce us and tell us about what you do. I'm sorry. For sure. Tell us all about yourself. I want to hear it.
About Amanda.
Amanda: Yeah, sure. I think that will give you a little bit of context of the struggle I was going through at the time. So I'm a working mom of two toddlers, almost five years old and almost two years old.
So professionally, I am the director of business intelligence right now for Ecommerce Company. The biggest struggle I have, other two struggles I was having, is the constant chatter of what I'm doing is wrong. There's always something else I should be doing. There's a different way I should be doing something.
Comparing myself to others.
And another thing I struggled with was comparing my actions and decisions with other people. If others took different actions, made different decisions, I saw negative self-talk. I'm not good enough of a mom. I'm not wise. I'm not smart. Why did I think like that? So different ways these kind of issues manifested in my daily life.
“...a constant chatter of, I'm not doing the right thing”
Like, on a daily level, it could be things like, I'm doing dishes - maybe I shouldn't be doing dishes, I should play with my kids. When I'm playing with my kids - oh, the house is a mess and I should be cleaning. It's just a constant chatter of “I'm not doing the right thing”. There's something else I should be doing. There's a different way I should be doing things.
“I didn’t have my own opinions.”
I think at work, it's manifested…at that time when I first started working with you, I was in the middle of trying to decide, okay, whether I should leave my current company or not. So I keep going back and forth, okay, I'm staying…then somebody else tells me something about the company, and I'm like oh, okay. Why didn't I know that? Why didn't I think of that? I should leave, but I hear somebody else's opinion, like, oh, maybe I should stay. It's like I don't have my own opinion. Always compare. If somebody has a different opinion, I always say, okay, why didn't I think of that?
Rebecca: It's always better. No matter what their opinion is, it's always better than yours.
Amanda: Always.
Rebecca: They must know something, or they must be smarter.
Amanda: yeah, I think the way I thought about it is, okay, the fear is that 15 years down the road, 20 years down the road, when the kids are grown up, when I am, at a later stage of my career, I would look back on the past two decades, saying, okay, what I doing wasn't right. I regret not spending enough time with the kids, or regretting not putting in all I can do in my career. That's what led me to you, to help me figure it out.
Rebecca: I would imagine, because you have two kids, so starting to have kids was that internal chatter just magnified. Right? It was there before, and you were always kind of second guessing yourself in your decisions and what you were doing and why you were doing it, but it didn't really affect anybody but you. And then all of a sudden, it had this effect on your kids and your family, and the potential for regret skyrocketed.
Amanda: 100%. So the fear is that, okay, if I let her watch TV for 20 minutes every day, she's going to be mentally affected, she's going to grow up to be a very poor kid. She's not going to be as smart as everyone. Every little decision I make has been magnified a hundredfold because I'm not just responsible for myself anymore, but for the very impressionable little kids.
Rebecca: Big picture. You came to coaching to be able to start making more confident decisions, to learn how to really trust yourself in your decision making, to know why you make decisions in the way you make them, and what is most important to you in those decisions. So you end some of that negative or that self talk chatter in your head, and you end a lot of that comparison. Or when it happens, you kind of know how to redirect it on some level.
Amanda: The funny thing is when I came to you, that's what I was thinking about. You are going to help me make the right decisions at every moment.
Rebecca: Oh, so good.
Amanda: You can help me make the right decisions. But every session with you, you change the mindset about what the right decision is. You change my mind.
Teaching Amanda to be a confident decision maker on her own.
Rebecca: I could teach you how to make the right decision about your job and that job conversation around what's next for you in your career. And I could help you make a right decision around some of the parenting things, like how much screen time should they have and what are the right rhythms for my family? You know, some of those conversations are important. We could have had really specific conversations and made some decisions together that you feel really confident about -
Trusting yourself.
Or I could just teach you how to be a confident decision maker so that no matter what your decision is down the line, you always feel like you can trust yourself and you know how to make decisions in a confident way. You become the person that doesn't second guess themselves, then now you've just solved it for life.
Amanda: Exactly right.
