Liberate Yourself from a Bad Decision and Make Hard Decisions Easy.

Do you ever get that sinking feeling you’ve made a really bad decision OR maybe you're fed-up and frustrated by the lack of decisions being made around you?

You're not alone!

I've had that sinking feeling a lot.

Sleepless nights, exhaustion, anxiety, anger and when it's really got a grip, a quick fix of caffeine followed by a relentless pursuit of taking actions in an attempt to get a result.

Sound familiar?

What did I do to disrupt it?

Firstly, whenever I'm in a funk (another way of saying I'm not getting the results I want or something's just not working out) I have three simple practices, I call it the A-Game:

1. Acknowledgement - We can’t change what we don’t acknowledge, so the very first thing I do is stop and ask myself "What do I need to tell the truth to myself about?" Without making myself (or anyone else) wrong (because that's not actually solving the problem) what's not working that’s causing me to lose sleep at night’?
2. Accountability - We can’t change the past, nor can we change what other people say or do, BUT we do have a say about the decisions we make and the actions we take. Despite all my opinions about the problem and what other people are doing or not doing, I ask myself “What can I do here? How can I move forward instead of waiting for the roll of the dice and seeing what other people will do?”
3. Action despite Attitude - It sounds simple, too simple. Because it is. And it’s not ;) because we get stuck for days, months and years, telling ourselves we can’t do it - "its too hard", "I don't know what I'm doing", "it doesn't matter what I do, it doesn't any difference". But when we take the action, we know to take (despite what we think) we realise we’re much stronger than we give ourselves credit for. 

The secret is taking the action we know to take. So how do we know what action to take?

This is where it gets interesting.

There are a series of questions I ask myself but before we look at the questions, let me say, "this is not something that comes naturally".

I have a reminder in my diary to ask myself these questions on a regular basis because I've had many years of taking action from the limbic (emotional) part of my brain - whether that's at work or at home, and especially at home with three kids (yes, those of you who are parents know what I'm talking about) and while sometimes it works, its not always the best outcome.

So, here are the questions...

1. What do I know to do?
2. What have I said I would do?
3. What do others expect me to do?
4. What am I afraid to do?

Back to the lack of decision making. When I finally "acknowledged" that was actually doing a pretty bad job at it, I called my good friend and associate Paul Gordon, the CEO of Catalyze APAC, the expert on #decisionthinking "come and join me on the podcast I want to talk with you about this thing called "decision making".

Why would I do this?

Quite simply, Paul is the expert and while I could get more resourceful (which is definitely required), when I told the truth to myself (played my A-Game) the conversation was firm:

"You're not the expert on this, you don't have to have all the answers, there are people around you who are the experts on this, so stop trying to be a hero and do it all yourself"

The best part!

Paul's just launched a book called "Hard Decisions Made Easy' so it makes sense that I pick his brain! So finally (yes, after years of knowing Paul does this stuff) we kicked off with Episode 1.0 of a 5 Week series on the 5-steps he's mastered out of 15 years of senior consulting roles facilitating hundreds of billions of dollars of value with major federal government departments and large corporates across Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

Here's what I discovered and found really surprising...

1. I was under the illusion that making decisions "is" and "should be" easy. As a result, I didn't invested any time, money or effort into better understanding the process. Instead I burnt myself out with unrealistic and false expectations.
2. My rapid approach to taking action was covering up a fear I had of making the wrong decision. While I kept taking action I wasn't able to get myself out of the "story" (misinterpretation, narrative, confabulation) that I was bad at making decisions and that all the decision I'd made of the past were bad (I'm not exaggerating, I was stuck in a loop)
3. While knowing that if I make a bad decision or I don't like the result of a decision, I can alway choose again, I was NOT giving myself the freedom to fail. Instead, I was indulging in not wanting to look bad. I was focussed on everything I thought that would go wrong, instead of giving myself some credit and focussing on all the things that could go right!

And, THAT my friends is what I discovered was holding me back from being the BRAVE, BOLD and OUTRAGEOUS human I know myself to be!

What's holding you back and what action can you take?

Subscribe to The Uncharted Leader Podcast and listen to the conversation on "Hard Decisions Made Easy" with Paul here. My favourite part, "how we do we influence others in the decision making process when we have no explicit power"

Listen for “what’s the one action I can take to move myself (and others) forward?” Then, take the action!

Win or lose, when we dust ourselves off we have invaluable lessons that propel us forward. Not taking action is what leads to a downward spiral of doubt, disillusionment or, worse yet, hidden anxiety and depression.

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Have a remarkable week.

As always, be well,

Kylee x