Episode 77: Transcript

You are listening to episode 77 of the Path to Motherhood podcast.

Welcome to the Path to Motherhood podcast.

I'm your host and fertility life coach, Sarah Brandell.

Join us each week as we walk through navigating your trying to conceive journey.

My mission is to share the skills of managing your mind, processing emotions, and living a full life to create a more authentic path to motherhood.

(upbeat music) Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Path to Motherhood podcast.

I am really excited to talk about today's topic.

It is one that when we get started, you may be like, "Sara, this does not sound like it relates "to infertility and pregnancy loss, "but I promise that it does.

" But also, like this skill that we're gonna talk about today is impactful in so many areas of life.

So don't throw away that you can use this skill these tools that I'm going to talk about today in every other area of your life.

That's why I'm so excited to share about it because it is something that has truly changed so much about how I approach my life and my career and my business decisions and family decisions and getting through infertility and just so many different things.

So stick with me and hopefully you enjoy this conversation about decisions and decision debt.

But before we do, I'm looking outside and it is a sunny sunny day in February.

This isn't going to go live for about a month but I am so excited for warmer weather.

I'm in Ohio so we get all four seasons which I do like but I would prefer like a month of winter, a couple months of spring, a longer summer, a couple months of fall and then like I said a month of winter.

Like I like it, I want it to happen but doesn't need to be here as long as I need that it is.

So I'm ready for the chilly weather to be done.

I keep daydreaming about the sun and warm weather and the pool and getting in the water.

The truth is is that coming off of IVF and now expecting our IVF miracle and adding daycare expenses.

A big vacation is not in the budget this year.

Definitely not unless something crazy happened.

And so I am trying to mentally prepare for the fact that that we probably won't be doing that this year.

And I'm gonna have to make the best of the swimming pool.

And that's okay.

I can enjoy it, but I'm just ready for it to be here.

So that's what I've been thinking about today is how much I want to be in the pool.

Sounds so nice.

So anyways, that's what's been on my mind that's not podcast related.

Sometimes I like to share something with you guys.

But as I said, today we're going to talk about decisions.

And I think this concept, this way of thinking about decisions is so important.

And that is that you can have decision debt.

And what do I mean by that.

We all know what debt is, right.

This is buying things that we can't afford and then we have to pay back on them to, you know, someone we owe someone for what we bought that we bought on debt and I think about decisions in that way and I think that often people don't realize how impactful delaying making decisions really is in our day-to-day life.

It really does have a big impact on our energy levels, our focus levels, our ability to really keep moving forward and have success.

And just like I said, your ability to focus, to narrow in on what is important and not just be distracted by so many background messages and some minimal thoughts and things.

And I think that's easy to happen when we don't make decisions.

And I think as a society, we're kind of trained to slow down decision making.

We're kind of trained to avoid decision making, as if waiting and taking longer to make decisions is the responsible thing to do, right.

To think about it more.

Let me make a really educated decision.

And while there's some nuance to that, that it's understandable and is true, and I understand where that's coming from, I think it's kind of backfired on us.

And I think it's caused us to get to this place where we really truly are afraid almost to make decisions.

And where does this come from.

I think one of the biggest areas that this comes from is this thing that has been created in our society where we somehow believe that we need to always be right.

that we need to never mess up, that we need to never have setbacks, that we need to never have a failure.

And I see this, for those of you that don't know, I do some teaching in graduate school program, some adjunct teaching, and I see this in these students, these 20-something year olds who have been very successful in their educational career thus far, and they have been taught from a young age school that you need to get things right.

You need to pass the test with an amazing grade.

Failure is not an option.

This is how you get into these hard programs.

This is what is expected of you.

And it has taught them that, like I said, they can't fail.

They can't make mistakes.

They can't get anything wrong.

And I see this play out when we are trying to teach them skills, when we try to have them attempt things knowing they're not going to be good at it at the start.

And that's okay.