Rebecca: I love that you decided to make an investment in yourself to become a confident decision maker. Because we make 30,000 decisions a day. We make so many decisions. Everything from, Do I want a grande cup of coffee or a tall cup of coffee? Right? Like little tiny things. And they're like, if you go to Starbucks, you have about ten decisions at that moment that we don't even think about, but that's ten decisions that you have to make, and then we make those kinds of decisions to big decisions, like, what is the most important thing for me to work on today? Like, what is going to be the most effective use of my time today? Or how is the best way to frame that correspondence to someone?
There's so many decisions that we make. If what you're saying is with so many of them on a conscious and subconscious level, you are always wondering if you are making the right decision and second guessing yourself and every little piece of it, and wondering if you should have done something better or something different. And then if that was your internal experience around 300 decisions, I can only imagine there was a sense of exhaustion all of the time, mental fatigue all of the time, because you were never doing anything right.
You can't feel really satisfied. I mean, I say satisfied, but I think satisfaction in life is really important in terms of happiness, right? So you're not really feeling a deep sense of satisfaction or happiness in life because you're always thinking you should have been doing something different.
Living a life of regret.
You talked about regret - and that's something that I talked with a lot of my clients about, is I want you to get to your kids high school graduation and look back at the experience of raising your kids before you send them off to college and for you to really feel like you did it exactly the way you wanted. You showed up as the mom that you wanted to be. You gave them the time that you wanted to give them. You raised them in the way that you wanted to raise them. That is such a powerful feeling to me, to think about that, to get to that point in life and have that experience. But it's not just about that in the future. We're not trying to prevent future regret.
If you're fearing regret that you're going to regret some things, it means you're regretting things right now, you're living a life of regret because nothing was ever right, and you should always be doing something different. And, that feels like the most worthwhile investment of money and time I could ever think of is to become a person that ends all of that and never regrets their decisions from here on out.
Amanda: I can 100% relate to that. It's just the anxiety I was feeling.
Rebecca: Oh, yeah.
Amanda: The daily life…I mentioned doing dishes. I feel I'm not doing dishes the right way.
Rebecca: How can you do dishes wrong? It's dishes.
There was a fear of am I present enough?
Amanda: Okay, what's the order of dishes? How can I do it fast? Like, okay, I want to finish this. I'm always rushing through life, rushing the dishes so I can play with the kids. And when I’m playing with the kids, I'm like, ok, we should do this so that I can go back to cooking.
When I’m with the kids, I try to be present, but at the same time, there is a fear of am I present enough? Am I going to regret not being present enough, which then prevents me from being present. It's anxiety of it, stress of it. Even though I'm talking about it, I can still experience the anxiety around that. I felt every little thing. I thought, this could not be a good life, right?
Rebecca: So, a lot of our journey was about becoming a confident decision maker. Like, it was a conversation about not the decisions themselves, but we did talk a lot about various decisions and you made some important ones over the course of our time together - but about becoming a person that makes confident decisions. Tell me about that process for you or some of the things that stand out to you and you just think about the journey of becoming a confident decision maker.
Amanda: I think it all starts from clarity on my value and my mom value that you helped me to define and own up to the value unapologetically. And one thing that was very interesting, our first conversation, Rebecca, was that, okay, I would like to have impact and ask, okay, is the depth of impact or the risk of scope of impact? I never thought about it. Well, it's a scope of impact I like to have.
I think to own up to that unapologetically really helped me understand a lot of the past decisions I made. And, also the tendency of me making certain decisions intuitively. So just to have the perspective of how I make the decision kind of reduced the level of self judgment and self criticism I have of myself.
Rebecca: It's the why you make decisions in the way that you do.
Amanda: Yeah. I don't remember the story of being a fire searcher. That was something, right?
Rebecca: That's right.
Amanda: Should I share the story?
Rebecca: Go for it.
Amanda: Okay.
Rebecca: It was something that you had been sitting with for a long time, I remember…
Amanda: For a very long time.
Rebecca: You're like, I got to talk about this, Rebecca. I've been thinking about this for so long and I need to finally decide and move on.
Amanda: I was beating myself up really hard for something that seems trivial. The story was that I was working for a large organization at the time, and they were looking for somebody who would be a fire marshal in the event of a fire. So that person would go around the floor, make sure everybody there's nobody in the bathroom, nobody is being trapped in the corner, or something happened or something like something like that. That person would tell the firefighters right.
