How to Make Better Decisions

Welcome to Creative on Purpose Live, a show dedicated to sharing insights and inspiration to help you define the difference only you can make and craft it into a fulfilling endeavor that helps you build identity, forge meaning, and make things better. I'm Scott Perry, Chief Difference Maker, Creative on Purpose, and Encore Life Coach. This is a special broadcast of a presentation that I developed over the early days of the pandemic called Stepping into Possibility: How to Make a Bigger Difference and Get Closer to What You Want by Making Better decisions. It was originally done as a live broadcast across social media. There were significant technical difficulties, and so I am re-recording it so that it can get posted to the platforms that it didn't get posted to and also solve a problem that we had with accessing the slides. So with that out of the way, let's go ahead and get to the presentation. Just two quick notes. If you're listening to this as an audio podcast, I am referencing slides here, but you don't need the slides in order to benefit and get the full value of this presentation. The idea was to try to do this in 7 minutes, and so that, that clock will start here in just a minute. And if you would like the workbook that goes along with this, simply write me an email at Scott@creativeonpurpose.com with workbook in the subject line. I'll be happy to send that to you. So, Stepping into Possibility: How to Make a Bigger Difference and Get Closer to What You Really Want by Making Better Decisions. I want you to imagine a world where uncertainty and adversity reign, a world that's torn apart by plague, turmoil, division, and violence. And imagine in this world a man navigating the challenges with courage, self-control, philanthropy, and clear-eyed purpose in trying to make and help others do the same. Do you know which world and to which man I am referring? Of course, it's the Roman Empire, 161 to 180 AD, ruled by Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Marcus is the last of the five good emperors of the Roman Empire and the closest thing the Western world has ever known to a philosopher king. At night, after a long day of dealing with corrupt politicians, bloodthirsty enemies, financial ruin, natural disasters, an unfaithful wife, and a petulant son, Marcus would write reminders to himself, cult— about cultivating, maintaining, and maintaining a sense of stillness and thriving through life's persistent challenges. Over and over again, he would write entries like this in his journal: Everywhere, at each moment, you have the option to accept this event with humility, to treat this person as they should be treated, to approach this thought with care so that nothing irrational creeps in. In this entry, Marcus is reminding himself about the three disciplines of Stoicism. Stoicism is an enduring ancient philosophy, Hellenistic philosophy, that asserts that virtue is all that's required to experience greater joy and equanimity through all of life's trials and triumphs. Here are the three disciplines of Stoicism Marcus references in his journal: perception, action, and will. Perception and action are part of what is known as the Stoic Four, as expressed by Epictetus, a Stoic teacher Marcus revered. Some things are within our control and others are not. Things that are within our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not within our control are body, property, reputation, command, and in one word, whatever are not our actions. Put simply, we have agency over our thoughts and action. Everything else is beyond our absolute control. The third discipline, which is will, refers to our ability to be mindful of our judgments about ourselves, our situation, and others, and respond to them with integrity and intention so that you can influence favorable outcomes. At the beginning of the pandemic, I wrote a book called Onward: Where Certainty Ends, Possibility Begins, where I repurpose Marcus's quote and the Stoic disciplines as 3 questions you can answer to help you make better decisions that get you closer to what you want and who you seek to become. Here are the questions: What's now? What's next? What matters? Asking what's now inserts a pause so you can zoom out Name and acknowledge what's really happening without any adjectives, adverbs, or value judgments. This eliminates unhealthy and unhelpful emotional reactions or expectations. What's next? Adding what's next encourages you to frame your options so that you can eliminate the ones that don't align with your values and decide which actually get you closer to what you really want without impeding anyone else's ability to do the same. And finally, what matters? Asking what matters reminds you that the content of your character is defined by the integrity of your thoughts and actions. You are not the measure of the outcomes you get, but the quality of your decisions and effort. So I'm going to illustrate all of this with an example. I've been a freelancer for over 30 years, and the thing about freelancing is you're only making a living when you have a gig. So almost every day I get up and I look at my calendar, uh, to see how I'm doing. What, what does the pipeline look like? What's— how many gigs do I have on the books? And sometimes I can tell that I don't have enough gigs coming up to continue to take care of my financial obligations and responsibilities. On those days, my internal narrative goes something like this: Holy crap, don't have enough gigs. No gigs, no money. I won't be able to pay