Are you struggling to make decisions that truly align with your goals and values?

Many high-achieving professional women find themselves caught in a perpetual cycle of decision fatigue, making choices that don’t serve their best interests. The pain of feeling overwhelmed and uncertain can be all too real. But there’s a solution that can set you on the right path.

🌟 BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL LEARN:

• How to identify and prioritize your core values, making decision-making more straightforward.
• The power of creating a weighted pro and con list to evaluate the importance of different factors in your choices.
• Why considering all areas of your life is crucial for making decisions that lead to greater satisfaction.
  
  

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Professional Bio

Are you a high-achieving, ambitious professional working mother, feeling trapped in the whirlwind of your demanding career and family responsibilities? Overwhelmed by stress, busyness, and societal expectations? Drained of energy and struggling to find balance while silently battling guilt and unfulfillment?

Welcome to a transformative journey a certified lifestyle medicine physician, experienced yoga and meditation teacher, and a mother of three. In this immersive podcast, she provides a path to authenticity, purpose, and vitality. Through tailored coaching programs, Dr. Libby Schanzmeyer equips you with the tools and strategies to regain balance and create a life aligned with your true self.

Our listeners, our clients, are high-achieving professional working mothers who have successfully transformed their lives with life design. They’ve overcome stress, found peace within their careers and personal lives, and are thriving.

Discover how to harmoniously balance your professional and personal life, relieve stress, and find your true purpose. Learn time management techniques, prioritize self-care, and regain meaning in life. Join Dr. Libby Schanzmeyer and begin your journey towards a life of ease, vitality, and impact, where authenticity leads the way.

Welcome to Living True By Design Podcast!

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Podcast Episode Transcript

This is an episode you don’t want to miss. Today we’re gonna be talking about the secret skills of decision making that do not fail. We will talk about 10 tips for making decisions. Things that I wish I’d known when I was making some decisions before I made them instead of after, like I know now.

First, I got a little story for you. When I was leaving my full-time job at the hospital as a full-time pathologist, this was a huge decision. And I didn’t have a structure to make this decision. And growing up, I was told make a pro and con list, and that’s kind of all I had. And I literally read books about how to make decisions, trying to make this decision. And when I was doing this, process of trying to make this decision. I got even more confused because people say make this pro and kind list. So I did my pro and kind list thinking that would be helpful. But it actually made me more confused because the pros, on the outside looked like that, I should stay in the job because it was a great income. It was a stable job. You know, there were a lot of good things to the job and the cons.

Were more internal, they didn’t, and so they were harder to name. And so I had a longer pro list than the con list, which was really frustrating and confusing. So that led me to learn a lot about decision making and think a lot about it. So I’m gonna give you 10 tips today on things that I’ve learned from the school of hard knocks, if you will, about making decisions.

One thing I’d like to point out before we dive into the 10 tips about making decisions is if you’re a high achieving woman, we function at a baseline level of exhaustion from decision fatigue. So I just like to name that because we’re basically, as the saying goes, changing the tires going 90 miles an hour, you know.

Coming up, making a big difficult decision takes a lot of energy. And if you’re already exhausted, if you have a family and a career, you’re making multiple decisions throughout the day in both your career. It’s a demanding job. There’s important decisions that have to be made. So you’re doing that, but then there’s also your home and kids and the kids need their band lessons or dance lessons or…

Soccer practice or martial arts practice, whatever they’re doing, the house needs to be clean, laundry needs to be done. you might need to hire somebody for help. You might need to fire somebody that’s not helping.there’s all these different things that are running in our head. And so there’s a baseline level of decision fatigue. So that’s part of the context.

Another thing I would like to mention before getting into the 10 tips is how important choice is. it’s part of some people’s definition of trauma, of loss of autonomy and agency to be a fully functioning, well human. We need to have our

Autonomy or agency. So we need to be able to make choices for ourselves and decisions for ourselves and think in our culture and especially as women that are taking care of so many people and different things, we end up in a situation where we’re taking care of others and sacrificing ourself and a consequence of that is this pain of losing autonomy and losing our free choice.

And it’s not the free choice of, throwing caution to the wind and traveling to the islands. It’s the free choice of, I can’t leave this job because I won’t be able to pay for my health insurance. That kind of trappedness in our culture is another part of the context. So I just want to name that.

Because that is definitely a factor and I don’t wanna pretend or ignore that these aren’t important considerations because they are. So those are part of the context of making decisions, just something to keep in mind.