Rebecca: Fire department. There was like a liaison between the business and the fire department.
Amanda: Yeah, exactly. So I said, okay. Sounds interesting. I'm going to do it. Like, somebody needs to do it. That sounds like a good thing to do. I signed up for it when I talked to my friend who's also a mom, and she said, there's no way I'm doing it. I'm responsible for my kids over anybody else. If the fire happened, I'm going to be the first one out of here. Wow, I didn't think of that. Why can't I be more responsible about my kids? Why didn't I think of my kids first? So I beat myself up.
Rebecca: I'm such a terrible mom. I'm not my kids in the midst of a fire. What's going on?
Amanda: Yes. So I really beat myself up for years and years because of that.
Rebecca: Wow. I don't remember that. I don't remember that this was that long of a conversation in your head.
Amanda: Your it was, so okay. I have to talk to you about it, and you help me understand hey, that really goes back to my value of having a scope of impact in a situation that you help me understand the likelihood of that happening. And, in that situation, would I really put my life at risk?
Rebecca: Are they really asking me to put your life at risk?
Overcoming guilt I felt for years.
Amanda: No, they're not. That just really, helped me overcome that guilt I've been feeling for years.
Rebecca: That you had felt for years. Over this decision?
Amanda: Yes, over this decision.
Rebecca: At the time that we were having this conversation, were you still the fire liaison?
Amanda: No, I wasn't.
Rebecca: You weren't anymore? Okay.
Amanda: Yeah, I was a different company already.
Rebecca: It was a retrospective conversation we were having, because imagine how many of these decisions on a subconscious level are sitting with you or had been sitting with you, that you did it wrong and you should have done something differently. And you're a terrible mom. You're a terrible person. Like, you're not all of these things. There's so much weight to all of this.
And what we did in that conversation I mean, what you're talking about is that we defined the difference between a wide impact versus a deep impact. And what did that look like? And we were kind of analyzing it. And you mentioned clarity as being such an important part of becoming a confident decision maker.
And what we do in coaching is we define three really important things. And really, I don't do this with all of my clients, but for you, we added a fourth one in there, which was, like, your core values as a human being, like, really what's most important to you at the heart of it. And then we identify when you are showing up as your best, how do you show up?
Define your purpose.
What's the impact that you make on the people around you and on the world when you show up and put some words to that, we define your purpose, and then we also define something that I like to call as your mom values, which can have some similarities to, obviously, just her core values as a human being. But it's really about what values do you most want to instill in your children and how you want to show up as a mom, specifically in the midst of your family. Right?
So we had all of these words now, this arsenal of words, as I like to call it, to define you at a really core level and what makes you tick. And we thought about all of those things, not just through the lens of, like, your job or your work or your career or just you as a mom. We thought about it in total, like you would think about it. You can name some of these things that have been important to you since you were young, many, many years ago. It's like, oh, yeah, I've always just been that person that does this or thinks this way or has had some inclination towards whatever it may be.
In defining who you are, you also need to define who you're not.
That's some of the work that we do that brings some real deep clarity, like, yes, this is who I am. And what's really important about that process is not just defining who you are, it's defining who you're not. Very equally important, which is a part of the process of really ending a lot of the comparison is recognizing that this is who I am, this is who they are.
And they have a whole other list of things that are their values that are most important to them, that they're living their life by. And I have mine over here. And it's great when they work together, and sometimes they don't, and that causes some conflict, and that's okay too. It's not personal. It's just this is who I am, and this is who they are. And I don't have to constantly be trying to align myself to somebody else's values. In fact, I don't even really want to do that. That's not life giving to me to do that.
This is who I am and what's most important to me.
It's important to know to and have some language to describe that clarity piece of, like, this is who I am and what's most important to me and how I want to live my life. That's a really big part of becoming a confident decision maker, is having, like, a matrix of understanding of the kind of life you want to live by, the rules that you want to live by, if you will, that are just based on you.
