#9 PTSD Decision Points: How to Stop Reacting to Triggers | Recovery Secrets Series

Welcome to the Overcoming PTSD Podcast. My name is Brad Schipke, and this is the limited series called Recovery Secrets Daily Coaching. Now, these were private sessions that I originally ran as a paid coaching program, but now for the first time ever, I'm making all 100+ sessions available for free for all of you podcast listeners. And this series is over 100 days of practical strategies that have helped thousands of trauma survivors fully heal. So make sure to subscribe because I'm dropping a new episode every single weekday until the archive is complete and you definitely do not want to miss it. So without further ado, let's dive on in.

Everybody, welcome to today's Recovery Secrets coaching session with me, Brad. I'm super excited today, as always, to talk about today's topic. It's going to be a continuation about a topic that we talked about, emotional versus logical thinking. Last Thursday, it was just me and we really kind of differentiated, you know, the difference between emotional and logical thinking. We focused more down kind of like the logical And this is going to be a continuation about kind of developing those, those thinking skills, how to think more logically. And really this today is going to be kind of like the first step to all of that. So I kind of gave the broad overall foundation of everything, and I'll give a little summary of that. We talked about emotional and logical thinking, and we talked about how recovery is a combination of both mastering the emotional side of it. And the logical side of it. And a lot of times, you know, we get stuck on either, you know, thinking too emotionally or acting too emotionally or thinking too logically and acting too logically. And those both have their own problems. We also talked about that reality has no meaning other than the meaning that we give it. So it's, it's all about all the information that we're taking in each day. All the inputs is really just data for us to interpret, interpret. And it's how we interpret that data, how we interpret the information of our life. Right? That really determines our reality. You know, a lot of times we feel like victims to, to our circumstances and everything else, but really comes down to how we are interpreting the experiences of our life, the information that is given to us that really determines the quality of our life and just our overall reality. So that's something we talked about as well. And then we talked about reactive thinking and adaptive thinking. So the reactive thinking was Like, as the word says, you're, you're reactive to everything. You don't really think, you just, you just move very habitually, very instinctually, and you don't think, you just act, right? So you can think of that as, you know, you, someone getting triggered and then, you know, instantly getting angry or instantly taking this action or instantly doing something and not thinking about the situation. So the goal of last week was to move from that kind of reactive mode to an adaptive mode. And the adaptive mode is when you kind of take each situation that you're in differently and you analyze it independently to come up with your own kind of custom solution. And I kind of gave the visual of kind of like an assembly line for the reactive thinking. It's like no matter what situation you're put in, you react in the same exact way. And it's very predictable, just like an assembly line or a manufacturing line where you put in the raw materials and you get the same exact product. out every time. That's kind of the, the reactive thinking. And then the adaptive thinking was more of the artisan, right? So the, it's the artisan that like custom makes the product. And that's what we're trying to work for, work towards today. So today's kind of a continuation of that. Also at the end of last lesson, I talked about GPS. So it's kind of just a simple problem solving framework that you can use. And it was goal, problem, solution. So identify the goal, identify the problem, and identify the solution, right? So we talked about slowing down. Taking a deep breath and then going through the goal problem solution framework when you are feeling in like you're, you're in that reactive mode. So today we're going to be talking about, as you can see on the board today, decision points. So decision points are those points when you need to slow down and make a new decision where you habitually tend to go down the reactive path, but we want to slow down and make a better decision, make that change. And do something different. So this is a continuation, kind of going deeper on just the decision point, just at, at the point where you wanna make that new decision and not go down that old path. So that's all we're gonna be talking about today. So basically all a decision point is, is a point in your day, a point in your life where you are faced with a decision. And there are thousands of those that we probably face every day, but there are a few key essential ones that you really wanna look out for. So if you really think about it, your Decisions really make up the quality of your life, right? And the quality of your day, right? So like the quality of your day at the end of the day, if you have a good day or a bad day, is really based on your decisions. And you make decisions on external things and on internal things. The things that you choose, the actions that you choose to take, the thoughts that you choose to have determines the quality of your day, the quality of your week, the quality of your month, the quality of your year, and eventually the quality of your life. So if you really dial it back down to, you know, How do you build the life you want to build? Or how do you recover from PTSD or whatever you're trying to achieve? It's like we have to make better decisions, right? And to be better, to