Optimizing Decision Making for Peak Performance in Work and Life

Would you be surprised to learn that on any given day, we make about 35,000 decisions?

35,000!

Would it shock you to learn that when it comes to decision-making, there is a whole process that we really need to go through in order to be effective? Even something simple like wearing a jacket or The color socks you're gonna wear. They all have considerations and implications. But those are easy decisions. Imagine what has to go into more complex business decisions. And that's what we're talking about today on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to today's show! This is where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up core skill sets to help them create the jaw-dropping, show-stopping experience that their customers and their employees deserve. I am your host, Service Expert and Master of Experiences Marc Haine. I want to thank you so much for joining me today. My guest for this episode is Executive and Career Coach Madelaine Clair Weiss. Today, we will be talking about how to become more effective with decision-making. My one ask of you is that if you watch this episode and you know that there's somebody out there who could use this information, I'd love it if you would share the link to this episode. And afterwards, if you enjoyed the content, why don't you leave a comment or a review? That would be fantastic as well. Let me ask you, have you ever made a big buying decision. Then hours and days afterwards, you doubted what you just did. What about getting yourself all worked up about a decision that you needed to make that you actually paralyzed yourself not being able to make a decision? What's going on? Well, That's our Question of the Day. On the opposite side of the spectrum, when have you felt amazingly comfortable about a recent decision that you made? Like you were confident with everything that you had and you made a really great decision. Look back at it. List out what made the process efficient.

Effective.

Again, I would love for you to be part of this conversation. If you can figure that out, I'd love it if you shared this episode on your favorite social media platform. Hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership and put your discussion points down. What was it that made your best decision effective? I am really thrilled to have today's guest along for the ride. Madelaine Claire Weiss is a licensed psychotherapist and board-certified executive career life coach. She is a co-author in the Handbook of Stressful Transitions Across the Lifespan and best-selling author of Getting to Great: The 5-Step Strategy for Work and Life. Madelaine is a former mental health practice director, a corporate chief organizational development officer, and associate director of the Anatomical Gift Program at Harvard Medical School. She has been featured on NBC, W4W Radio, Fox TV, and Talk4TV. Madelaine, welcome to the show! It's so great to have you.

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. And I've been responding to everything I've been hearing you say. So, I can't wait to dig in with you.

It's going to be wonderful. Before we get into today's topic, could you maybe tell us a little bit more about how you serve So I asked myself that question at some point.

Everybody seemed to be doing so well, and I have such a diverse educational and experience background. And then all of my clients were also different one from the other in age and ethnicity and occupation and gender and whatever. And I thought, what is working here? And that is when I looked for some sort of common denominator to all these differences, because who knows what I'm pulling out of my bag of tricks at any given time. It's such an interactive process. So when you say, how do you serve your clients? Usually, When people come to me, they don't come saying necessarily, I want to have a great life. Can you help me with that? It's usually something a little more that they're in some kind of pain and they just want the pain to stop. So the G in that acronym for GREAT is for grounding in the belief that it doesn't have to be like that. That you really can. We all have everything we need to have a really great life. So I hold that space in that process. That's how I begin to serve my clients.

Nice.

I hold that until they can step into it and run with it on their own, this belief that it's actually possible. So Lovely!

Today, we're talking about effective decision-making. We know, I was— thank you for sharing the stat with me that I can introduce it. But it's like, it's absolutely true. Every little thing we make decisions about. Why do you think effective decision-making is such an important topic for today?