Amanda: The rules, and also other people's rules. And also sometimes just to have a framework of looking at things that you realize you're not good at but other people are good at. Like, for example, most recently, we went on a family trip with another family. One thing I'm not good at is researching activities to do and places to eat. I think the old me would be like, okay, I should be doing more of this. I can't just rely on somebody else doing this. I should step up.
Rebecca: Like, a good mom would have planned activities for their kids all of the time and know exactly and make sure we're eating at places that have healthy options that they're going to eat at.
Shifting my mindset.
Amanda: Oh, my goodness. Yes, exactly. I think that immediately I go to that mode, like, oh, wait a second. It's not something we go at. It's not something I'm interested in, but there are things that I'm taking care of for everybody. I'm the person who woke up early in the morning making coffee, making breakfast for both families. So they're good at this, that family will handle it. I'm very good at this, I'll do it and enjoy making the proper breakfast and also relax, let them drive. What we should do. It's just the mindset shift of understanding what you want versus what you just can't give up. You don't need to worry about it.
Rebecca: And being able to let it go with a lot of ease. Because to your point, like, your brain still wanted to offer to you that maybe you should be researching all of these things and you should be contributing to these ideas and to, planning the activities. Your brain still offered that to you, but you were able to hear it and say, oh, no, I don't actually have to do that. That's okay. Like, here's where my strengths are and what I have to contribute and what's most important to me.
The ability to redirect your brain, is a big part of confident decision making.
Your brain still offered to you that you should be doing something else, that you should be helping with the planning of the activities and so forth like that. But you are able to hear that and go, oh, that's actually not true. That isn't what I need to be doing. My gifts, my value, what I have to offer is over here in this department. I want to make sure people are getting up and being cozy and feel taken care of. Right. And so it's the ability to redirect your brain, as a big part of confident decision making.
And I want to point that out because a lot of times when we think about confident decision making, we think that there's no second guessing whatsoever. Like, we just make a decision and we don't ever question it. We move on. There's nothing in our brain that is putting any type of hesitation about the decision. That's what we like to think of as confident decision making, when in reality, that's not it at all. A confident decision maker, of course, is going to have times where they think deeply about their decision and question it and kind of make sure that whatever they're deciding is the right thing moving forward - of course they're going to do that.
They know how to redirect their brain in the way that's most useful to them so that they don't feel stuck in the decision. So they're not going back and remaking the decision again. So the decision isn't lingering with them, so they don't have the comparison or the negativity that can come with decision making. Right. They can make a decision, and whenever their brain questions that, they go, oh, well, here's why I made the decision, and here's why it still feels right, and they move on.
And I even remember that was part of our last conversation that we had together, like, what's a ten out of ten in confident decision making? And I remember you said, well, I shouldn't hesitate about decisions ever. Is that really true? Like, you shouldn't be hesitating, is that really what a confident decision maker is? And then we had to question that. Like, actually, no, that's not really true.
Amanda: I think questioning the decision part gives room for growth, for genuine growth.
Rebecca: For growth and for pivoting.
Amanda: Yes.
It’s okay to pivot on your decisions.
Rebecca: If your brain offers to you, maybe I should be doing this, if you take a moment with it and you go, should I be doing that? No, I shouldn't. Here's. Why I shouldn't. Or should I be doing that? Or maybe I should consider that. Let me think about it with a lot of intentionality about if I want to pivot and go a different direction right now, or if I want to stay the course that I'm on, like, that's okay to pivot. We just want to do it with intentionality. We want to do it with an understanding of why versus like, oh, my gosh, this is terrible. Maybe I made the wrong decision. And then you think that the old decision was wrong if you pivot right, like, there's none of that in confident decision making.
Amanda: No, it's none of that. It's a very liberating feeling to bring the intentionality into decision making. It wasn't self criticism or even I'm changing my decision..it was why wasn’t I wasn't smart enough to make the right decision at the moment. It was like, that wasn't working. It felt like a lot of playfulness and lightness into the decision, like, oh, that wasn't working. Let me try something else.
Rebecca: That doesn't mean it was the wrong decision.
Right vs Wrong.