make better decisions, we have to be aware of those points where we're faced to make a decision. And a lot of times we're not really aware of when, you know, we're making a decision because it's so habitual. And what we want to do is basically slow down so we can be aware of when, okay, I'm making this decision, I'm going down this this habitual path and I want to do something different because if we're not aware of when those decision points show up, then we can't make a new choice. We can't choose to go down a new path because we're totally unaware that we're even going down this path automatically. So a lot of this, a lot of the decisions that we make are pre-made, right? A lot of the decisions that we make are pre-made. They've already been made in the past and we made a, may have made them only once based on very limited data. And then we've built a habit around that decision and keep taking that action. So maybe when you were younger, you were in a, maybe a kind of disrupt— disruptive household where it was very normal to be very reactive with emotions. And maybe that decision was made, maybe it wasn't even made by you. You know, that's, that's another thing. We take on a lot of other people's decisions, a lot of other people's beliefs. But maybe that kind of decision was pre-made for you. So when you feel emotion, you just react instantly. In the way that you feel, and it doesn't really matter, right? Like, it, you could be yelling, it could be screaming, it could throwing things, it could be anything. It could be running away. It could be whatever it is, you know, it could be hiding. But, and I'll, I'll get into, into this more because obviously, you know, like I said in the beginning, healing is a combination between logic and emotion. And what I'm talking about today is just the pure logic side. So there is the emotional side too. So I don't want you to forget that and just say, this is the only thing that like you need to overcome you know, these, these challenges in your life. But that may, may have been, that's just an example of a decision that you may have pre-made. And now that you're total— now you're totally aware, unaware of it, and you keep making that decision again and again and again, and it keeps ruining your life, but you're not aware that you've already made that decision. You keep making that decision just because you've built a habit around it, and it's the easiest thing for you to do because you've done it again and again and again, because you've had so many references of maybe people in your family or people in your life doing that so that it is just accepted and we don't We're not aware that we're even making a decision because it's just so habitual. It doesn't even feel like a decision because we just do it. So that's what we're talking about today is like, how do we find out, you know, when we're making those decisions? What are the most important decisions of the day? Because I can tell you that there's really 3 main decisions that I focus on making a day. And if I can make these 3 decisions, then I know I have a good day or I have a very high likelihood of having a good day. And let's say our, our day just starts out average. Maybe it starts below average because maybe we have A lot of trauma and we wake up with a lot of stress. So let's, let's go with that. We'll say, you know, maybe, maybe our day when we wake up in the beginning of the day is starting a little bit less than average. And let's say we're faced with, with a decision to get, to get out of bed, right? And we're like, you know, I'm gonna hit snooze, right? So that decision, let's say, brings you down more towards a bad day. And then let's say your next decision, you hit a next decision point and you're like, should I get a donut or should I have a fruit salad for breakfast? Whatever. And then let's say that you choose the fruits out and then let's say you're, you're driving to work and you, you, you choose to listen to some negative news on the radio and that makes you feel more negative, right? Let's say that brings you back down to the bad day towards the bad day. And then let's say you start, you know, someone cuts you off on your way to work or whatever it is and you start having these negative thoughts and you start getting angry and you choose to get mad at this person instead of just accepting it and letting it go. So then let's say you, Start spiraling into negative thoughts and then so on and so on. You kind of get the picture, but basically the decisions that you make throughout your day will determine whether or not you have a good or a bad life, right? So all of these points throughout your day will determine whether or not you have a bad day, an average day, or a good day. And if you have enough, if you have enough bad days, you're going to have bad weeks. If you have enough bad weeks, you're going to have bad months. You have enough bad months, you're going to have bad years. And if you have bad years, you're going to have bad decades, and then bad decades, bad life. So it really comes down to, if you boil it back down, it comes down to each and every one of these decisions that you're making throughout the day. And I'm really trying to stress that it comes down to the little decisions. And this is where you may have heard of the compound effect, right? It's like these little, these little decision points throughout your day compound over a lifetime, right? So like you may, you may make a bad decision right in the beginning of your day to sleep in or to snooze. I mean, let's just, for the sake, we'll say that's not the best decision. And then you're already starting off your day in a bad way, right? So you already have this kind of negative momentum to make a bad decision, right? I'm sure all of us have kind of experienced that. It's like when you start your day off well, you tend to make better decisions throughout the day. When