Well, actually, after the book was published, I then saw that number, that 35,000 decisions a day, most of which are unconscious. And I thought, holy Hannah, no wonder everyone is so exhausted. And actually, the doctors now have a term for that, decision fatigue. But then I saw that Forbes said that decision-making should be at the top. Of every organization's agenda. And you and I were talking in the green room that decision-making is so important. Like, getting out of bed in the morning is a decision that we make, and yet we don't talk about it. Now, I heard you say in the intro something about, like, what you put on in the morning, and you said, and that's an easy decision. I got to tell you, I spent an entire session with a client yesterday who is at a, let's just say, prestigious university being interviewed for something that really is— really means the world to him. The interview is today. I saw him yesterday and he couldn't figure out what to wear. He was going to be interviewed and he was going to be on a panel. Discussion, and he's really young. And what we explored was he described himself as more experienced than all of the others, but younger looking. And he was struggling with wanting to be himself, wanting to feel authentic. And also wanting to convey the experience that he has. And it was all wrapped up in what was he gonna put on his body. I also want to say something else I heard you say before we got on, which is I thought I heard you use the words comfortable, a comfortable— when you're comfortable with a decision. And then you said, and what made that so effective? Those are not the same things. Ah, that's interesting. And one of the myths I want to peel down with you today is people thinking they have to wait till they feel comfortable, and that's how they know it's right. Wrong. And that's one of the myths because people could spend their whole lives waiting to feel comfortable.

Yeah, it's interesting. You bring up a lot of good topics. And so, I think as we peel back the onion of today's episode, we're going to be uncovering a lot more of this content. Before we get too deep into the conversation, could we talk a little bit about what ineffective decision-making would look like?

Well, there was something else that you also said, which was— I'll get back to that. I'll get back to that when we start to peel it down. Go ahead.

Sure. So, I'm really interested in— because part of—

Oh, I know what it was. I have a thing that I think that I made up. Which is, and I usually say this at the end, but you referenced it at the beginning. So it's not the decisions we make as much as it is what we make of the decisions once we have made them.

Hmm.

So I don't tend to think so much in terms of mistakes or failures. Those words don't pop into my life very much. It's what I made of whatever it was that was the best I could do at any given time.

Right. So then, it's not about making ineffective decisions. It's about the follow-up to whatever decision is being made that can become effective or ineffective.

It's all part of a process.

Gotcha.

So a decision is, to me, not a snapshot. It's a moving picture. And you could— by the way, I have a 3-part online course, and it starts with optimizing decision-making for peak performance in work and life. But you can make amazing decisions And if you don't implement, it doesn't matter how good the decision was. And you can make amazing— so the second part of it is mindfulness-based goal commitment. Because you can have a great goal without great commitment to it. But then most of us don't live in a vacuum. Most of us need some buy-in somewhere outside of ourselves. So, the third component is navigating the people. So, it's not about like you made a good decision. It's you made a good decision and you tended it, or you made any decision and you tended it well in the process, and you also paid attention to who out there thought what. about what you were trying to manifest in the world.

Yeah, yeah. You mentioned that one myth. Are there any other myths that people need to understand about decision-making?

Oh, I have a whole bunch.

Yeah, let's cover 2 or 3.

So, one big thing is that most people, there's a common misunderstanding that If a decision is really hard, then you should spend more time on it. And there's something called Buridan's Ass. And when I teach this course, I have a picture of a donkey. And the story there is this donkey is standing in front of— I've seen it a bale of hay and a pail of water, but I've also seen it 2 bales of hay. And the donkey can't decide between the two because they both have a lot going for them. The two bales of hay look exactly alike. So the donkey has trouble deciding on that. Or if it's thirsty and hungry, which should it settle? And the moral of that story is that the donkey dies because it's paralyzed with indecision. as you referenced earlier. So there are studies that show that the more successful CEOs are the ones who realize that the reason the decision is so hard is because there are equal threats or opportunities on both sides. Therefore, you should spend less time on it, not more time on it. So I have this thing where I say, go fast, Go bold, go emo, and I'll explain that, and go high. So, the only people who are happy that you're dragging your feet on a difficult decision is your competition. 60% of people said they don't want to follow a leader who appears hesitant. So, this idea is you should take a really long time because it's really important and really hard. Those people that I was talking about whose buy-in you need, they're not going to be on board. So, people tend to do what makes them, and here's your word, comfortable. And they might wait for better information than they feel like they have right now. But what the studies show is that the longer you drag it out, the more decision fatigue you get. And even if there is new information, you're not really able to process it because the system has shut down.

Right.