Amanda: It wasn't. That something you helped me to really understand the concept of, right versus wrong. It wasn't black and white. Okay. I didn't have all the information. Even if I changed my decision, or even if the outcome isn't perfect, you help me understand that between the decision and outcome, there are so many external variables that you don't have control over. Just because the outcome is not what you're expecting doesn't negate your decision. Or maybe you have got additional information. Like, I didn't know that, now I know it, I'm going to change my decision, or you don't.
Confident decision-making doesn't mean that you always get the results that you desire.
Rebecca: What you're saying is that confident decision making doesn't mean that you always get to the results that you desired. In fact, the results of whatever decision it was doesn't actually have any bearing on whether it was the right or wrong decision.
Feeling liberated from self-judgment and self-doubt.
Amanda: That was a mind-blowing concept that really liberated myself from self-judgment and self-doubt.
Rebecca: Tell me what you learned about that in specific. Like, what do you think now about the result of a decision or like, the right or wrongness of a decision now from your perspective today?
Amanda: I think like I just mentioned, lightness and playfulness. I think one thing we talked about was whether I should take a new job. At the time, I was with a different company. I think I was going through the process of, okay, I heard something about the company. Why didn't I know this? If I knew this, I would make a different decision. Then towards the end of it, I was still gathering the information from different people about the current company I was in at the time, and the mindset shift, it was like, oh, I didn't know that. That's interesting. Oh, I'm really thankful for this piece of information I take into consideration.
“Making decisions from myself rather than outside influence.”
But whether I take action on this additional piece of information, it depends on myself, not how anybody else reacts to that additional piece of information. And also, when it comes to parenting, sometimes we realize, oh, maybe this morning, I think we woke up in the morning and she was not in a very good mood. Right. And we're rushing my daughter through the morning routine. And I kinda yelled…
Rebecca: I totally get it, I yell at my kids. Everybody else yells at their kids sometimes.
Amanda: Oh, yes. And she just went in a very bad mood and was very disappointed. I think the old me would be like, oh, why would I do that? I would criticize myself for it. And now the new me is like, I yelled, that happens, I learned. And tomorrow I'm going to address the situation differently and avoid that.
Rebecca: And why do you think you're able to do that now? What has really contributed to your ability to, like, yell at your kid, which we all know what that feels like and we all hate it and nobody wants to do it, but it happens to all of us. So being able to yell at your kid and your response to that is to not beat yourself up and to let it go. Probably not instantaneously, but it doesn't sound like it's lingering with you much, right?
Amanda: Yeah, I think a couple of things. First of all, in one of the sessions, you help me understand that, OK, if I yell at her, it's going to have a detrimental effect on her. Is she going to grow up to be a yeller?
Rebecca: Right. You like to catastrophize, you always took it to the extreme.
Amanda: Extreme, yes. ‘I'm an awful mother for yelling and she's going to be a yeller growing up, and she's not going to learn patience when I'm not demonstrating the example of being patient, and she's not going to learn from it.’
Going back to our mom values.
So to be able to not dramatize and go to the extreme with a situation, that definitely helped. I think the second thing, going back to my mom value, is my mom value says, never yell at your kids. It's not there. My mom value is emotional intelligence. And sometimes I say, okay, look at me, sometimes I lose control too, and it's okay. And I know you lose control too sometimes. That's why we learn from it. And I will say, okay, I apologize. I'm sorry I yelled. And, let's not try to do that again, and let's work on it, have a better morning tomorrow, make some changes to have a better routine tomorrow. And we talk through it. And it brought a closeness in the relationship as well.
Rebecca: Just being able to go back and say, yelling isn't the problem. It's really how I respond to that, because that's what teaches her, ultimately, in this case, it's what teaches her emotional intelligence. It's an opportunity to instill something in her and in yourself around the same, because you're learning your own emotional intelligence in the middle of it as you get in tune with your own emotions, right? And then you help your kids do that. So I love that so much.
There's a couple of things that I'm highlighting here. One of the original questions I had for you as we were starting to talk about this was the process of becoming a confident decision maker. Not just making confident decisions, but becoming the person that makes confident decisions. And the very first thing that you offered to us was clarity was such an important part. Like, you need to know your framework of what's most important to you, and feeling, like, really confident and certain in that so that you can use that as your guide.