you start your day off poorly, you tend to make more poor decisions throughout the day. I know that was absolutely true for me. It's like when I chose to sleep in, I was like, ah, you know, I kind of missed, I missed my workout. I didn't do my meditation. I didn't do my processing. I didn't do all these things. And then I start to beat myself up, I make the decision to beat myself up and I start going down further and I'm like, oh, I'm just going to stuff my face with some food this morning and then I'm going to watch some TV and then I just go down and down and I, then I like get locked in into this bad day. So each decision can compound on a daily basis, but also a weekly, monthly, yearly, lifetime basis. So that's what like, that's what I like to think about. That's why I want stress is like, Each and every one of these decisions is very important, right? But there are, there are decisions obviously that matter more than, than others. So these are decisions that I like to call keystone, keystone decisions, right? So these can be decisions throughout your day that if you make them in the right way, they're going to set you up and give you the positive momentum to have a good day for the rest of your rest of your day. Right now I'm going to talk about kind of keystone decision. Decision points. And like I said in the beginning, it's like I really have 3 decisions to make, maybe 4, but really it's 3 main ones that I need to make throughout a day for me to know that if I make these 3 decisions, I'm going to have a good day. Much more, it's going to be much more likely to have a good day than a bad day or even an average day. So for me, the first one, I'll just give an example for this, for the keystone decision is the first decision that I know I have to make Is I need to wake up and get outta bed and get dressed. That's the only one. Don't go back to sleep, right? So if I do that, I know that I'm headed in the right direction, right? I know that I'm going out. And then the next big decision that I know I have to make, and there's gonna be little decisions in between these, but the next big, big decision here I have to make is— So I, I wake up, I go to the gym, or I, I meditate, I go to the gym and I come home and I take a shower. Usually when I'm taking a shower, I have the desire To just go back in bed. Like it's, it's so comfortable that you just wanna kind of spend all day in there. But when I'm in the shower, you know, I, I usually get more relaxed, I get tired and I'm like, ah, I just wanna go back to sleep. You know, cuz it's like at this point it's probably 6:30, already went to the gym, it's already early. I may even be have starting to have a little bit of thoughts of like, I'm kind of tired, you know, like I kind of just wanna sleep. And you know, that's, you know, normal humans like to sleep, but I know if I make the decision To not go to sleep and go to work or get ready for work. At least that's, it's really, that's all I have to do. I don't even have to go to work cuz I know if I start getting ready for work, I'm going to go to work. So that's the second one there. And if I make that right, then I'm headed up in a positive trajectory. And then the third one here is, for me right now at least, it's right after Recovery Secrets, right? So right after we do this coaching, it's, do I Jump right into my to-do list and get focused on the actions I need to take? Or do I kind of do a bunch of little small tasks, right, that aren't my to-do list, but like, like it might be like answering emails. So like every night I plan, this is what I'm going to do for the next day. Do I jump right into that or do I do some like little tasks? And I know if I get, if I lock that in, I'm rocking and rolling. I'm focusing on the most important tasks for, for the business and the rest of my day. And the rest of my decisions just come easily. And I know the rest of the day is, is pretty much good, right? So those are kind of like the keystone, what I call keystone decisions, decision points. And what I want you guys to kind of determine for yourselves are like, what are my keystone decision points? Because it can be so like complicated. It's, it's, it's important to be aware of like all the little decisions that you're making, right? But, and we want to become more and more aware. Of, you know, the decisions that we're making so that we can make better decisions. So I'm not saying don't become, don't be aware of all the decisions you're making and try, and I'm not saying don't make better decisions on those little decisions, but there are inevitably, inevitably going to be a few decisions that matter more than other decisions, right? So those are the ones that you want to focus on. And for me, there happened to be 3. That's just the number that I had. I want you guys to kind of think about, you know, what are the, the key decisions in my day? That if I can make them, I'm going to have a good day. And I might be waking up on time. It might be, it might be showing up to this. It might be, you know, doing your processing work. If I can just wake up and do an hour of processing work, I know that, you know, the rest of my day is pretty much locked in. So those are kind of the keystone, keystone decisions and how you can kind of set your day up in the right way. So it kind of automatically goes to a more good day than, than a bad day. Now I want to talk about what, like, what kind of goes through your head when you're at these decision points, because obviously it's not like, oh, I'm aware of this decision point and then I just automatically make the good decision. It's like you're going to have, you're going to have some struggle here. So like when you're at like one of these decision points, it's called a decision point for a reason. Because there's, I mean, there's, there's probably infinite paths that you could take, but to make it simple, there are