So what they're saying— here comes Go Bold— is that there are studies. I looked at a lot of studies when I realized that this is something, like you said, It's so important and nobody's talking about it. And they said that the people who leapt outside of their comfort zones were down the line happier than the people who stayed in their comfort zones. There's this wonderful Yale study that showed that when we are in our— they say that you have to be out of your comfort zone 70% Of the time, which is why I said comfortable and effective are not the same thing, in order for anything to really happen. So they're saying that when you're in your comfort zone, the learning and the motivation centers in your brain are saying— because the brain doesn't want to ever waste any energy. So the learning and motivation centers in your brain are saying, everything's fine here. We can rest. We don't need to do anything. So, Not much learning takes place, nothing new happens, and it's not that much fun. Now, I have clients who say to me, fun? Like, who cares? Like, is that supposed to matter? Isn't a decision supposed to be pure logic? No. That's another myth. Because that Psych 101 study, Phineas Gage, where he falls on the train tracks and gets a brain— Injury. Injury, and he seems kind of sort of normal, but his judgment and planning is completely way off because his higher brain and the emotional centers are not connected. There's this wonderful story about a physician who had a similar brain injury and couldn't get dressed in the morning. So like, they'd lay out his pants— this pair, this pair, this pair, this pair— and because of the disconnection between the emotional center and the cognitive centers, he had no preference. He couldn't experience preference, and he would just stand there. I don't know. And there are more recent studies that show that when that link is not linked up, that there is cognitive impairment in the areas of judgment and planning and all the stuff you really need For decision-making. Now, we do not want the emotions to drive the bus, but we do want the emotions to feed that data. I like these pants, not these pants. To feed that data to the executive functioning brain, who we do want in charge of driving the bus. So when I say go high, I have this. 30-second mindset reset that anyone can have. It's on my website, madelaineweiss.com. There's a tab in the menu that says Power Breathe. I timed it. It takes me 30 seconds or less to activate the polyvagal nerve so that you go into— you go out of fight or flight You go out of the lower brain center and you kick it upstairs to the higher brain where that's where you want to make your decisions from after you gather data from the emotional centers. So, none of that stuff immediately comes to mind when you wake up in the morning.

But—

Not at all.

Right? And you've just fed us a fire hose, Madelaine. of content. So, I encourage people to watch this again because there's so many different aspects that you just tapped into. And one of the things that came to mind is, so we're talking about effective decision-making, us as leaders. But let's flip the table a little bit and talk about what does it take for your customers to make effective decisions. And you mentioned something about this decision paralysis when you have 2 or 3 things and you have different aspects, different stressors on your brain forcing you to test out the logic without engaging the emotion. But at the same token, one of the things that we do especially in retail and in food service and all that is we want to limit how many choices we give our customers. There was actually a study done at a farmer's market for a lady who was selling mustard. And she's got 45 different kinds of mustards. And they did a test with her and they put the 45 little jars of mustard out. And through the 4-hour farmers market, she sold barely any. When they reduced it down to a selection of 5 mustards, she sold 300 times more mustard because she had a limited stock. And so, this is what you've been saying really resonates with me.

Yeah. When I do this as a PowerPoint presentation, I have a slide that lists 200 different kinds of cereals and this many different kinds of toothpaste. And there are people who think that the obesity is that— the problem that we have is that there's too much choice, which is, I think, what you're saying. It just overwhelms people. Makes us not so smart.

Yeah, yeah. And again, to your point, I mean, if you're trying to accomplish something, for instance, if you're wanting a healthier lifestyle and you don't know how to do it, you could get that decision paralysis because you're afraid even though it's a $4 box of healthier cereal, there's so many different choices you're afraid to make the decision and go on the wrong track. If that did play with your metaphor.

You mentioned the customers. I would think, you know, that thing about it's not the decisions you make, but what we make of them afterwards. I would think that, and you tell me, that letting your customers know that it isn't just that they're going to make a decision and then they sink or swim. But that it's part of the process and you're in that process with them. I know that I take that approach with my clients, you know, that everything is sort of experimental. We'll try this, and if that doesn't work, you know, it's each new decision is based on the outcome of the one that came before it. So again, it's And I think there's something— tell me if you think so too. But I think there's something comforting about that.

