Decision-making is never an easy task because it is a very complex task, which takes time and energy to weigh your options. Feeling indecisive and self-doubting are just a normal part of the decision process. In many ways, they’re a good thing, they are a sign that you’re thinking about your choices instead of just going with the flow. However, you don’t want to think about the choices so much that you overthink and do not make the decision. 

Of course, there is a mental disorder in which you display pathological indecisiveness and can seek help, or else, you can learn the tools and skills to make faster decisions and know that many times indecisiveness is simply a combination of mindset blocks and anxiety. 

We have these mindset blocks and anxiety because we as humans in most cases fear that we would make the wrong decision that’s why we hesitate when we are faced with a choice. Maybe you are afraid of failure, suffering from any consequences or even the consequences of success. Maybe you are worried about what other people will think about you. In many cases, this also ties to perfectionism and if you feel you are in any way a perfectionist, head back to ep80 where I talked about how to overcome perfectionism or ep89 about overthinking.

Anyways, I’m here to tell you today the good news that decision-making is a muscle we can build. You can practice being decisive and you will make faster decisions.  

Start to build that decision-making muscle by setting some rules. For example, on social media, my rule for myself is that I do not accept any friendship requests from unknown men, this way I can easily reject hundreds of such requests at a time without the need to think about it. My rule for family time is that I don’t take client calls on weekends so that I have plenty of time for my family, so it’s a no-brainer decision when I’m asked for a call on the weekend for any reason, and this decision of “no thank you” will be immediate. I have rules set for many things: social media, money, friendship, family time, etc. Because I know my values, priorities and boundaries beforehand so that when it comes to decision making in those areas, my decisions are always immediate.

Then you strengthen this muscle by practicing from the small stuff. Set a time for making decisions. For example, give yourself 30 seconds to decide what you’ll have for food, what movie to watch, or whether you want to go out or not. Follow through on those small decisions and repeat. This is important so that you are not experiencing decision fatigue. This is why many successful businessmen wear the same things every day because they don’t want to waste time on making these small decisions. This is also part of my reason for becoming a vegetarian, I used to be stressed about what to eat all the time. By becoming a vegetarian, restaurants helped me make those decisions because usually, these are only one of two choices on the menu. And most importantly making small decisions quickly trains our brains to think through questions faster and faster. Then you are ready to work up to bigger things.

When making a bigger decision, give yourself a deadline to weigh the different options. If you can’t seem to make the decision forward, turn it around and reverse engineer. Instead of weighing what you will gain from making the decision, think about what you will lose by choosing each option and compare how you will feel losing those options. Ask yourself, is this decision healthy? Is it in alignment with my values, priorities and goals? Is it rewarding? 

No one makes perfect decisions all of the time. Hey, most of us have exes, most of us have been in a job we didn’t like, we definitely ordered the wrong dish at some points. But hey, action works in our favor, while inaction never does. When you delay the decision-making because you’re afraid of messing up, nothing changes. But when you’re proactive, you’re choosing to move ahead—and that’s one of the best decisions you can ever make.

Always remember that only action will lead to clarity. I’m gonna say that again because it’s so important, action leads to clarity, so stop waiting for clarity to take action. You are always making the best decision according to your best knowledge. And if you ever take a wrong turn on the road, just enjoy the different scenery and have fun along the way. Cheers to you making healthy, successful, and rewarding decisions. 

Guest featured in this episode:

Karla Merrell, a former attorney, is a business and leadership strategist that built a successful business from the ground up without an email list or a fancy website. She is the creator of the Client Maximizer Course that has helped dozens of female entrepreneurs and coaches build successful businesses that pay the bills and adds significance to their lives.

After having all of her 2020 live events canceled due to the pandemic, Karla decided to intentionally grow by completing a 106-day mental and physical challenge, creating a new leadership program for working women, losing 15 pounds, reading every day and eliminating everything that did not serve the women she was destined to become-like a bread addiction and she is here to show you how you can do it too.

Karla and Lucy met in the Mic Drop community, where amazing women speakers and authors hang out together. If you are interested in becoming a speaker and author, check out MICDROP.

