326. Abundant Decisions

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 326: Abundant Decisions.

Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me, I can show you how. Let’s go.

Hello everybody. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here. I’m excited to talk to you today. I hear from people all the time who tell me that they have a hard time making decisions. Maybe their decision-making process takes a really long time and it’s slowing them down. Or maybe they just feel stuck, and they second guess themselves.

And a lot of people tell me they have decisions they have been trying to make for years that they just haven’t made, which by way you always have made a decision. You’ve just not decided to change anything. And then you’re replaying the decision in your mind. So, it feels like you have a decision to make but not making a decision is making a decision. I can’t say that word ‘decision’ now. If this is you, if you want to be more confident in your decisions, if you want to be more sure of yourself then you’re going to love today’s episode.

Before we dive into it, I’m sorry but I have to mention my book because I’m so excited about it. I wrote a book. Who knew I could write a book? I mean I can barely read a whole book. I don’t know how I wrote one. But it did take me several years so that might explain it. And I did have lots of help from people who are much smarter than me. But I’m so proud of the book and delighted that the book is nearly ready.

Here’s the thing, I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell you this, but it actually is available. It’s just not available in all the formats yet because we’re going through the process of making that happen. But if you really want the book you can go to Amazon and order it. It’s called Better Than Happy and it’s by Jody Moore. And it’s a really good book. The subtitle I should mention is Connecting with Divinity Through Conscious Thinking.

But by November 5^th, that’s my official launch date, when I’m really going to start talking about the book and maybe sharing some of the book with you. And it will be available in all the formats by then, if you like audible, or an eBook, or you want a hardcover book, or a soft cover book. You can have all kinds of options, November 5^th. But this book has a more spiritual message to it than a lot of the other work I put out. As you guys know, I talk about my religion a lot and I bring it in. But this book, every chapter is based on a principle from the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And it connects the dots between gospel principles and the tools of coaching and thought work that I teach as a coach. So, for example, there is a chapter on faith. There’s one on the natural man. There is a chapter on forgiveness, and prayer, and obedience, and repentance, and grace, and agency, and a bunch of others. And so anyway I’m really happy that this book is finally going to be hitting the shelves. And I hope that you’ll love it as much as I loved writing it. And I hope that you’ll give it away for Christmas too. I’m just saying, right around the corner.

Alright, I want to talk about abundant decisions today. Because decision-making is one of the things that I don’t think I realized until actually within the last one to two years even, how powerful it is, what a powerful skill it is and how challenging it is for so many people and what that creates in their lives. I don’t think I realized sort of the ripple effect that it has, decision-making skill. A lot of the things I teach you here on the podcast are things that I either am terrible at and working on myself or at least used to be terrible at until I learned what I learned.

This is one of the few things that I happen to be innately pretty good at. And that’s not to brag or to say that I’m better than anyone else. It’s just we all have certain things that are innately easier for us than they are for a lot of other people. We all have those things. And decision-making happens to be one of them for me. And I’ve always been that way. It’s not, not because of anything great I did. I think I just come wired in a certain way around decisions. But it’s only recently that I have realized why and the power of making quick decisive choices in my life.

And so, I want to talk to you a little bit about this and for some of you it will be just sort of an identifying of yourself as well, which I think is empowering, that you’ll notice that you’re also really good at this. And for others of you, maybe you feel like you’re not good at it and that’s okay. I want to help you to get better at it if you want to because it really is such an expansive skill to have. It’s such an empowering skill to have. So don’t feel bad if you think you’re terrible at making decisions, if you have a hard time, if it takes you forever, if you have lots of fear, that’s okay but let’s take a look at it.

So, the reason I wanted to do this episode is because recently a friend of mine posed a question to myself and some of our other friends about decisions. And she said, “How do we know when we should make a swift prompt decision and just own the decision and move forward and when we should slow down and not be in a rush?” Because one of the things that we know in the world of human behavior is that oftentimes being in a rush is coming from fear, many times.