Now a couple of other things that have stood out to me. Number two that I wrote down was to not personalize decisions, which to me is like when you make a decision, it doesn't come back to you as feeling like you're a bad person if you get it wrong or if you do something wrong or if it doesn't meet the outcome that you want it. To me, it doesn't mean anything about you personally as an individual, as a human, as a worker, as a wife, as a mom. Right? Like, none of it's personal. They're just decisions that are out there, and they sometimes come to fruition in the way that you want, and sometimes they don't work out.
Confidence and making confident decisions has nothing to do with the outcome
And then I wrote down here as you've been talking, is that confidence and making confident decisions has nothing to do with the outcome. They're totally separate, whether you get to the right decision, and it works out in the way that you want, or it does not work out in the way you want. Aka, you failed. Right? I'm getting the big F word. You failed.
That has nothing to do with whether the decision was right or wrong or whether you were confident in making that decision, which is kind of a flavor of the second one, too. It's kind of a lack of personalization. Those three things feel so key to being a confident decision maker.
Amanda: Yes. I think the third one was probably the most difficult thing for me to overcome. What do you mean? Like, your result is a decision. I have always been operating on the understanding that, hey, if the result is bad, then the decision was bad. I was always living in the mode of I don't want a bad result, so I need to make the right decision. But what is the right decision?
Rebecca: So what happens now if that's not true anymore? That getting to the desired result or not getting to the desired result has nothing to do with whether you made the right decision or not. What does that free you up to do as you make decisions?
Being present with my life.
Amanda: Just being present and enjoying what I'm doing. Hey, I don't want to do dishes right now. I want you to sit on the couch, watch cartoons with my kids a little bit, and that's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to worry about the dishes, or if I want to do dishes, I'm going to do dishes. And they're going to be okay. They're not going to grow up to be awful kids because they're watching TV for 20 minutes, mommy is not watching with them, just always catastrophizing. And if some negative outcome would happen, it’s like, oh, that happened, I didn't know that at the time. Something happened in between, and I do differently.
Rebecca: A lot of that chatter has gone away.
Amanda: It has gone away.
Rebecca: There's a clearness in your brain, a quietness in your brain, which is allowing you to just be in the moment and be present.
I have learned how to process negative self-talk.
Amanda: 100%. None of the questions come up, but I'm able to, hey, okay, maybe it's something I need to think about. And if it's something you need to think about, I tell my brain, I need to process this, but, let's put it aside right now. I have the tool. I have learned how to process this kind of negative self-talk.
Rebecca: Yeah, and you've talked about that before is that sometimes you'll take in information and you will say, oh, that's interesting. I should think about that. You'll tuck it away in your brain. It's like, I'll set aside some time, whether it's five minutes or it's 30 minutes, to sit and really evaluate in a more intentional way whether the direction I'm headed here and decide if I'm going to pivot based on the new information I have.
You try not to let it linger or whenever your brain wants to keep offering it to you, you're like, no, I have some time I'm going to set aside. I'm going to sit down. I'm going to actually write it out. Is this most important to me? What are the new priorities? What are the new criteria? What's the new information and data that I have to rethink about and to decide?
You did a lot of that when it came to your job and deciding to leave your job. Right? And ultimately, because there was constant data coming in, because the situation was somewhat tumultuous. And so, there was always, like, new information coming in, and you had to give yourself a formal place, an intentional place, to sit down and to think about it and decide if you were going to stay or you were going to go.
Amanda: Yeah. So I think that's something that I really wasn't doing very well is to give myself space to process through some of the questions I have. So it always comes up. It's never resolved. So it comes up again. It keeps being triggered. I keep going back to it without any solution, so it keeps coming up.
“I don't have the answer for this right now, but I have tools.”
After six months working with you, what I'm able to figure out is that, okay, I don't have the answer for this right now, but I have tools, and I have the process I can't go through to figure it out later. Let me just put it on hold and I will figure it out later. And I don't need to worry about it now. So that really freed up my mind to be present with what I want.
Rebecca: To do, to focus on whatever it is that you need to focus on.