And expecting them to learn from the process, learn from the failure, learn from the setbacks.

It is a very uncomfortable experience for them.

They really, really, really struggle with it.

This turns into them like negotiating and bargaining for every little point to try to better perfect grades.

This turns into them thinking, well, if you didn't set me up for success, then, you know, like, I should always be getting perfect A's on every assignment.

And if if I'm not, there's a problem.

This sets them up for like literally freaking out when they receive a lot of feedback for improvement on an assignment.

And I know this is like, you're somewhat of a tangent, but I mean it, where we have been taught from a young age, like we need to be right.

And I know you can relate to this because so many of you come to me needing to make a decision and you feel so stressed out about it because you feel like you have to make the right decision.

You feel like I can't commit, I have to think about this for a couple weeks because what if I make the wrong decision.

That would be the end of the world.

That would be so awful that I would rather carry this decision debt, not make this decision, let it linger, think about it, procrastinate on it, carry the stress and the energy depleting parts of having an unmade decision with me in my day-to-day life, just so I know I'm not gonna get it wrong.

And I really just wanna show you that what this does, this procrastination of making decisions really what it is, causes you to pile up so much decision debt.

Decision debt shows up as confusion.

It wastes our energy.

It holds us back.

It is very distracting and sometimes distracting in like a subliminal way that we don't realize it's there, but it really is.

It's constantly processing and thinking about it in the background.

And often we don't even realize that that is happening.

And so what I have learned along the way with this skill is to become an intentional quality decision maker is a skill that improves your life so much and helps to make you such a a more efficient person, such a more clear-minded person, and freeze up so much energy in your life.

And so something that I do do with clients is help them make decisions, make confident decisions, and move forward in life, and feel the freeness that is not having all this decision dead.

And to do this, there's a couple things that we have to accept and know are true.

Once we make a decision, we have to go start taking action on that decision.

And that can be scary, right.

Especially if we're worried that the decision might be wrong.

It can feel scary to go take the action and risk showing everyone, oh, we made the wrong decision.

But the truth is, is that you're going to be uncomfortable regardless.

Sitting here and not having made the decision stuck in indecision versus going out there and taking action on the decision you made and being nervous and it being risky, both of those are uncomfortable.

So you might as well go after the one that's hopefully going to take you to the result that you want.

Another thing that we've talked about before is that often I find that when it comes to decision making, people are looking at like a silver bullet of this one decision is going to solve all my problems.

And often that's not how it works.

Often when we make decisions, it gets us a step closer and then we reevaluate and we make another decision and we get another step closer and another step closer.

And that's typically how it really works.

Another thing that I want to tell you is we get to change our mind.

Isn't that so cool.

I always joke about this.

I find it so funny that like when people are really struggling to make decisions, it's as if they could never go back on that decision ever, no matter what for the rest of their lives.

And that's just not the case.

Now, sometimes I will give myself timelines, right.

Like I'm going to commit to this decision for at least 30 days, and then I can reassess and decide if I want to continue with it or choose something else.

Maybe it's six months a year.

It depends on the decision, but you're allowed to change your mind and nothing has gone wrong.

If you've done that, you've just now developed more information to make a more educated decision and that's totally fine.

The other thing is that you have the job of making the decision you make the right decision.

So what does that mean.

It means that we need to drop all this regret and beating ourselves up for making wrong decisions and instead intentionally decide the decision I'm making was the right decision in that moment and we're gonna move on with it and make our life good regardless of how that decision turned out.

So I'm gonna share a non infertility example with you.

I had student loans and this was in the heat of the pandemic when student loans were on pause and I was still making payments on them but I knew that that pause was supposedly ending soon and there was just this these record low interest rates and my interest rates on my student loans were insanely high and so I made the decision with my partner my husband to Consolidate and refinance those student loans Intentionally choosing to go move them to a low interest rate an interest rate that you could not get right now in the state of the economy And when I did that that was the goal right that was the intention but What happened.

those non payments the deferral of payments with zero percent interest got extended for multiple years post when I made that decision.