Any time you catch yourself in a real hurry to achieve a goal, or to solve a problem, or to get some place it’s coming from fear. So why would we say, “Make swift decisive action, make quick decisions, don’t overthink things”, if being in a rush comes from fear? And I think it’s an interesting question and I don’t know that I have the right answer but here’s what I told my friend and what I really believe about decisions. I think that ideally, we want to make decisions from a place of abundance, or you might say from a place of faith, or trust, or love.

You want to make decisions from positive emotions ideally. Now, the reason this is challenging is because when we make a decision it’s often a decision about what to do now in order to try to create a future that we want. But the future is always unknown. And the brain does not like unknown.

The brain wants to be afraid of the unknown. It wants to worry about the unknown. It wants to think about all the things that could go wrong. And so, the brain thinks making a certain decision now could lead to or prevent a problem in the future. And therefore, we should be kind of freaked out about this decision because if we get it wrong, we might create a problem. Can you relate to this? But making a decision from abundance, from love, from faith, from trust is not that feeling. It doesn’t feel like a fear-based rush. It feels like okay, let’s just do this because whatever happens it will be fine.

Isn’t that what faith is? Faith is just believing that everything will work out in the end. It’s believing, in a religious sense it’s believing that God is aware of us and that ultimately this is all his plan and it’s all orchestrated in our favor. It’s believing that the future will be what it’s supposed to be and that we can handle whatever comes. Or that we will have help and assistance when we can’t handle it. That’s what faith is.

And abundance is sort of an extension of that, is the way I think of it. I think of it as if everything worked out and there’s plenty of what we need. And things are going to always go in our favor, whatever that is, even if it’s not the way I would have designed it it’s still always in my favor. Then I don’t need to stress and worry about this choice too much.

I need to make the choice that seems like the right decision to me. It seems like it’s going to the easiest, the path of least resistance if you will. But if I’m wrong, alright, then I guess that’s the path I’m supposed to go down. And we’ll deal with whatever problems come up and we’ll learn and adjust accordingly.

So maybe you’re trying to decide whether to send your kids to school or home school them. Maybe it’s a decision about something going on with your kids. And usually there’s lots of people with lots of opinions and it can become challenging especially if everybody doesn’t agree unanimously. So, if we’re making a decision from fear the decision is how do we prevent a disaster? What’s the least likely to lead to disaster?

Versus we make a decision from abundance and it’s no matter what we choose this child is going to have an amazing experience. It’s going to be half positive and half negative. So, what sounds like the most fun? What sounds the easiest? What just feels right to us? I like to listen to my gut, listen to my feelings and my emotions. So, an abundant decision is what if either way it could be amazing? What if either way there’s a lot of happiness, and joy, and this is going to be a great experience my child’s supposed to have, now what do we do?

Notice it’s a different feeling from which one is the least disaster filled to either way it’s going to be amazing? So, what do we just want to do? The second one, the abundant one is not very dramatic. It’s not even that interesting. It’s like we could just flip a coin really when it comes down to it. And I’m not saying flip a coin, but it could be that simple.

If you really don’t feel super good or super bad about either option, then you really could just flip a coin because that means it really doesn’t matter. Either way there will be challenges and either way there will be lots of joy and happiness.

One of the ways that I use this skill a lot is in my business. So sometimes something will come along, and a member of my team will say, “Hey, we have this possible challenge in the future so we need to make a decision, what shall we do?” I always try to make the most abundant choice, for example, sometimes when we plan live events things get tricky. Venues tell us one thing and then they change their mind, or they overlooked availability in some way. Or COVID causes us to have to change how many people we actually can take.

And there’s just a lot of kind of variables that come into play. And so, planning live events can get sort of sticky. That’s why I have an awesome person who manages that for me. But sometimes she’ll say, “Okay, so this is happening, and this looks like it could potentially be a problem down the road. And we don’t think it’s going to be a problem but we’re not really sure. What do you want to do? Do we want to keep this live event? Do we want to cancel it or postpone it?” I try to go to abundance.