really 2 paths, right? You could take the negative path or you could take the positive path. And usually, you know, when you're talking about decision points, you're trying to change a habitual negative pattern that you're in, right? So usually you're going to have more momentum moving into this negative, negative pathway than into the, the positive pathway up here. So what you're going to have to do is like to first become aware of that decision point and then slow down. So take a breath, right? When you're, when you're faced at that decision point, you're going to have a lot of emotional pull. To do the habitual thing, to do the easy thing. For me, just as like the example of like, I'm, I just got back from my shower or, or from my, my workout and I'm in the shower and I'm thinking like, oh, the bed, the bed is really warm. It's really comfortable. I'm kind of tired from my workout. It would be really nice to lay in there. It's like the, like there's a strong emotional pull to go and do that, right? So what you need to do is you need to first slow down so that you can make a better decision. And you can just do that by Taking a few deep breaths, telling yourself to slow down, that you don't have to make this decision right now. Nothing is life or death. Everything is okay. And you just kind of talk yourself into slowing down so you can think, so you can relax, right? You don't really make good decisions when you're in an emotional state, right? And if you kind of think of it like emotional is kind of on the opposite side of logical. So if you're stuck in this emotional state, you want to calm down so you're more in a more logical state so you can make a better decision, right? So that's what we're trying to do there is get you out of kind of this emotional reactive state, slow you down. So you're more in this, you're in this kind of more logical thinking state. You can, you can think through things more clearly and more look at things more objectively and make better decisions for yourself. Think longer term. So that's the first step is just slowing down. And then what I want you to do is foreshadow. So slow down. And then foreshadow at this decision point, right? Foreshadow, you know, okay, what's going to happen if I make this decision, right? And that's, that's kind of like the problem of like emotional thinking and reactive thinking is that you don't think, like, you don't think what's going to happen. You know, you don't think about the consequences of your actions. You just take the action. Like you don't, you don't think about it. And if you, if it's a, if it's a good decision like that you've already pre-made and habitualized, like that's, that's good, you know, and that happens and that, that happens quite a bit. But when it's negative and you don't even think about it, you don't, you know, think about the consequences of your actions, that will lead you down a very not good path. So we want to slow down and then foreshadow. You want to be like, what, what will happen if I go down, if I make this decision? So for me, it's like, for this ongoing example, what will happen if I decide to go back to bed? You'd be like, oh, okay. I know that if I go back to bed right now, I'll get an an extra hour of sleep, you know, 6:30, I'll be able to sleep until 7:30. I'll wake up, but then I'll be more groggy. And then, you know, my Recovery Secrets coaching will be, you know, less impactful for people. I won't be able to help as many people. And then the rest of my day I'm gonna be groggy and I won't be as effective at work. And I'm going to be put into a state where I'm more likely to make another negative decision. So maybe for lunch, instead of having something good, maybe I overeat a little bit or maybe I do something else. And then I kind of project that out further and further. So that's one example there. And you can also project out and foreshadow, okay, if I, if I choose this good path, but you don't even really need to choose, foreshadow the good path. The most important thing is to foreshadow the negative path. You know, what's going to happen if I do this negative thing? And that enough is just like, that's all you need to really make a better decision is to know this path is not the right path. I'm going to choose a different path. Right. And 99.9% of the time when you're choosing between a negative path and just a different path, the different path, no matter what it is, is usually better. Usually, usually the different path is better. It puts you in a better state, even if it's not the perfect path. So you wanna slow down, take a breath, foreshadow what's gonna happen if I make this decision. And if you remember earlier, I talked about, it's easy to think about like external decisions, like waking up, you know, whether or not do I go back to bed or do I jump right into focusing and work? But there's also internal things that going on that go on with you. So one of them could be choosing to go down a negative path in your mind. Right. So I talked about this yesterday with like forgiveness, acceptance. It was actually acceptance, but for me in the story, it was forgiveness where there was one point where I became aware of the decision point of where I would typically get very angry at this person for things that they did in, in my life. And I would get super angry. But before I went down that path, I stopped. I'm like, I became aware, I slowed down and I foreshadowed what will happen if I start getting angry at this person mentally, right? Like, because the person wasn't there, I was just mentally getting angry at nothing, right? Like at my thoughts, at my past. So I, I foreshadowed that and I'm like, oh, if I get, if I start going down this path of being angry, I'm going to get really upset. I'm probably gonna be mad for a few hours and it's gonna mess up my sleep and I might not sleep at all because I'm gonna be so mad. And then