my bills at the end of the month. What happens if I can't pay the mortgage? My kids will hate me. My wife will leave me. I'll end up an alcoholic living in a box under an overpass and die alone and hungry. Seriously, I can get there really quickly and quite often. But when I zoom out and state what's happening more objectively, I can identify and work the problem instead of letting the problem work on me. Here's a more objective reframe: I don't have enough gigs on my calendar to pay my bills this month. That is simply stated the real problem, and that's a problem that I can solve. So having objectively framed my situation, here's what I might list out as choices and how I might apply the process. So I write down everything I can think of about solving this problem. I could Um, reduce my expenses by canceling online subscriptions and other conveniences. I could get a part-time job. I could explore bankruptcy. I can raise my fees. I can connect with past clients for new business or referrals. I can sell the guitars I don't play anymore. I can give up and go back to teaching. Now what I do next is I lay these out against my values, my goals, my, uh, guiding principles, all the things that, um, are kind of non-negotiable elements of my character, the virtue, my virtue, the content of my character. And so I'm probably going to strike explore bankruptcy right off the bat because it just doesn't align with my values about personal responsibility and taking care of the things that are mine to take care of. Going back to teaching, getting a part-time job, probably not going to really consider those. I've got too much invested in my business. Plus, I've been here before and I know how to navigate my way through a difficult financial period. So I'm going to look at the remaining ones and try to figure out which one of the remaining options is going to take me the furthest and the fastest towards my goal of taking care of my money problem, my monthly revenue problem. The one that leaps out to me as making the most sense would be connecting with past clients for new business or referrals, because I have a lot of, uh, past clients. Um, many of them are actually current clients, so they are clearly happy customers and have referred business to me in the past, that they have said nice things about me, uh, at, at events and networking and so forth. So if I reach out to just a handful of my very best clients, they will probably put me in touch with other people, potential prospects and prospective clients that can help me solve my, my money problem. And of course, I might also consider doing some of the other things. I mean, if there's really guitars that I'm ready to let go of, I should probably just get rid of those anyways. I certainly could consider raising my fees, and I should always consider canceling all those subscriptions that I have that I actually have forgotten about and don't use anymore. So here's the thing. We've covered the 3 questions that will help you make better decisions and get closer to what, uh, what you really want so that you can make a bigger difference. Those questions are: What's now? What's next? What really matters? What's now is what's really going on. No value judgments, adjectives, or adverbs. What's next is all the possible ways that you could solve your problem. And then what matters is making sure that the solution to your problem is expedient, efficient, effective, and lines up with who you really are, what you're really good at, and where you really belong. So this is how you build identity, forge meaning, and find fulfillment through life's ups and downs. And the quality of your thinking and effort, not the recognition and results, are the real rewards of life. So I hope that this, uh, these questions and this presentation and the principles and practices here inform and inspire you to lead and serve from the inside out with greater purpose and peace of mind. I hope this is helpful. If you are so inclined, I would love for you to share a lesson, aha, or takeaway as a 6-word update. This is something that I'm borrowing from Nick Peterson, who borrowed it from Dan Nicholson, who borrowed it from his mentor Randy Massengale, who may have borrowed it from someone else. But the idea is, can you summarize a lesson, aha, or takeaway in just 6 words? And if you would take on that challenge and put it in the comments. It will not only help solidify the learning in your mind, um, but it will also help other people see your unique perspective and your unique takeaway from this and help them, uh, deepen their learning as well. If you would like the Stepping into Possibility workbook, send an email to scott@creativeonpurpose.com with workbook in the subject line. I'll be happy to send it to you. There's no opt-in of any kind required for that. And if you are interested in learning more about Stoicism, I also have— it's about a 20-page white paper of all the essential principles and practices of Stoicism and a list of resources, including YouTube videos and blog posts, books, apps, and that sort of thing. You can click on that QR code if I can move my picture. You can click on that, or you can simply go to creativeonpurpose.com/stoicism. So it's been my pleasure to present this to you. I hope you find it really helpful. If, if so, please feel free to share this presentation with a friend. If you're listening on a podcast, please consider leaving us a 5-star review. It really helps this content connect with more of the right people. And until next time, be well, do good, have fun.