322: Tips for Making Tough Decisions — Solo Spotlight with Sarah Young

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Minute Maid Zero Sugar Great taste. Zero Sugar sells itself I've realized that clean energy is typically a trusty guide. If our intuition and deep inner knowing is telling us that something is off, it often is. I use clean energy as a guide for both my life and my business, and as a result am grateful today to be part of a community of friends, colleagues, and clients where the clean energy flows beautifully in all directions.

What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of the Only Move that Matters is your next one.

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Welcome back, Pivoters. Jenny Blake here with a quick intro to a very special guest who I've invited to record today's solo episode. I'm calling it Spotlight with Sarah Young. I met her through this platform over a decade ago when she wrote in to thank me for something. Maybe it was for the Pivot book. I'm not even exactly sure, and I asked for her mailing address so I could send her a postcard back. After that, she followed up a couple years later. We ended up working together in a number of different ways. And then the pandemic hit. Sarah and I both decided to work on Books during 2021. We became part of each other's author support group, ASG. It was just the two of us. We would bat ideas around on Marco Polo. We would try to encourage each other when we were going through a dip or having indecision about the process can be overwhelming, for sure, and we would even keep questions or conundrums we had about the writing and the ideas in our books in a Google Doc so that when we got on the phone, we could help each other talk through the really tricky stuff. So I couldn't be happier to be celebrating the One Year bookaversary of Sarah's beautiful book Expansive Impact. An invitation to lead in everyday moments. In fact, in celebration of the One Year bookiversary, she just released the audiobook edition. Many of you who listened to Our previous conversation episode 277 on spacious scheduling wrote in to say how much fun you had hearing Sarah's thoughts on things and how soothing her voice is. I totally agree. And recently she sent two episodes of her Friday favorite newsletter they're just so relevant to navigating the pivot process that I couldn't resist asking if she wouldn't mind hopping on a mic and recording them to play here for you. One of them is on tips for making Tough Decisions and the other relates to relationships where sometimes you're not sure if somebody still belongs in your life, whether it's a client, a colleague, an old friend. And so that second piece that she's going to read is about clean versus Dirty energy, which might have been a concept we picked up from Martha Beck, but that Sarah and I took and ran with that became so helpful for a lot of the conversations that we were having about business, about life, friendship. In just a moment, I'm going to turn the mic over to her. I just want to say I hope you enjoy and if you want to reread any of these or I know some of you might be audio listeners, some of you might be more visual or you need to actually see it on the page, I will link to these two articles in the Show Notes as I always do. I highly encourage you to also subscribe to her Friday Favorites newsletter that's chock full of good stuff. Like in the one Most recently she put a link to these delightful, delicious French cookies paired with a French music playlist and some good TV recommendations. And I remember in an earlier newsletter she sent this link to Lemon Loaf Tea by Tazo. You know, I'll put that in the Show Notes too. So good. Every time we make that tea it just feels like we're eating dessert. So anyway, she finds the best stuff and I always love her take on a heart based approach to life and business. That's@zingcollaborative.com Friday Favorites. And again, don't forget to get your copy of Expansive Impact. Without further ado, here is Sarah Young on tips for making tough decisions. Over to you Sarah.

I have a confession to make. When it comes to making big decisions, particularly those that go against the grain, my process occasionally goes like Analyze excessively. Do all of the research. Talk to experts. Wait for intuitive clarity to come. While waiting, research the topic late at night. Save articles on my phone and in Google Docs on my laptop. Intuitive clarity comes at the point that it's meant to come. Sometimes intuitive clarity takes much longer than I'd prefer prolonging the phase of late night research. Definitely not ideal. Gremlins inevitably arise once the decision is made. I notice them. Then I go back to analyzing excessively, just to be sure, to the point of occasionally questioning the Decision, pause, ground, reconnect to intuitive clarity and repeat. Can anyone else relate? If so, I hope that these strategies might offer a bit of support. Here are a few exercises that we can use when we're making tough decisions. First, grounding. We can connect to our higher self, the version of ourself who comes from love versus fear. What would she do? Second, exploring. We can try on the options. If we imagine walking down each of the possible paths, what do we see? How does each one feel? We can write to ourselves without judgment. We can ask the question and answer it via writing. We can see what comes up. We can check in with our future self, a version of ourself in 1, 2, 5, 10, or even 20 plus years. Which path did she pick? How does she feel about her choice?

We can write out three different paths for the decision at hand. The path that we're on right now, a slightly modified version of the path that we're on right now. And then an option that's totally different. And perhaps a best case scenario. How does each one feel? We can name the gremlins, the voices in our head that say, this will never work or you are nuts for considering this. And then for each, we can ask, what, if anything, is true about this? And how can I solve for it? We can write it down, what is the best that could happen? What is the worst that could happen? And then we can do this. For each possible path.

If we are considering an opportunity that came to us, we can ask ourselves, would I have been excited to seek out this opportunity on my own if it wouldn't have come my way?

