2 Decision Making Hacks That Will Change Your Life

And a big thank you to the sponsors of this podcast. Open Phone is the number one business phone system that's open phone. O P-E-N-P-H-O-N-E.com earn for 20 off for six months and cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with rocket Money. Go to RocketMoney.come y h today, as our options started to get more limited, you start to really go into the decision, like, do I want children or not? I. I have an extremely happy life and I feel like I'm lacking for nothing. Like, nothing right now. But as I flash forward to my life when I am 60 years old, I ask myself, what did it all mean? And there's a question mark there. Hey, everyone, welcome back to the show. It's time for another quickie because there's always time to fit in inspiration. And I have to tell you, I have been getting some incredible feedback from all of you about the secret podcast that I just released. You can't get it on this Earn your happy podcast, but you can get it by scrolling down and clicking in the show notes under the secret podcast titled Operation Rekindle this Bitch. And let me just tell you, this was a complete download. One of those things that just gives you all the goosebumps and it takes your breath away because you have this feeling that it's not just you who's experiencing this. Like, it was a collective feeling and download that I got that I needed to speak on it. And it is about an hour of some real hot, very raw truthiness. So if you are not in that place where you do not feel like you need a kick in the ass or someone to just give it to you straight between the eyes. Do not listen to this podcast. It is a different version of me than you might be used to. It's a little bit more real and raw because I knew that I was able to do it kind of behind closed doors. And it was a way for me to also test out, giving myself permission to be the version of me that I am with my best friends and with my family and with my husband. So I hope that you love it, if not totally cool, that, you know, weeds you out of my ecosystems, it's great. If it makes you feel closer to me, thank God because you're my people. Let's bond together in 2025. There's some pretty cool stuff that I'm chatting about at the end as well, so you want to go over and listen to that. That is in show notes But I wanted to give you some things that I'm really deeply using in implementing this year around decision making. Because I feel like this is the first year in a while and, you know, everything is cyclical. We go in these different chunks and phases of our life. I feel like this is the first year where all of the groundwork that I've laid for the past four years is now coming to fruition. Like all of the clearing out, maybe who I was around, the way that I was thinking, the way that my teams operated, who was on my team. I feel like I finally have gotten to the place where doing all of that work, and now we're ready to run. And so through all of these decisions that I've had to make, there's been a few different things that I've used. And one that really came up for me, literally, that has been huge for me. Even just this last week, was I was reading the book Mind Magic. I don't know if I fully suggest the entire book, but there are. There are some nuggets in it that are game changing. And I'll also just be sharing some of them with you here. So I'm going to give you some cliff notes on something that changed my life. And it was talking about when making decisions to really think in terms of two things. And he was mentioning how having a meaningful life and a happy life are actually two completely different things. Now, meaningful versus happiness. Meaningful is that like long lasting, deep, rich, significant feeling about your life that you are here for a purpose. You feel you have a big call on your life, you wake up, and even though some days might seem really stressful or really overwhelming, you do feel a deep sense of meaning, which can also help pull you forward through life. Happiness is something that's a little bit shorter. It usually comes with a little bit less stress. It's not as long of lasting, and you can reach happiness a little bit quicker. So when we're thinking about this, you know, if you take that pottery class, that can make you happy. But if you're not really trying to get better at pottery or using it for a purpose, it could just be something that brings you a lot of joy. Both meaning and happiness are important, but it's kind of learning how to balance both. If at the end of your life you want to feel like you had a very purposeful, deep meaning to your life, where a lot of times the people who say that they are happy, but they feel like they had a bit less meaning towards the end of their life, their happiness starts to Dwindle because they don't feel like it meant something. Okay, are you tracking with me? Because it's two very different things here. So Chris and I, you know, something that we're always talking about is having children. And we started trying to have kids when I was 37. I'm 44 now, and we've gone through multiple rounds of IVF, and we just were always in question of do we have children or not. And some of you are probably like, you're still thinking about it. Yes, let myself think about it till I'm 50. So if that helps you at all, to alleviate the stress. If you're in your 30s and you're like, oh, my God, should I like you? There's time, and there's different ways to do it. But as our options started to get more limited, you start to really go into the decision, like, do I want children or not? I have an extremely happy life, and I feel like I'm lacking for nothing. Like, nothing right now. But as I flash forward to my life when I am 60 years old, I ask myself, what did it all mean? And there's a question mark there. There's a bit of an. I don't know, because I do feel