my next day won't be good and I'll probably eat real bad and Maybe I'll watch some TV and, you know, try to numb it away. But I, I remember that point, and this was a, a long time ago, but I remember that point very clearly cuz it was the first time I became aware of that internal decision point where I in the past would just habitually make the decision to get angry at someone. So this can happen internally and externally, right? So with your thoughts, and that's probably more challenging, you wanna be aware of your thoughts and when it goes down, when you start to have a negative thought. You can foreshadow, okay, what will happen when I have this negative thought? You know, if I choose to have this negative thought, where will this take me? Right? And that's a decision point in your mind. And those are, I would say those are probably more important than the ones that you take externally, cuz everything starts in your mind, right? So this applies to external things and internal things. And I would say the internal decisions that we make with our thoughts are way more important than the external ones. Because if you can make the right thoughts in your mind or the right decisions to have the right thoughts in your mind, everything else will flow from there. So that's an example there. Another example that you could have here is choosing to yell at your partner or choosing to step away and deal with your emotions in a private, safe environment so it doesn't do damage to your relationship or the other person or yourself, right? That's an example of a decision point of slowing down. You know, you feel this emotion of like, I want to fight this person, or I want to yell at this person, or whatever it is. You can take a deep breath, you can slow down, you can foreshadow what will happen if I yell, what will happen if I do this, and I can make a different decision. Another one is maybe if you, you are choosing to, or if you're feeling some emotions, you're triggered and you want to go numb with something, like let's just say TV, like you want to go binge watch TV and eat a bunch of food right at that point. That could be a decision point. You could, you could foreshadow what will, what will happen. If I make this decision, right? Look down that pathway, project yourself out after making those decisions before you make it, and then choose a different path. And that's all we're talking about is choosing a different path. We want to become aware of these negative paths and just choose a different one because it, like, like I said, 99.9% of the time, if you choose something, it may not be, it may not even be good. You know, maybe it's just neutral, right? Maybe you become aware of this path, you make a different decision. And it's just neutral, but you're still going to be in a better spot. So that's another example there. And I think that kind of wraps up the decision points. I have a few more things that I can cover here. So I do want to talk about, about something about like, about making decisions. Obviously, like I said in the beginning, we're talking about it in a very logical way. Like there's obviously other things that affect your decision-making process. And I think I want to touch on those just a little bit because I only have about a minute and a half here left of the teaching. But things that kind of influence your decisions are decisions themselves. So if you can make your life simpler and have fewer decisions, you're going to have more, more energy for the keystone decisions here, right? So if you can simplify your life, reduce the amount of decisions that you, you, you make throughout the day, you're going to have more energy to focus on these keystone decisions right here. And that's something called decision fatigue, right? So the more decisions that you have to make throughout the day, Like there was actually, I, there was actually a study done on judges where they brought in inmates, inmates from prison to determine whether or not they would, I forget what the actual term is, but basically set free. And they saw that in the beginning of the day of the judge's day, they were much more lenient. And then at the end of the day, they were much more strict. So if you were lucky enough to be an inmate, you wanted to be at the beginning of the day because they were much more lenient and many more inmates would be basically set free, or I don't know if it's called parole or whatever it is. And at the end of the day, since they made so many decisions, they had to think so much, they defaulted to no, right? The easier decision. And that's typically what we do as humans is like the more decisions that we make, we typically default to the easiest decision, which typically is not the best decision for us. Usually the easiest decision that we can make usually is not the best decision for us. It's usually the one that provides us with the most instant gratification. And the lowest long-term gratification. So I'll kind of sum it up right now. There are a few more things I could touch on, but let me, let me know if you guys kind of enjoyed this, this kind of lesson again on me going deeper into decision points and different, different types of kind of thinking processes. Because I could do this again. We're kind of taking this as it comes. If you guys like this kind of content, this kind of coaching, we will continue to do this. There's A lot more topics that I could talk about in regards to just thinking and thinking clearly and things like that. So I could continue going into kind of step by step the different topics to help you think more clearly, to help you make better decisions, help you think more logically, see things more objectively. But if it's not something, I want your honest opinion. I want your honest opinion because like, I don't care if it's like, if you're not enjoying it, I want to know if you're not finding value from this