And third, we can take action. We can decide on a first small step. We can make this step as small and granular as possible. And we can have a backup plan which will allow us to feel safe and secure even if our decision doesn't work out the way that we had expected.

What do you think? Is there one of these ideas that resonates for you? And one thing to keep in mind, it is nearly impossible to fully imagine the decision we haven't yet made. For example, if we are considering adopting a dog and we've never had a dog before, we only know what life is like without a dog. We can't fully know what it will be like to have a dog because we've never had one. If we're considering moving across the state and we've never lived there before, we can only know what it's like to live where we've lived. We can't fully know what it's like to live across the state because we've never done it. You get the idea. So I offer up these tools as invitations to explore with the caveat that all we can do is make the best decision we can with the information we have.

Thank you so much, Sarah, for reading that wonderful piece on making tough decisions. I just love how she teased out what makes them so tricky and also how to try them on. I've also heard that sometimes for big decisions, whether it's adopting a dog or getting married or having children, there are certain decisions where there will always be the road not taken. So in some ways, part of this is accepting the decisions we make and then making the most of them because there's just no way to know what that other path would have been. There is no going back. And I also think that's what makes them feel so high stakes in the moment. There are certain decisions that are actually final in some ways, and because of that, I've learned over the years they require grieving. Grieving. The other decision that we didn't make baked into the fact that by making this one we're choosing a certain life or even a certain becoming a certain identity. That is no going back. It's like once you're a parent, there is no going back. You've made that decision and so there's almost this parallel self out in the world of what could have been. I think Cheryl Strayed talked about this in her exquisite book Tiny Beautiful Things. And so part of this is allowing space for navigating these big decisions and the lingering feelings of regret or grief. They're so natural and part of this process.

We'll be right back just after this.

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The next piece that I asked Sarah to kindly read here on the pod because I know how helpful it's been for the two of us is her article on Clean Clean Energy over to you Sarah.

I'd like to share one of the single most helpful filters I use in my life and my business. You know the song Big Energy? Well, today I'd like to talk about a game changing filter that I've applied to my life and my business. Clean Energy what is clean Energy? Clean energy is a feeling within our relationships.

Clean energy is clear and flowing. It feels like the relationship is balanced. Clean energy has no icky, sticky weirdness of the space. Clean energy creates a space in which we feel safe, seen and able to be ourselves.

Clean energy involves a natural feeling of psychological safety. With clean energy, we aren't wasting time or energy thinking about whether something is off. We are able to simply show up and be in relationship with the other person. Clean energy is the opposite of dirty energy. Dirty energy feels like something is off, that something doesn't feel quite right, that somehow in some way the energetic currency of the relationship is imbalanced, that there's a weirdness in the space that is hard to put a finger on. With dirty energy, our spidey sense often detects danger, but we might rationalize with ourselves so that we set our spidey sense aside.

Dirty energy might make us feel unsafe, though perhaps we convince ourselves that we are imagining it. When making decisions in work and life, we can ask ourselves, does this have clean energy? If yes, proceed. If not, step back, pause and examine further. Overwhelmingly, the most challenging situations I've navigated, both personally and professionally, have involved dirty energy from the beginning. The professional acquaintance who demonstrated severe taker energy starting with our first interaction. The colleague who demonstrated a lack of integrity from the beginning, but then I ignored or brushed off as simply having different approaches. The guy I dated many years ago who was very clearly cheating on me but where I brushed off the many, many signs as imagining things. In each of these cases, the dirty energy was present, but I convinced myself to ignore it.

After a number of instances of learning the hard way, I've realized that clean energy is typically a trusty guide. If our intuition and deep inner knowing is telling us that something is off, it often is. I use clean energy as a guide for both my life and my business and as a result am grateful today to be part of a community of friends, colleagues and clients where the clean energy flows beautifully in all directions. What do you think of this idea of clean energy? Have you ever experienced what feels like dirty energy in your life, your work, or within your circles? Big thank you to Jenny for all of the conversations about this topic and for co creating this language of clean and dirty energy.

That's a wrap for today's Solo Spotlight with Sarah Young. I hope you enjoyed these two pieces. Big thanks to Sarah for reading them, even though podcasting and recording stuff is not part of her day to day routine. I'll put all the links to these posts and resources in the show notes and again, be sure to sign up for Friday Favorites if you haven't already. That's@zingcollaborative.com Friday favorites and get your copy of Expansive Impact. If you enjoyed her take on these two topics as I do her beautiful soothing voice, I know you'll love the audiobook that has been just recently released. Although I will say the hardcover is beautiful as well. My favorite part is this hot pink end sheet right when you open the book. It's got so much style. It's really beautifully done with spot color on the interior and a nice keepsake for your bookshelf. Thank you so much for being here listening and if you have any thoughts on these two topics or follow up questions, we would love to hear them. You can always leave a voice note@pivotmethod.com ask or email helloivotmethod.com thank you so much for being here listening. Hope you have a beautiful rest of your day.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode. Welcome to an episode of the Pivot Podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter Ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.