There is. In fact, what I'd like to do maybe is right after the break, I'd like to talk a little bit about the idea of using decisions to help us fail forward. And we'll get to that right after this.

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Welcome back. I am speaking with leadership coach Coach Madelaine Claire Weiss. We are having a great discussion, a great discussion about effective decision-making. But Madelaine, you have your book now, Getting to Great: A 5-Step Strategy for Work and Life Based on Science and Stories. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your book?

Well, I started with What the G is for. The beginning of the book really tells the story of my father who passed away at 42 years old. And he was a business owner. And I was a very mouthy little girl, you know, like the book, Madeleine. She was not afraid of mice. She loved winter, snow, and ice.

Too.

The tiger in the zoo. Madeline just said poo-poo, and so did I, too many times to my dad. So when he passed away, I went for years thinking that he died of me until this moment in the cemetery with my mother. And I broke down with her about how all my fault it was. And she said, no, honey, it wasn't you. It was work. So no surprise, I now help busy people live happier, healthier, prosperous, and productive lives. And we do this by learning to master the mind, which can be on our side if we learn how to make that So, so I started out actually in a clinical chemistry laboratory. I was very worried about my mother when my father passed away, and I went to the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Medical Technology to begin to earn income as soon as I could. It was after that that I realized That I wanted to work closer to the people. So, I call myself the Queen of Pivot because I just kept learning more and more and more that would enrich me to be able to do the work that I'm doing. And as I said, I got to a point where I said, this is working. What is it? And that was when I decided to write the book.

Nice, nice. It's a really nice tie-in. I did read the preview. It is available on Amazon. The link is in the show notes for it. I encourage people to check it out because you share some really intimate stories about how you grew up and some of the challenges that you had and kind of your evolution within your great framework as well. So, well done on that.

Thank you. Yeah, every chapter starts with an anecdote from my life that is relevant to the topic of the chapter. So if there's a chapter on money, and there's a chapter on time, and there are little stories about me and that, but then it goes into a lot of theory and research. And each chapter concludes with a case study that is not about me, but one of my clients, and an exercise for personal use. So it was, it was kind of fun to write. So you said something about fail forward, but I—

Yes. So just before the break, I— we were— you were tapping onto this thing that kind of laid this seed about it's not about the decisions, how you deal with the decision afterwards. And we talk now about this idea that we should be encouraging people to take more chances, to fail forward more if we want to be innovative. And so, where does the effective decision-making come into that? And what would your advice be to people who are watching this and listening to this when it comes down to the I told you I don't use that word. Ah.

I don't use that F word.

Okay.

Because it doesn't fit for me in the way that I think of things. When you, when you're thinking that our life here on this planet is a process and it's all part of the process, so I just, I'm sorry. I can't embrace the word. It doesn't seem to work. What do you think of my saying that?

I think the challenge is that our present paradigm is centered around the fact that when we make a decision, we have an expected outcome. And if we don't make that outcome, then we deem it to be a failure.

Okay. Well, here's the thing.

Good.

So I have been studying Eastern philosophy for over 25 years, which is why I say to you, who knows what I'm pulling out when. According to Eastern philosophy, it's not about the result. It's about the process and the journey. And they have this story about the monkey. I forget what it is, trying to pull the banana out and is gripping so hard to the outcome that it can't get the banana out. So result— even though, of course, we all want really good outcomes. They go better when we're paying attention in the moment to the process. I know this to be true because I live like that. But I also appreciate how counterintuitive that is. I don't know how to say it any better that when I make a decision, I tend my decision. I take into account its impact on others, and I just do the best I can. And then I make another decision and another decision. There's something called the Goldilocks principle. Have you heard of that?

I heard something along those lines, yeah. But we should explore that a little bit.