stuff. I want to know so I can make it better because we're here for you. We're here to help you. So now let me go into the action, right? The action, the action, the action. Number 1, try to just become aware overall, bring a sense of awareness to all of this, this decisions that you're making internally and externally. What are the thoughts I'm choosing to have, right? Those are all decisions. I'm choosing to have this thought right now. What are the actions that you're choosing to have? That's a decision you're making as well. So become on like a global scale, start becoming aware of all the decisions that you're making. And it's just something to keep in your, in, in the back of your mind. Secondly, try to become aware of your keystone decisions, right? Your keystone decision points, because those are the ones that are going to have the biggest impact in, in regards to everything, nature, life. There's something called the 80/20 rule where 80% of your results come from 20% of your actions. That's just one way to state the 80/20 rule, but 80 or 20% of your decisions will give you 80% of the results you want, right? And that's kind of the idea behind this. And it's 100% true. If you can just make these decisions, these few decisions, and it can be, it could be one decision, right? It doesn't have to be 3. For me, it happens to be 3, but it could be 1, it could be 2, it could be 3, it could be 4. Try to keep it simple, but think about what are my keystone decisions? If I make this decision, this correct decision, it will basically set me up for the day I want to have. So become aware of those. And then when you face a decision point, slow down and foreshadow, right? Slow down and foreshadow, right? So become aware of all your decisions on a global scale. Just keep it in the back of your mind. You don't have to like do much effort or action there, but just something to keep in the back of your mind. Use that GPS framework that we talked about earlier as well. But for now, the easy thing, slow down. Foreshadow and make any other decision. Just make any other decision. 99.9% of the time it's going to be an improvement, even if it's not the perfect decision. So again, hope you guys enjoy this lesson. So Lisa says, nail voice choice, positive before getting outta bed without snoozing, jump up, make bed, and launch into the day planned, planned the evening before. That's awesome. That's awesome. And maybe like that is like the one decision point that That for me honestly is probably the biggest one, just getting out of bed. Like this first decision that I make is probably the biggest one. And then each one after this become less and less important, but they are still keystone, but they make, they're easier and easier to make. So I think that's great what you said, Lisa. Nail the, nail the voice, the voice choice. So that internal voice before getting outta bed without snoozing, jump up, make the bed, launch into the day planned the evening before. I love that. That's perfect. Nancy says, this is so helpful, Brad. For me, the decision point is right after dinner when I'm finally done with my day and cooking and it's 8:30 and I'm so tired and just end up continuing to eat because I'm too tired to do all the other things I need to do. And the result is that I end up wasting time going to bed too late, like 11:30 or 12, and end up chronically sleep deprived. And so it goes. I will apply today, today's lesson to this decision point in my life. Could change. Any suggestions? Yeah. So I like generally, and I didn't talk about this, but generally when you go through the keystone decisions, you can pre-make those decisions, right? So you can look ahead of time and be like, okay, I typically do this, right? So you can think ahead and be like, I typically do this, right? But I want to do this. I want to do this, right? So you can pre-make those key decisions ahead of time. So for you, you can think for yourself, you know, what's the goal that I want to achieve? after 8:30, you know, and then how do I achieve that? And then start thinking of different decisions that you want to make. So I would just, I would think of, I would try to pre-make that decision because it would just make it that much easier. And then you can even visualize yourself going through that, right? Visualization in like in, in, in pre-making decisions or pre, pre-making routines is so powerful. So you can think about that specific time at 8:30. Come up with a new plan essentially, right? A new decision that you're going to make at that point and then visualize yourself at that point, right? Like sometimes like you visualize so deeply and when you're at that point, you even feel the pull to do the negative thing. But then right there you can slow yourself down and you'd be like, no, I'm going to, I know where this, where this is going to lead me. I know this is going to lead me down a negative path. I'm going to make this new decision. And then you can visualize yourself Even foreshadowing, okay, this is where it's gonna go. Visualizing yourself doing everything mentally that you would do in that decision point, and then visualizing yourself making that new decision. The last thing I would say too about that is I would wanna make it sustainable. So we talked about morning routines and how morning routines, a lot, a lot of times people like to complicate it and it's really important to keep things simple and have it be something that you can imagine yourself doing for the rest of your life. Right? So that's kind of like the last piece here. Sometimes we get overly optimistic, and I'm not saying that don't be optimistic, and I'm not saying don't set your goals high, but with this in mind, we want to build something that you can do for life. We want to, you know, make these keystone decisions a thing you can do for basically for life forever, and not just something that's going to be around