So was it the right financial decision.

Mm, mm, if you do the math, maybe those couple years of no interest in me making payments would have been so impactful that it would have been the better technically on paper math decision.

I don't know, I've never done the math to figure it out.

But here's the deal.

I could have beat myself up, regret the decision, thought that was so dumb of me, I cannot believe that you did that and let that eat at me for years to come.

And instead, what I have done is I have said, I had information in front of me, interest rates were low, I saw an opportunity, and I made an educated decision, and I'm moving on with it.

I have a protocol in place with a low interest rate to pay these student loans off, and I feel good about that.

And literally like drop all the other drama.

I've made that decision the right decision for me, and I'm good with it.

So how can you make the decisions you commit to right regardless of the outcome.

That is what I want you to question.

And this requires using your intuition, using your wisdom, using your trust in yourself to know what's the right decision.

So now that we've talked really about just decisions as a whole, I really want to talk about this when it comes to infertility.

We have decisions out of a zoo.

What interventions are we gonna use.

How am I gonna care for myself on this journey.

Do I want to keep going and take more cycles.

Do I wanna take a break.

Do I want to step up my intervention.

So like, now I'm just tracking and now I wanna start medications or consider IUI or IVF or NAPRO.

Like do I want to step up to my next level of support in this process.

Do I need to get mental health support.

When am I going to decide I'm done trying to conceive.

Right, these are just some examples of decisions.

There's so many.

I remember one that was really hard for me was deciding if I should or shouldn't take a medication.

It was prednisone in my infertility treatment.

I have PCOS.

There was studies and maybe some question of if the prednisone would help me get pregnant and stay pregnant.

But I also knew that it was going to worsen my blood sugar and my PCOS and that wouldn't be a good thing.

And I really struggled to come to a decision.

I went to my own coach to talk through that decision with her to help me make this decision.

So there's so many decisions on this process.

And I find that women get so paralyzed.

They procrastinate, they overthink, they delay, they don't make the decision.

And so I'm here for you to like listen to this, come back, re-listen to it, and think about how can you use this concept of avoiding decision debt, of making this intentional decisions to get clear on when it's time to take a break, when it's time to change your treatment protocol, when it's time to advocate for yourself, when it's time to get a new provider and make those decisions right for you.

Even if you make the decision and it doesn't magically make you pregnant next month, it can be the right decision.

You get to believe that, you get to trust yourself in that, you get to use your wisdom in that.

And so I really hope you will take this to heart and think about how can I go about life having less unmade decisions, carrying less burden of open decisions.

I think about it like, you know, like the computer screen, when you have like 30 screens open on the internet and it's like so many different things, that's unmade decisions.

So how can you get it down to as few open, unmade decisions as possible and feel confident in the decisions you're making.

That's what I want you to think about this week.

And if you're like a Sarah, that sounds great, but how do I do that.

How do I actually get myself to make those decisions.

Reach out.

I can help you do it.

I can help you make those decisions.

And I would be honored to be your support person in that process.

So click the Apply button in the show notes we can start making you a decision-making machine.

I hope you all have a great week.

I look forward to talking to you next week.

I believe.

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yeah, next week is an episode.

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oh, my dog must hear somebody.

Next week is an episode with a guest actually talking about how she made the decision to stop trying to conceive.

So I hope that you guys will tune in and listen to her story and I hope you all have a great, great, great week of March.

I will talk to you later.

Hey there, Inspired Mama.

If you enjoyed this show, I want to invite you to leave a review in your podcast player.

This helps to share the message with so many more women just like you.

Also, if you know of another hopeful mama on her path to motherhood, please share this episode with her.

I would love to get this into the ears of anyone who needs to hear it.

If you are ready to step this work up and not only learn these tools but to apply them to your unique story, head to the link in the show notes to apply for a free consult call.

I would be honored to help you.

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