Yeah. So the Goldilocks principle— nobody gets out of a session with me Without— well, I shouldn't say it that way. Sometimes they do. But for the most part, at the end of every session, we have action steps. And the action steps are usually designed by the client based on the conversation that we've had about where they want to go in their lives. And the reason we call it Goldilocks Is that the steps are not so big that— and you were talking about this, Marc— that it throws them into this decision paralysis, like it's so overwhelming, but also not so small that the brain is bored. Because you want those learning and motivation centers turned on. And the brain likes novelty. The brain goes, oh, look at this. This is, this is new. There's something happening here. So you always want to be moving forward, not too big, not too little, but just right. And you can see there's, there's nothing about failure in there. You're just trying this, and what you learn from that will tell you what maybe your next step could be.

And It's amazing. Of course, the cliché that we hear all the time of course is Thomas Edison and taking 1,000 tries on a light bulb. And when he was interviewed by a young reporter who asked him, what does it feel like to fail so many times? He looked at the young reporter and said, I didn't fail 1,000 times. I found 1,000 ways not to do it. And we need— everything is evolutionary. I mean, we need—

We learn.

Yeah, we need to figure out what didn't work. And from there, we learn about what didn't work. And because of that, we can then iterate and move forward with it.

You know, there's this wonderful little video on Thomas Edison. I don't know if it's a true story or not. But I cried when I watched it. They sent him home from school one day with a note for his mother saying that he couldn't come to the school anymore because he was too dull. And then she homeschooled him or something.

He was too dumb. He was too dumb to be in the class.

Right. And she, she told— correct me if I don't remember this right— she told Thomas that it was because he was too smart. And they couldn't work with him because he was so smart. And look what happened.

Yeah, yeah. It's amazing. We have stories about this all over the place, right? We have organizations who are doing like Google's 20% time, right? Where the staff are given 20% of their time to work on a pet project that Towards Google, not the random things. But how much innovation has come out of that because of giving people the chance to say, you can waste 20% of your time trying new things and moving forward with it. And so, that's really interesting.

Or you can spend—

And I think that we can learn a lot from there. I've had situations where we've had mistakes in the organization. And they are taken aback when I said, look, nobody died. Nobody got hurt. And to me, that's the 2 biggest measurements of whether or not a decision is bad. Nobody died. Nobody got hurt. So, we can learn from everything else. It's like, what steps do we then need to take to make sure it doesn't happen again?

You know, one of the first things I learned in business school 100 years ago was that people are rational. And If they don't seem that way to you, it's because you don't understand yet what they were thinking and what their intention was. That for the most part, and maybe this doesn't apply to everybody and I'm fine with that too, but for the most part, people mean well. And when things don't work out, because we have so little control over almost everything. That when things don't work out the way we want them to, so we can learn like Thomas Edison did. But I'm pretty forgiving.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's like with anything, right? If you wanted to learn how to ride a skateboard, you wouldn't jump on a skateboard and be able to do the big half pipes and all that sort of stuff, right? Everything would come in with you learning to stand on the board first. And iterating from that point on. Decisions are really challenging for a lot of organizations when it comes down. And I loved your comparison about when the outcome, when the variables are equal, that we tend to delay it. And really, that's the last time, last place we want to delay it because what we should—

Right.

But I know exactly what happens. I know exactly why we procrastinate in making those decisions because we're waiting to see, okay, if everything's equal, let's wait a bit and figure out if there's something that shows up that we didn't consider before. And then, we are paralyzed.

Yeah, because nobody wants to make a mistake.

That's what it is.

But when you stop thinking in terms of mistakes and failures, and you just think one foot in front of the other in the best way we know how, and we learn. And it's a process. It's not a snapshot. A decision is not a snapshot.

It's interesting. I just recently had a conversation with my comedy coach. decided that in order to become a better speaker, I wanted to learn a little bit about stand-up. And he said one of the number one things he told me is when you go to the open mics and you're standing up on stage, go up there with the expectation that you're going to learn about what's not working.

Huh!

What a different way to do it because most people get all nervous and everything because they think, okay, I want everybody to laugh and they better all laugh. I know this stuff is funny. And then, when people don't laugh, they They absolutely fall apart. And his suggestion is to do the opposite. Is go up there, have fun, but do it with the intention to find out what's not working. Because then, the next time you can sit down, rewrite it, and test it again. And I thought to your point, that is exactly what we should be doing with our decisions is saying, we have an objective to do. Why don't we try this and see what the outcome is? And then, we can adjust from there. I think that's brilliant. In the documentation you sent me, you have a thing called peak performance decision-making. Could you unpack that for us a little bit?