for a day or a week or even a month. It's like we want something that's going to stick. So when you're making that decision or pre-making that decision, I would think of, you know, is this simple? Can I realistically imagine myself actually doing this? And a good litmus test, I don't know if, I don't know if I should even say this because it's, it's kind of a good thought experiment, but not necessarily how you should craft everything. But some, one way I like to think about it, just another, another way to think about like decisions and routines other than like, can I imagine myself doing this for life? Another thing you could be is like, can I imagine myself doing this on my worst day? Right. And there's also other things that, that can go into that, but those are just some questions to, to really think about. Am I building something that is sustainable over the long term? And that's what we want. So that's what I would say, Nancy, is like when you're pre-making that decision for, for this evening, make it something simple, something enjoyable, you know, whatever it is, something that you can imagine yourself doing for a long period of time. But I would definitely think about pre-making it. Visualizing it, and then asking yourself if, if this is something that you can, you can do for the long term. Bonnie says, makes a lot of sense and helps show the mistakes we make day by day just by simply, or by a simple wrong decision puts the whole day out of whack. Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Nancy says, thinking clearly is really helpful. I realize I have been mainly an emotional reactive thinker. Absolutely. And that, I mean, that's the first step, right? Just becoming aware. And for me, it was like, I definitely lean more on like the logical side. And it's like, if you, if you're just looking at things from an emotional perspective, you don't have any foundation of like objectivity or like logic to, to like, to guide it. You know, it's just kind of like this emotion. If you're guiding your life through emotion, pure, purely through emotion, it will lead you astray. If you're leading your life purely through logic, it'll lead you astray. I definitely like to lean on logic a little bit more, but I mean, everybody's, everybody's different. But I mean, that's great, Nancy, that you are aware of it, right? You're aware of it and be like, okay, this is a deficiency that I have in my thinking or whatever. Now I can improve on it, right? That's awesome. That's a huge win. And it's like, it's humbling. I mean, I, it's, that's a challenging thing for a lot of people to do, but that's really what separates people who basically successful people who heal, people who don't, is that people are willing to say, hey, I'm not so good at this. And like, I was terrible at emotions. I couldn't even get myself to cry. Like I was awful. I was like terrible, but I'm like, I need to figure this thing out, you know? And, and that's really all it is. It's not like there's anything wrong with anybody if they don't know something. It's just nobody knows everything, you know? And we all have deficiencies in different areas and we can all improve in different areas. And I think that's, that's, that's the differentiating factor is that we can look at ourselves objectively and be like, yeah, you know what I am? And accept it, right? We talk about acceptance and accept that, you know, I am like, the reality is, is like, I'm not that good in this thing. And I just need to get better at it. And when you, when you accept that and you acknowledge it, you become aware of it, you actually have the opportunity to get better at that thing. So I wanna just say awesome job with that, Nancy, being humble enough to, you know, accept that and see that. So it's awesome. Nancy also says, so helpful that you give detailed explanations of how you have applied the lesson in your own life. Gives us a real life example of what the healing path really looks like. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. That's what I try to do. I try to mix, I'm, I try to mix in You know, kind of the theory. I try to mix in some visuals. I try to mix in some stories. I try to mix in some examples, try to mix in like other people's stories to try to get like a cohesive whole so you can look at it from all different angles. And even better if I can make it interactive. But I try to, I try to do a little bit of everything. So let's see. Barbara says, Brad, I really appreciate this presentation of yours. I have made decisions more outta my emotional side and looking at it logically is helpful to me as it is Not my go-to yet. And so it gives me a new way of making choices. That's awesome. What does foreshadow mean? In advance? Yeah. Foreshadow means, actually I might be using it in the wrong way, be a warning or indication of a future event. Basically what I mean is you just wanna, you wanna predict the future, right? So you wanna predict where it's gonna be, wanna go. So I say foreshadow, but I mean, that might not even be the right use of the word now that I looked at the definition. But At this point, you want to look at the negative path and you want to just predict what is going to happen, right? So that's, that's what I mean. And hopefully that makes sense. Joe says reactive versus conscious thinking. That I think is the crux of decision point. Yeah, I think that's great, right? It's like, am I going to reactively go, go down this or am I going to consciously make it, make this decision? Right. That's beautiful. I love that. All right, let me go through here. Isabella says, so I make the decision Every other day to go to work. I, as I work every other day, however, on my days off, I do very little for myself, my home. I will definitely try this for myself at home. I do the laundry and lightly clean, pick up, pick up, drop off kids. I get so tired from my job. Feels like I need a