What if everything’s going to work out beautifully? Let’s just do it. Let’s just keep it. Let’s just plan for it. Now, I’m not talking about being naïve and burying your head in the sand to reality. I’m just saying, “So right now you’re saying this isn’t actually a problem. We’re just foreseeing that it could potentially be a problem.” So worse case scenario we’re going to lose some money. Alright, that’s fine, then we’ll lose money. Let’s just make an abundant decision.

Let’s plan to move forward and let’s assume that it is all going to work out somehow and that even if there’s a challenge, we’ll find a solution. Let’s go. See what I mean? Abundant decisions.

We did our VIP event last month. And we went back and forth about how to check people in because there were almost 2,000 people coming. The guest list was changing as people came in and out of wanting to attend. And we were trying to figure out how are we going to have time to check all those people in and not make everyone have to be there an hour and a half early? And what do we do if there was some kind of a glitch or error and somebody’s not on the list, are we going to say, “Sorry, you can’t come in?”

Because this was a free event. People had to qualify in various ways to come. But we hadn’t charged money for this event. And so, what I said is, “No, we’re going to just let people in.” Some of the people on the team helping to plan the event were like, “Well, maybe we should give everyone name tags or something so we can know that everyone who’s there is supposed to be there.”

Now, again, I want to go to an abundant place to make a decision. And so, what I said is, “No, if somebody chooses to sneak in then we just want them to be there. They need to be there.” They’re going to go to all the trouble of figuring out what it is and then sneaking in, okay, then they need to be there. Again, that’s not always the answer. If I have clients that have paid money for something, then we’re going to have a different process out of fairness to the clients and customers. But as much as possible I try to make abundant decisions.

I try to decide, no, what if this is all going to work out beautifully? It’s tricky when you’re running a business to know how many of these things should we order because how many are we going to sell? I don’t know. It’s a little bit of a mystery. I make an abundant choice. Let’s assume we’re going to hit our goal, let’s order that many. Because worst case scenario we’re out some money. Alright, who cares? If you’re abundant then you just know, we’ll just make more money. That will be fun because we make money helping people. Let’s do that.

Sorry, I’m getting off on a little bit of a tangent on business here but that is where abundant decision-making has served me so well. I approach everything from abundance, and it simplifies our business, and it helps me contribute more good in the world. And that good always comes back to us, it really does, in ways that I couldn’t have even planned or predicted.

So, when you make a fast decision and when do you slow it down, again, what I told my friend is, “You make fast decisions when you’re making them from abundance.” You don’t second guess it. You don’t listen to part of your brain that’s like, “But what if this? What if that? What if somebody’s mad? What if it doesn’t work out? What if the pandemic flares up again? What if we run out? What if we lose money? What if? What if? What if?” You just say, “You know what? It will be fine. If that happens then we’ll deal with that when that happens.”

But let’s assume everything’s going to go beautifully. Let’s assume it’s going to work out perfectly. What if we make decisions from that place? I can’t even tell you how much it simplifies all of the other things in your life to make abundant decisions. You don’t have to spend hours researching and interviewing everyone about the school if you just make an abundant decision. Do a little bit of research, do your diligence. But don’t spend more time than necessary researching a decision because a decision doesn’t actually create your experience in the end, you do.

Who will you choose to be if there’s a problem or challenge? You’ll always get to choose who you want to be. And when challenges and problems arise that’s when we do our best being ourselves work because that’s when it requires that we choose it consciously instead of just being able to be ourselves automatically because everything’s going well. I want to have some pushback in my life.

I want to have some challenge, and struggle, and trials so that I get better at being the highest version of me I can be because then the other 99% of the time when everything’s going well it’s so much fun to be me. It’s so freeing and empowering to be me. I need to practice it when things go wrong. Abundant decisions, make them as often as you can and make them quickly.

Now, let’s talk about those fear-based decisions. When you’re making a fear-based decision, that’s when I want you to slow it down. When you feel yourself operating from panic, fear, trying to get away from negative emotion, trying to get away from feeling bad, trying to get away from frustration, or shame, or guilt, or whatever else, slow down. Slow down. Don’t make quick action from fear. Don’t make decisions from fear if you can avoid it. I’m not perfect at it, that’s why I’m saying, as much as you can. Maybe somebody other is perfect at it. I’m not.