Amanda: Yeah. I think at the end of our last conversation, I brought up teaching my daughter Chinese, which is my mother tongue. I feel a lot of struggle and self criticism for not teaching her that. Everybody said, oh, it's going to be a very useful language, and everybody wants to learn it, and you speak it fluently, why don't you speak it to her? Right? It just never worked out in my family because my husband doesn't speak Chinese. It never happened that way.
Then my decision has always been, should I teach her or not? I'm such an awful mom for not teaching her that. And then, I really just sat down a little bit. That has been a conversation in my mind for almost, like, as long as she was born. So that question keeps coming up every single day and every conversation. It just bugs me, it took some time.
So, I just sat down, and looked at my mom value - Is teaching her Chinese part of my mom value? Like, no, it's not really. But given her exposure to different cultures, different environments, and different activities, is not part of my core value. So it's the exposure part. So okay. It's not a yes or no answer. It's okay, we're going to bring a little bit of exposure in our daily life. We're going to have a Chinese Monday. That's when we're going to watch Chinese cartoons, listen to Chinese music, and read silly Chinese stories. I also set a reminder on my phone every morning to speak a little bit more Chinese to her. That's all that is, establish chatter.
Rebecca: So often we don't even realize that our brain is offering us a question. Should I do dishes? Should I really look for another job? That's a question. If you were to write it down, it would have a question mark. That's the end of it, right? It is a question your brain is offering to you. We don't hear it as a question. We hear it sort of like a suggestion or, like a pondering thought.
Amanda: Maybe I should do this…
Rebecca: Yeah. But it's actually a question that your brain wants to have answered. It's saying, hey, there's this thing over here that is feeling a little unsettled. I'm not sure if you know yet because you haven't really taken the time to decide on it. So I'm just going to keep bringing it up. Right. And this was happening to you at your job, right, all the time. Should I really leave? Should I stay? I think it was probably more like that. Should I stay? Should I stay? Should I stay? Maybe this isn't the right place for me. Maybe I should go. Should I go?
How to quiet the inner questioning.
It's in that that you've started to tune in to the fact that your brain offers you questions all of the time and that you get to answer them. And that when you answer it, when you take some intentional time to sit down and say, if I were to answer this right now, should I teach my kids Chinese? What is the information that I have? What are my actual values? Why does my brain keep wanting to offer it to me? What do we gain from teaching it? What do we gain from not literally going down and thinking about it like it's a decision and then get to the end and say, okay, based on the information I have, here's how I'm going to handle this and move forward. And then your brain goes, oh, okay, I don't need to keep asking that because you've decided. And all of the questioning in your head starts to really subside when we start realizing that all of those little, like, should I do this? Is an actual question that needs to be answered.
Amanda: Yeah, you're right. Just give yourself some time to answer the question. And one tool that you introduced to me was just journaling. I've been trying to journal. I don't know what I would journal, but that's part of you helping me find the time.
Rebecca: Give some framework.
“I feel a huge burden off my shoulders.”
Amanda: Yeah, give me some framework. But I found the best time during the day, and I could do that. So I have been doing that consistently, sometimes for just five minutes. And sometimes I don't really have any questions today. That's okay. Let's sit down. Think about the question I have for today and what's unanswered and work through that so I don't have to pop up again. That's very liberating. I keep doing that work. I just feel a huge burden off my brain, off my shoulders.
Rebecca: The result of that, as I've just heard you say over and over again, is just the ability to be present, which is what most of us want as working moms, is to just the time that we are spending doing anything, but particularly when we're with our family, is we just want to be present. We want to be deriving the joy of the moment. We want to feel the satisfaction of life and the things that we've done and the people that we love. Right? We want to feel really good about our life. And that ability comes when you don't have all that endless chatter going on in your head.
Amanda: Yeah. It's freedom and joy.
Rebecca: Freedom. Yes, you've said that word a lot. I love that, and I feel it. I fear it in your voice. I feel it.
Amanda, this is such a fun conversation to have around confident decision making. I love how far you've come in it. And I think we will close on this little topic, because I remember such an important conversation that we had was about where you were headed in your career. And there was a session where you declared to me, you said, I'm going to be a CEO one day. That's what I'm going to be.