job recuperating. Yeah. And it'll absolutely feel like that. I mean, a lot of times just getting yourself to do anything, right? When you have PTSD and trauma, have gone through trauma, it's like, it's Exhausting, right? Like, I, I, I know that firsthand. It's like, it's so hard just to get yourself outta bed or do anything. One thing that can help you for that for sure is, is having a morning routine, right? Staying consistent with that on your days on and your days off and the night before. And when you plan, plan your day the night before, you don't have to wake up and wonder what you're going to do. All you have to do is just do it and you don't have to make the decisions cuz you pre-made the decisions. And another little trick with that is when you plan tomorrow's day, you make your to-do list for the next day. You can visualize yourself actually going through your day the night before. So when you're in bed the night before, you can visualize yourself going through your next day doing what you want to do, and it makes it that much more likely you're going to actually do that, right? So that's something I would recommend there. Get a morning routine in place, get an evening routine in place, right? Those are like, those are like the bookends to your day that hold everything together. Right? So in the evening routine, you want to plan tomorrow today, and I would, I would highly recommend visualizing what you're going to do the next day and even visualizing your morning routine. And then the morning routine will prime you for the day so that you're ready to actually take action on what you want to do. And then it's also important to, you know, make sure that it's, it's sustainable and that you can do it consistently and allow yourself to rest. You know, like a lot of times we think we have to be so productive 100% of the time. It's It's okay to, it's good. Like productivity is very important. Like it is very important. Like just to like mentally feel good. Like at the end of the day, I feel so much better when I'm productive during the day. But we have to understand it's like you don't have to be productive 100% of the time. Like you can give yourself time to just lay down and knock out and just relax. And that's, that's important as well. So, but ultimately you need to do what's best, best for you. And think independently. But that's what I would recommend. Getting those 2 routines in place will, and even if your evening routine is literally just, I'm going to meditate or some type of visualization exercise or some kind of relaxation exercise, it can be 2 steps, right? Or it can be 1 step, or it can be even just, I'm going to plan tomorrow today. And that's good. And that's my evening routine. And if you can just lock that in, and if that seems sustainable and something that you can do long-term, just do that. Same thing with the morning routine. You want to do something that is sustainable that you can do for a long period of time. But if you get those 2 in place, particularly the plan tomorrow today, have the morning routine and then visualizing it, that will help you kind of just work through the whole, work through the whole day. Bonnie says, I don't know about you, but I would feel guilty about taking a little time for myself. The guilt then drained me more. Maybe try to set a little time in your day off that is specifically for you to have time for yourself. And then have some small things on your to-do list to work on as well. Then the guilt won't make you feel more negative. Yeah. And the guilt is something that you'll be able to work with as well. You know, like it's your life. You can do whatever you want. You know, you can live your life in any way you wanna live it. Joe says, Brad, are you using foreshadow as, as meaning predict the path of each decision point? Yes. So I probably was using foreshadow in the wrong way. Okay. Just reading through these. Judy says, okay, I'm starting to learn some of the tools for coping, but I haven't really gotten to learning about how to process. Yeah. So just stick with us here. You know, we're going to dig into that more and more and more. And it is a process. It is a learning process. And all the things that you're learning so far, they're laying the foundation, right? Like even like Monday, we talked about the Recovery Hero, getting the routines in place, learning those coping skills. All of those things are the foundation, right? And you can't really get to that next point without having this kind of foundation in place. So right now you're building the foundation. I'm sure you're already seeing the results of, you know, putting all this work in. Be patient. You will get there 100%. It is, it is a process, right? It's not a, it's not an overnight. Nothing is overnight, right? Although you can have really fast processing sessions, but I mean, for the most part, nothing is overnight. So be patient, keep building these blocks, and then week after week, as long as you're making progress, that's a huge win. So stay patient with that. Keep, keep showing up like you have been, and we will, we will keep building those blocks together. We will keep giving you those, or we will give you more processing tools, we'll give you more mindset tools, and we'll just really give you a holistic look at everything. And you'll be— you'll hit the ground running, I can promise you that. So I think that's it here. I thank you guys so much for showing up today. I hope you enjoyed this. I hope you guys have a great rest of your day. And yeah, I'll see you then.

Hey everybody, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you want to learn more about how you can coach with me directly, there's a link in the description you can check out. There's absolutely no pressure. The main thing is I wanted you to get value from this episode. Here, but I hope you have a fantastic day, and I'll see you in the next one.