So let’s dive into our 10 tips for amazing decision making that just don’t fail. So number one, let’s talk about identifying our own values. This is huge. You can look up different lists online and I have a whole part of my coaching where we identify our own values. We can cover that on another podcast. There’s not time to get into that on this, but

Identifying your own values helps so much with decisions because decisions can seem a little overwhelming and have all these different parts that are involved in the decision and these complexities. And when you don’t already have your values, goal, values and goals identified, it makes it more confusing because it kind of is like, well, is that a goal? Is that what I really wanna do? I don’t know. So I would suggest having…

Five of your top values identified. Like mine are family, freedom, transcendence, vital, well-being, and clarity. Those are my five. And so like with the job, I would go through and say, does keeping it support each of these values? And then I would go back through and say, well, does not keeping it support these values? And so that’s a way to consider both options. So that’s number one.

Number two is doing the tried and true pro and con list, but this time do something a little bit different. You can do it weighted. So you can do, your pro would be leaving a job, say time freedom, con would be financial change, we’ll say. And so that’s fine, you can make your list, but then when you go back through, maybe…

Your freedom is super important and the financial change is not as important. So you would say rate each one on a scale of one to 10, one is not very important, 10 is. So freedom might be super important to me. So I’m gonna rate that a 10. But then my financial consideration, I’m okay, because I’ve saved and I’ve worked and I have something else going. Whatever your situation is, the financial consideration might only be like a three. And so that helps when you write it all down.

And you look at the weight, then you can, multiply it out and add it, or just get an overview of a pro and con list and how important the things are on the pro and con list. So that’s tip two.

Number three is look at all the areas of your life when you’re considering a large decision. There’s a circle of life satisfaction thing that we do for coaching, and I can give you an example of this, but it’s a circle that has wedges drawn on it, and then each area of your life is in the wedge, like finances one, relationships is one, spiritual area is one, home.

There’s all the different areas. So I would recommend going through this circle of life satisfaction, but looking at it in the context of how each area will be affected by this decision. And that’s a way to just kind of tease the parts out and see if there’s something that maybe you hadn’t considered that is important to you. that’s part three.

Tip four, notice the state of mind you’re in and make a decision from a high state of mind. Like I’ve noticed, I actually, this was in one of the books I’ve read. I’ll see if I can find the reference. But I remember it was talking about getting in a good state of mind to plan your day.

Which is a great thing to do, but it’s also a great thing to do to get in a good state of mind and make your decision. And by that, like exercise, eat well, get a good night’s sleep, and then make a decision. And it seems like, well, yeah, that makes sense, but it really makes such a difference because our outlook on life is so much different. if I go to the movies and eat some candy and drink a diet, coke and stay up too late that night, the night before and get up the next morning and try to think and make a really great decision is not going to come out as well as if I get up and go to the gym and I’ve eaten well the night before that state is a big factor and long run when you’re making decisions from a higher state of mind it’s going to serve us so well in our life,because think about it.

If I decide what to do about my job when I’m feeling low and down versus when I’m elevated and feeling great and feeling good in my body, this job decision is gonna be a lot different from this job decision. So one will really be uplifted and moving forward in my life and the other one might be more status quo and I don’t know, it’s hard work. So it’s gonna make a big difference. So state of mind is huge.

Tony Robbins actually talked about this a lot, about the state. And I never understood it until I was listening to this book on the treadmill and I was like, oh, I get it because I feel really good right now. And you’re moving and a lot of it is physical movement. Lift some weights, feel how strong you are in your own self, in your own body, in your own core. You know, when you make the decision, even you could.

Stand up straight and relax your shoulders. It’s all part of your state. Our physiology is totally connected to our thinking and decisions.

Step five. This is to take baby steps. Sometimes a decision isn’t just one big dramatic thing. It can be, but sometimes we need to do some research. We need to do some parts. So break it down if you need to. That is totally okay. If you wanna start a podcast, that’s fine. You can make the decision to do it, but then you can back it up by saying, okay, well today I’m gonna research how to do it. And tomorrow I’m gonna research.

Maybe of course I wanna take how to do it. The next day I’ll research what platform to use, you know? So if you take baby steps, that consistency will help in the decision and then of course implementing it as well. But a lot of times we have to gather information to make ourselves feel like we have enough information to make the decision. And if you break down those steps, it can make the whole decision making process easier.

Number six, remember, whatever decision you make, this is not gonna be the last decision that you make. For me with this job thing, it was a huge career move and it felt so final that…

I was afraid my life would end if it wasn’t the right thing and my career would end and I would never be able to get another job this great or anything. And it really kept me stuck. And in hindsight, I wish I had been able to understand you make one decision and even if it is quite a large life changing decision like leaving a job, something huge.