Guest featured in this episode:

J. Han was raised by her mom and grandma, two boss women who immigrated from South Korea. She overcame obstacles by becoming courageous and resilient through discovering how to love herself. J. Han is a multi-passionate entrepreneur, teaching financial literacy for individuals, families, and businesses by providing the tools and peace of mind they need to thrive.

She was the CEO of 13 retail stores, called Closet; one of which is still open in San Diego. J. Han also loves to create spaces for guests to connect to their mind, body, and spirit through guiding sound meditations with her crystal singing bowls.

Things you will learn in this episode:

Sound therapy is undoubtedly one of the most powerful modalities for healing as it can take the human spirit in different states of consciousness. In particular, the sound of singing bowls stimulates stress relief on all levels. After sound therapy emotions are calm and the mind clearer and the sound vibrations have an effect on the body even after the singing bowls have been played on it.

Besides their traditional use for meditation, singing bowls are used for deep relaxation and muscle regeneration, to relieve pain, to improve circulation, to release tensions or blockages, to open the energy flow, eliminate the toxins from the body.

So now, let us relax with the sounds of singing bowls in a short sample sound bath session from my friend and fellow co-author of the Asian Women Who Bossup book Jessica Han. JHan is the CEO of ClosetSignature.com, Director of Expansion at Virtue Financial, and a Sound Meditation Practitioner. 

Guest featured in this episode:

Nicole Cheri Oden is an attorney licensed in the State of California for over 9 years. 

Nicole has her own virtual law firm and helps entrepreneurs protect their online businesses and brands legally with custom contracts and policies or legal templates that they can customize for their unique businesses as well as trademarks.

Her unofficial motto is that while you don’t have to devote all your time, energy, and money to addressing legal issues, as an entrepreneur you do have to become familiar with the law.

Things you will learn in this episode:

• What exactly are Terms and Conditions?
• How can you bind that contract, how can you make the customer agree with your terms?
• From your experience, can you give us some examples of litigations in disputes in this area?
• and much more…

Definition: Think about (something) too much or for too long. What’s even worse? Spending more time on thinking about if you are overthinking or why you are overthinking. Then we begin to make up problems that don’t even exist. If you consistently focus on ruminating and making it a habit, it becomes a loop, And the more you do it, the harder it is to stop this loop. Many times, overthinking is a very sneaky form of fear that’s less obvious than fear. 

Of course we don’t want to make snap decisions in life without research, but we don’t want to overthink either. Why do we need to stop overthinking on the spot? Because for the least, it steals your happiness, creativity, time and goals. It’s very normal to have some tendencies to overthink and as long as we are aware, we can change the narrative and stop overthinking. But if we don’t stop overthinking, in serious cases it can lead to many mental health issues like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress or even borderline personality disorder. 

So how can we stop overthinking?

1. Make a decision – Make firm and committed decision to stop overthinking – add ex
2. Awareness. Notice when you are stuck in your own head. Overthinking can become such a habit that you don’t even recognize when you’re doing it most of the time. However, if you are conscious and committed to this change, I promise you will start to catch yourself when it happens. 
3. Switch focus. What you focus on grows. So keep your focus on problem-solving instead of the problem itself. 
4. Challenge your thoughts. Our perception of things is our own narrative in our heads and the good news is that narratives can be changed. So when you notice your overthinking thoughts, challenge them, opposite them to positive and abundant thoughts. 
5. Learn skills to help you through these times. All skills in life are like muscles to be worked on. If you need more mindfulness in your life, practice yoga, meditation, breathworks or whatever modality that you find helpful to gain muscle in that area that you need to improve. 
6. Schedule time for reflection. I will probably talk about the importance of reflection in life for another episode, but for now I’m just gonna say it’s ok to think and that I even encourage you to schedule time for thinking. But that type of thinking is beneficial and that is to reflect. Reflect on how far you have come, how much you have already accomplished, what you have learned and how you can improve yourself. Reflection is meant to help you move forward not to stop you on your tracks. Remember the quote that even if you are on the right tracks, you’ll get run over if you just stand there. 

If you are healthy, you are free to dream hundreds of dreams. When you are unhealthy, you can only have one dream and that is to be healthy again. So if you are here with me and you are in good health today, take action towards your dreams and stop overthinking.