Well, to make it your peak performance decision-making, you circumvent these myths. So, you said that it was a fire hose. I want it to feel more simple than that. Go fast. Go fast, go bold, go emo, go high. It's 4 things. And it doesn't mean to always go fast because there's sometimes when maybe you shouldn't, but faster and bolder and taking your emotional data into account for your higher-order decision-makings that come from the higher brain. So fast, bold, emo, high. And that's what I think gets us to optimal decision-making because when we don't do those things when we should, we're pretty much shut down.

You mentioned the emo. I think we talked about everything else but you mentioned the emo side of it. But I don't think you defined that for us what that was.

Well, emo is the word that my kids used to use when they were young and still living under my roof. And I didn't like what they were doing or something, and they would say that I was being emo. What that means—I'm just using that for short—but what I mean by that in decision-making was what I was saying about the midbrain emotional centers. Here's the look. Here's the hand model of the brain. This Is the amygdala. When this is overexcited, it either really loves what's going on or it really doesn't love what's going on. But in either direction, it's overexcited. It knocks— this is your higher brain. So this agitation knocks the higher brain offline. Dan Siegel, who sort of coined this, says it's like Flipping your lid. You're not thinking straight anymore. You have no access to your higher brain functions. You're just all emo and you do not want to make decisions from here. So when you do that 30-second mindset reset, the Power Breathe, which again, you can get for free on my website, what that does is it integrates your brain. So these are connected, and this part can say to the higher brain, I'm freaking out right now because of whatever it is, and then the higher executive functioning brain can say, thank you for sharing, I got it from here. So then this is in charge, this is driving the bus, not this. But this has to be in communication. They need to be connected. So I can remember this client about 3 months ago, I guess it was or something, when I said something about how did she feel about this decision. And she said, my parents always taught me I wasn't supposed to— it isn't about how you feel. It's supposed to be logical. I'm like, oh my God.

That's why we have accountants.

Oh, I just read a really great article on how people with, you know, there's a 5-factor personality measures. It was actually my professor who designed that. And there's conscientiousness as one of those factors. And accountants are thought to be in that category somehow. And they were saying there are ways that even the people who are most conscientious, most up here in their heads, can be creative by accessing. So, that's why the emo is so important.

Yeah. So, for people who are tuning in, If they were saying, this is making sense. I need to adjust and get clarity on my habit of decision-making. What would you say their next step should be? How do they clarify or move themselves in a direction that they're going to become more effective in the decision-making processes?

I just had a client this morning Where he said things were really busy and it was really great because then he didn't have to think about anything that he didn't want to think about. He didn't have to. And we talked about— so then he was trying to apply the doing to feeling. And I said, well, that's like a bit of an oxymoron, or that's the solution that's creating the problem. Now you're going to turn this being and feeling into a doing, kind of undoes— anyway, the point was for him to be able to just— this is going to sound funny since I was saying go fast, but take a moment to go slow and see what comes up.

Love it.

So, the go slow part of it is more along the lines of intentionality.

Yeah, yeah. Again, to make space for that in one's life so that you can even have access to your emo. Because a lot of people are really good at making sure they don't have any connection to their emo.

Right, right. I'd love to get into some cautionaries. About people adjusting their emotional decision styles and their habits. And we'll get to that right after this.

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Welcome back! As you can tell, Madelaine and I are absolutely passionate about helping entrepreneurs and business managers just like you. If you belong to an industry association or an organization that is planning a conference, a leadership retreat, or just bringing people together and you feel that we could be of service, feel free to drop us a line or do a connection request. Our details are in the show notes. Madelaine, as we go forward, one of my biggest challenges when introducing new concepts or any concepts to anybody is the idea that this becomes kind of the mantra of the month or the focus of the month. And I find that there are a lot of people out there wanting to go quickly by putting band-aids on stuff. If you unpack this a little bit as far as people kind of understanding that they have to do some work within the confines of being more effective at decision-making, what kind of cautionaries would you offer?