You wake up the next day and there’s more decisions. So there’s always more. And just if we can remember, there’s always gonna be more, it’s okay. That could take a little bit of the pressure off to help us relax so that we can think through it more clearly. Because if it’s too much pressure, then that is something that keeps us stuck, you know?

So tip number seven, there’s no perfect decision. It might feel perfect, but it’s just a choice. It’s going one direction or another. It’s not like I found when I was making choices in my life that sometimes,

I would think, oh, this is the perfect thing to do. I have to choose the right, the right answer, right? We wanna get the answer correct. And the thing is, there’s not a correct. So letting go of perfectionism or recognizing that perfectionism is at play and not being driven by perfectionism can be super helpful when we’re making the decision. I’m using this job because that was a huge decision for me.

Letting go of perfectionism can be quite freeing and realize, I’m making the best decision I can and we’re never gonna have all the information. I struggled with that too, thinking I could gather all the information and you can’t. We won’t know the information. We won’t know the whole picture.

Until the decision is made and we look back. And that’s just the nature of life. So gather as much information as you can and know it’s not gonna be perfect. It might be, but it’s okay if it’s not. Detach from the outcome and know it’s just a choice and you can make other choices and other choices will come. I promise you that.Tip number eight is trust yourself.

You know what is right for you. I promise you know what is right for you. I if there is anything that I believe it is, you know what is right for you. Trust yourself. I trust you. I can hold space and trust you to make your choice. And I will back you up. And as I said before, it may not be perfect, but it is right for you.

When we’re trusting ourselves, something that can be helpful is journaling,kind of thinking through it and seeing what seems right in our mind.

That leads us into number nine of checking in with our body. So we trust ourselves and we’re also going to lean on our, not only our mental knowing, our mental power, but also the knowing in our body because our brains are functioning,

Perceiving things that we don’t necessarily articulate in our mind. So checking in with how you feel. If you’re comfortable with it, see how it feels to you. Does it feel tight in your stomach when you consider one option versus, ah, that would be so wonderful if you consider another option, that’s really important information to honor and listen to. A lot of times our bodies know before our brains do, you know?

Then number 10 is if you’re an external processor, which I am, I like to talk to people and bounce ideas off of each other and hear, talking through things is helpful for me, discerning decisions. But make sure the person you’re talking to knows you, loves you, and can celebrate you. Because some people, are not capable of all three of those things. And if they don’t know you and love you, that there’s nothing wrong with that. It just might not be the person to get advice from. And maybe you’re not getting advice. If you’re not getting advice and you just wanna talk through something, that’s perfectly fine. But again, be sure the person can be supportive of you because

These decisions are usually new ideas and they’re delicate. And if someone doesn’t have the capacity to hear you and give you space to talk through your idea or talk through your decision, it can really dampen a creative project before it even takes off. So make sure that whoever you’re talking to knows you loves you, that you trust. And, is able to celebrate you because that’s what you’ll be doing after you make your decision.

I’m going to go back through the 10 areas that we just talked about for making decisions. So the first is identify your values. The second would be make the weighted pro and con list.

The third is look at all the areas of your life and see how those are influenced and changed by this decision. The fourth is get in a good state of mind when you make the decision. The fifth is take baby steps, break it down. Make consistent small steps when you’re making decision. Number six is be open to the next steps that are gonna be happening and that there’s gonna be more decisions after this. So it’s not the last one you’re gonna make.

So number seven is letting go of perfection and knowing there is not a quote, correct, unquote answer. Decision. Number eight is trusting yourself. Number nine is checking in with your body, feeling sensations that arise around that decision.

Number 10 is talking to others who know you, who love you and can celebrate you in your decision.

What kind of decisions are you making? I would love to hear about a decision you’re making and if any of these ideas are helpful for you when you make a decision.

What is the biggest area that you struggle with when making decisions?

I would love for you to come join the conversation over in our Facebook community. It’s Living True by Design Facebook group. There is support there, there’s community there, and I would love to hear how you are making decisions, what your biggest struggle is with making decisions, and if there’s any way we can support you in your decision right now.

See the link below to join our Facebook community and I will see you in there.

And I’d like to invite you to come back next week for an amazing show where we are gonna be talking about life changing information about success. There is so much power in knowing your own definition of success. Come back next week and we’ll be talking about that on the podcast, Living True by Design.