Amanda: Yes.
Rebecca: And you said it with such confidence. I was like, have you ever said that before? You're like, no, I've never said that. And I was like, oh, really? It sounded so clear to me and to yourself. I was like, oh, yeah, this is exactly where I'm headed one day. It was just like a declaration of what's to come. It's inevitable.
Amanda: Yes. I think it's the confidence that comes with it. I don't know exactly how I'm getting there yet.
Rebecca: We don't know how we're going to get anywhere. And so we decide we're going to go get it. We're going to go there.
“I want to do something more.”
Amanda: Yes. That was the first time I said it, I think, prior to that. Okay, I want to do something more. I want to have a wide scope of impact. Right. But I'm always afraid to say in the world like, hey, who are you to say that? How are you going to get there? And I said, now I have a goal. That's my goal, and I will find a way to get there without sacrificing my family life and find balance. The way to reach that level, whether by myself, working with a coach or find a way to get there.
Rebecca: I love it. And I don't think that you would have been able to get there and say that with that much certainty and to think that big if we hadn't done all of the work that we've been doing around becoming the confident decision maker.
The ability to dream bigger.
I think it's such an important connection to make that those bigger goals and those bigger dreams start being said and start being realized when we become that person that can see them. It's a result that comes from confident decision making, ultimately, is the ability to dream bigger and believe unapologetically that those things are possible.
Amanda: And also believe that it's inside of me. I need to channel it in my daily conversation with people, with leadership, at work. I'm showing up.
Rebecca: Because you’re not second guessing yourself all the time and you believe that you have the answers and you know that you can pivot. And, like, all of these things that come right, that is a part of who you've become now. So, of course you're going to show up more powerfully and you're going to feel more confident and so you're going to show up constantly or to speak up in a different way, all because of that.
Amanda: Yeah, 100%.
Rebecca: Do you have any final thoughts as we are kind of wrapping up here? Maybe any final thoughts to that working mum that is struggling with making confident decisions and feeling kind of stuck in there?
Amanda’s final thoughts.
Amanda: I think the mindset shifts, that is really the biggest thing. Like I said, when I approached you, I was expecting a playbook of this is how you should structure your day and, this is how you should handle the mess in the house, spending time playing with the kids, and how to manage your time. But I've walked away with so much more. It's freedom. I keep saying that word.
Rebecca: It's such a good word.
“I feel confident and also in a way that I want to be a good example for my kids on how to show up confidently…”
Amanda: The freedom of, even the mess or enjoying the mess. And if it's clean, if you want to clean, I clean…Even freedom. Not worrying too much and enjoying it. And the mindset is and it has a huge impact across every area of my life. I work at home, in my church community, how I show up in every situation I'm in, I feel confident and also in a way that I want to be a good example for my kids to have to show up confidently, especially with my daughter. This is how you show up as a girl. Nobody's allowed to make you feel it's small and you need to be confident. I feel I'm being a good example for her right now and which is also very empowering.
Rebecca: I love it. So good. Thank you again, Amanda, for coming and sharing your story and your journey. That's just so brave of you, and I have no doubt that you're going to reach all of the goals that you have for yourself. You're such an amazing person.
“It has been an amazing couple of months, and I don't think I would be where I am today without it.”
Amanda: Thank you, Rebecca, for leading me through it. It has been an amazing couple of months, and I don't think I would be where I am today without it. The process happened. It wasn't overnight, but gradually. And I don't even know when I realized that, hey, I'm quite a different person from where I was six months ago, but it just happened.
Rebecca: And I remember when you said that your husband mentioned it, too.
Amanda: Yes. What is the attitude you have? - in a good way.
Conclusion.
Rebecca: So good. All right, well, working moms, if you are looking to become a confident decision maker just like Amanda, and you are wanting to be that person, not to be told all of the right answers, of course we're going to come to some of those decisions together in coaching. But to be the person that stops second guessing themselves is less dependent on having to get the quote right answer all the time and kind of ends all of that endless chatter. Like, I'd love to connect with you. I will put in the show notes how you can book a free call with me, which is how it all starts. It's how it started for Amanda. And we'll connect. All right, working mom, let's get to it.