Well, I don't think that there's a cookie-cutter approach to any of this. For example, Today, in speaking to a client, I heard myself saying to him, you know, a lot of times we're trying to help people anchor in the present moment because the mind wanders 70% of the time, and usually it's in the past regrets or future worries, and it's important to be in the present. But in, in his case, he was too much in the present. Where everything was just fine and not thinking enough about the future and what he was setting himself up for. So I'm always a little careful about prescribing something for everyone because there's this wonderful book called The Moral Animal by Robert Wright, and he talks about knobs and tunings.

Mm-hmm.

And he says, we all have the same knobs, which is our capacities for competition and cooperation and the whole bag of stuff that humans are capable of. But by nature and nurture, we have different tunings on those knobs. And I'll often talk with people about getting their hands on the knobs. Because a lot of it is just habit. It worked for a period of time and it's not working anymore, but their hands aren't on the knobs. So when they begin to think that way, and you know, you might want to turn this up a little bit or turn this down a little bit, and that might vary from situation to situation. So it's all, it's all very nuanced. So I guess what I'm saying is if you want to make a difference in your life and not be stuck doing same old, same old, keep on doing what you're doing, keep on getting what you get, it might be okay. But it's kind of blah. And why shouldn't you have a great life? Find somebody great to work with.

Yeah. And we've said this time and time again on this show. We've talked about at length the The need to be able to get somebody to help you with your reflection. Somebody to hold up that mirror for you so that we are able to become more effective about it. This has been a fascinating topic, Madelaine. Like I mentioned to you before we start, we went live. Out of 127 other episodes, we have not talked about effective decision-making. And this has been a thrilling conversation. I can't believe how quickly the time has gone. Do you have any last thoughts about what we've been talking about today?

Well, there are some other tips. Some people believe, some studies show, to make the important decisions in the morning, for example, before you start getting fatigued from the 35,000 decisions. To your point about all the choices, to pare those down for yourself. Just because, you know, so they were saying things like, and I have a good example of my own. If there's a breakfast cereal that you like, just because there are 200 of them, you don't have to think about all 200. Pick one and stick to it. Actually, that's one less decision. decision that you have to make. I wear black all the time, and people are constantly commenting on it. But I'm saying, you don't understand. I don't have to think. There's no thinking. And it just— there are ways that we can each reduce our own decision fatigue. And it's different for everybody. But The other thing that I— and this isn't— well, I guess it is about decisions now that I think about it. There's a concept that I like to share in closing, which is good company. And good company is not just the people that we decide to let into our lives. It's the— You'll like this: the food we eat, the wine we drink, the books we read, the music we listen to. I'm going to put a line under this: the thoughts we allow to exist in our heads, and then the people who people our lives. And those are Decisions. They may not be conscious. They may not be as conscious as they could be. And they can be more conscious decisions. And they really impact the quality of our life and living.

Love it! I love it, Madelaine. Thank you so much for sharing your passion, your expertise with us today. Could you just remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you if they want to use your services?

Everything's on the website. So just go to madelaineweiss.com, and you're going to have that spelled out because it's kind of a quirky spelling. I always thought my mother spelled my name wrong. So madelaineweiss.com, and you'll see the online courses there. The freebies are all there. How to get in touch with me is there, and I would love to hear from any of you. My clients do great and it's just such a pleasure for me.

So, Madelaine, this has been brilliant. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you.

Why don't you let me know if this was of value to you? As always, my offer stands. If you would like 30 minutes of my time to brainstorm your business with you and your team, feel free to book yourself on my online calendar. The link is in the show notes. It's the one that is marked meetwith.marchaine.com. It would be my absolute honor for me to be of service. While you're at it, why don't you go ahead and leave a comment or review about this episode? I'd love to get your feedback. Was this of value to you? Or even better, do you have any topics you would like me to cover on this show because the world is filled with great experts just like Madelaine. I'd love to be able to reach out to people based on a requirement or a need that you might have. Thank you so much for joining me today. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.