like there's an asterisk for me around. I want it to mean that I was able to pass everything that I worked so hard on learning forward to someone to make their life a little better. And I do feel that Chris and I get a lot of meaning. I'll just speak for myself right now, but I do feel like I get a lot of meaning from being a part of the mastermind and having people in our masterminds and in our courses and close friendships, that I do feel like I get to create some impact and deep connection and things like that for people in different experiences. But I do feel like there's a sense, particularly for me, who wants to really be a teacher to something that feels extremely close to me and that might be a child that might not. I'm not sure yet what that means, but having this little bit of clarity around, you know, am I making this decision from a place of what I want my life to mean and what I believe could be meaningful versus will it make me happy? So I'm using the kid thing for you to understand, because obviously, kids, when I ask people, are you happy that you had children? Some of them tell me no, but they do tell me that they feel deep meaning and purpose and they would never take it back. But they do feel like their happiness took a hit in a major way. And a lot of times when I'm talking to these people and I get this answer back, it's typically people who have kids under the age of four or multiple kids under, under that age, or maybe they're teenagers or they're going through a hard time. And not all answers are that, but obviously I'm in data collection phase. So I could say that you could ask an entrepreneur the same exact question. You know, ask Chris and I, are we happy that we started two startups in a household around the same time and we both got our asses fucking handed to us. Am I happy about that? Has it made me happier? No. I can say that our happiness went down quite a bit for a period of time. For me, my happiness sunk for four years straight, like I couldn't get back the barometer back up to where it was. And now I can say that understanding the journey and the person that it's turned me into and the sacrifices that I've made for it and the person that I've become on the other side of it has created some really deep meaning for me. And the meaning around the team that I've gotten to create and the team that I get to lead has really created some deep, purposeful meaning for me. And what I understand we're actually doing with this company and the proof of what can be done and what a woman can do and what a woman who did not graduate high school can do, that has created massive meaning for me, knowing that I get to pass that on to other people who have this vision who may not think it's possible for them. And so the difference between happiness and meaning are quite different. So when you're making that decision, say right now, is this going to make me happier? If the answer is no, it doesn't mean it's not for you. It means that it could be coming from a place of a deeper meaning and impact and you could be sacrificing your short term happiness right now for deeper meaning and happiness later. So it's really like looking at your life and saying, I have to understand that I'm not always going to be happy, but in the times when I am stressed out and I did choose something for a different purpose, can I wrap meaning around it so that I can change my perspective around this is miserable to. I am creating deep meaning in my life around this portion. I want to be a person who tried. I want to be a person who tried valiantly, who, you know, gave their all, who knew that they had potential and did it. And that's what I want this to mean. That's what I want my life to mean. So even to the basic things, like if you're somebody who right now you're resenting having to spend so much time with maybe your family and friends because you are in a really busy season of your business, and instead of making decisions of, okay, I'm, I'm going to go back to that birthday party or not, you can ask yourself from a place of, is this going to make me more resentful or does this go with my core value of I want to create a meaningful connection with this particular person and this will mean a lot for me to go and celebrate them in this way. If it doesn't. If it's just something that doesn't really matter to you and it's not going to affect you 10 years from now, looking back and saying, wow, I can't believe I missed all that and I didn't invest in that, or I wasn't the person who went back and invested in those relationships, great, that means nothing then. And you can make those decisions, but this is going to help us sort through, okay, how many things do I need to go back and see them for? How many events do I want to show up for? For this to mean that I was a good for them? It doesn't always have to mean it on their side, but on your side. You have to decide what it means to you and what you need to do to make that meaning for yourself. So, you guys, I hope that this helps you. I hope this helps you make your decisions easier in this next year. And also, if you love this podcast, please go check out the secret podcast. If for any reason it doesn't work right away on your phone, make sure that you go and update all of your app apps. It did not work for me right away on my phone. So go ahead, reinstall all of your apps and then go try it multiple modalities. So if you listen on Apple and it didn't work on Apple, try it on something else. But Apple's been working great. And go and check that out because I really feel like I poured my heart out and I spent weeks and weeks writing this podcast for you. So I hope that it lights a fire under your ass. And I'm really, really excited to hear what you think. So go to the Show Notes and check that out next. And thank you guys always for tuning in and I will talk to you next time. Sam.