But as much as possible, you want to slow down the fear-based action and decision-making so that you can take a look at it. So that you can question on it. Have a coach help you take a look at it because fear is always a lie, you guys, it’s always based on lies. And it’s lies about the future. Fear doesn’t even exist about the present. Fear is always about the future. Anything going on in the present is just a problem to solve and the brain’s like, “Okay, we’ve got a problem here, let’s go. Let’s solve it.” Fear is about the future.

I don’t know what the problem is. I don’t know what the parameters are. I don’t even know what we’re trying to solve. I don’t know what we have to work with. I don’t know what our timelines are. There’s so much unknown that the brain will panic. So, if you find yourself trying to make a quick decision because you’re frustrated, and irritated, and upset, and you’re trying to get out of that feeling, slow your roll, slow it all down. Don’t do anything yet.

It’s sort of like we’re in a room and there’s a bunch of tables set for a wedding with beautiful dishes, and crystal glassware, and flowers, and when we make fast decisions from fear it’s like we’re running around the room flailing our arms everywhere. And we’re just going to make it worse. We’re going to break things and things are going to fall off and shatter. And it’s a mess we’re creating. So, we don’t want to do that.

We want to just stop, take a deep breath, get our bearings again, where am I? What’s going on? Get control of ourselves. Get control of our brains and then make a decision. So that can take a long time, or it can take just a little bit of time, but it does take consciousness, it does take awareness. So, there are so many decisions that we all have to make every day that we’re all suffering from decision fatigue. But you’re suffering from it even more if you give too much weight to decisions, if you think the decision is that important. It’s not that important. I promise you, it’s really not.

So many things that people spend so much time thinking over, I’m just like, “This is not an important decision.” What brand of yogurt you buy, just pick one. There’s so many options. And every time I go to get yogurt at the grocery store there’s just people standing outside the refrigerated doors, looking at yogurt trying to decide.

And I just want to be like, “Listen, this doesn’t matter. Just pick one. What do you want? You want Greek yogurt, you want a low-fat yogurt, you want a flavored yogurt, you want a plain yogurt, you want a high protein yogurt?” Alright, you’ve got lots of options, just pick one and let’s go.

As many things in your life as you can automate, and repeat, and make boring, then the parts of your life where you’re trying to grow or contribute or create something will become more exciting because instead of wasting your energy and your brain juice on choosing yogurt, you can use it on something else more exciting, that you’re trying to figure out. Learning the piano, figuring out what you want to say in that church talk. Deciding how to best help your child.

You have plenty of other things where you need your brain. You don’t need it on so many of the little trivial things that people spend so much time overthinking. Are you with me? So moral of the story, make abundant decisions quickly. I say quickly because if you slow it down too much your brain will want to bring in all kinds of data, data that it makes up, data that it finds in the world. It will want to overthink it. I don’t want you using your mind up that way. So just make fast abundant decisions.

If you aren’t operating in abundance, then slow it down and do some work to get to abundance and then make your decisions. And as you practice this, you’ll get better at it and you will set yourself free from overwhelm, free from indecision, free from being just dragged down by the weight of all the choices and options that there are in the world.

Alright, I love you guys, thanks for being here today. Have a great week. And I’ll be back next Friday. Make sure you subscribe and please do share the podcast if you’re loving it. I would greatly appreciate it. I’ll see you next time. Bye bye.

Who is your life coach? If you don’t have one, I would be so honored to be your coach. I created a virtual coaching program called Be Bold that I want to invite you to join me in. We can address challenges, we can work on goals, and we can do it in so many different ways.

We have group coaching, individual private coaching, and online chats along with hundreds of hours of courses and content that I’ve created just for you. When you’re ready to really take what you’re learning on the podcast to the 10x level, then come check out Be Bold at JodyMoore.com/membership.