How many times in life as women + mothers have we all been at a crossroads where we had to make a decision and that felt bitter-sweet?
Decision-making from Intuition vs. Emotion
So first, I want to talk about the difference between making a decision from intuition and making a decision from emotion. It’s very different.
When you make a decision from emotion, it’s feel like you are slamming on the gas & the brake at the same exact time; there’s so much momentum but you feel stuck at the same time.
What happens is that when we start to think about all these what-ifs in our brain, it’s very much fear-based. And we have two primary emotions and from these two emotions, a menagerie of feelings are born.
Two Different Kinds of Emotions
We have two different kinds of emotions that tend to run our mind and our body chemistry. The first one is love. The second one is fear.
So from fear we can also have sadness and anger and frustrations and disappointments.
Out of love we can have excitement and joy, spontaneity, creativity and calm etc.
So when we are making a decision out of emotion, what happens is that intuitively we are being pulled in a certain direction but then the emotion kicks in. And when we start to think about the people that we love, it starts from a place of love. But then there’s this tipping point, once we start asking those what-ifs, then it starts coming from a place of fear. And that’s where the problem kicks in.
Our Brain Doesn’t Understand a Question
You see, our brain does not understand a question. You can ask your brain something, but all it understands is the topic of what you’re questioning.
Envision for a moment an upcoming decision that is required from you within the next 6 months.
How does that feel in your body? Does that feel light or does it feel heavy? Because if it feels heavy then your body is emotionalizing and releasing about 14,000 hormones in your body based upon that worst case scenario.
The reason this is important is because when we start to feel like we know intuitively what we want but then we notice emotions kicking in and a lot of those what-ifs keep us stuck and stagnant in this place and we start to believe the illusion that this isn’t the right choice, because it doesn’t feel good. It’s not comfortable.
The great news is there is a way to get back into alignment to make that decision from intuition and once you stay on that path, all the resourcefulness from within you and all the resources externally that are around you will start to show up in your life with synchronicity.
Things will just start kind of popping up and you would say “I would have never thought that it would unfold in such a great way.”
Now, here’s one thing to consider; when it comes to making a decision and we start to worry about what other people might feel, one thing that is really important to keep in mind is that we are only looking at a very, very small slither here. You can widen your periphery with 4 simple + powerful questions.
Four Questions To Ask
There’s four questions that you can ask yourself in any type of situation that will help give you a 30,000 feet high perspective that can help you to have more ease in this whole process.
- “What is the best thing that can happen if I say “Yes” to this decision in 6, 12 and 24 months?” (And I recommend writing those questions down and also the answers.)
- What’s the worst thing that can happen if I do these 6, 12, and 24 months from now?”
- What is the best thing that can happen if I don’t do these in 6, 12, and 24 months?”
- What is the worst thing that can happen if I don’t do these in 6, 12, and 24 months?”
Many of you have already heard of the process of what’s the best + what’s the worst but that 6, 12, 24 part of it that goes on to the end of it, that is what makes the difference here.
Our Core Values
When you are asking these questions, be mindful of what your core values are. Because even when we are considering other people’s feelings, understand that we have core values on behalf of them as well. We have core values about ourselves, you know, things that are just important to us as women. We also have core values that are important about the world; Things that are really important for us to give out into the world whether its compassion, altruism, philanthropy.
We also have core values about our interactions with other people.
So if this is something that you are thinking about, and let’s say you know a potential employee that you’re working with or even your son or your daughter that you are thinking about, you have core values about them, too.
With your core values, let’s say you have three core values for your child – or let’s say one is happiness. And let’s say maybe two is spontaneity. And number three is whatever might be important for you, maybe it is creativity.
What I challenge for you to do, and I promise you that this works (it’s not always comfortable but it does work) is to really tease together these four questions that I just shared with you with regards to those four values. And when you answer the question of what is the best thing that can happen if I do this, meaning this is that very difficult situation that you know intuitively you need to do.
What it teaches our children
What is the best thing that can happen for that child? And what can this teach them? And see, the best thing that you can do for your child is not to give them comfort because let’s face it, life is not meant to make us comfortable. That has nothing to do with the quality of life.
The quality of life has to do with being able to grow, to learn, and connect.
And let’s just say for an instance that maybe if you were able to show them what making a decision, a powerful decision based upon your core values, in a way that feels aligned with you and also compassionate for other people…think about how powerful growth and connection and learning that can happen for your child.
And many times as mothers the thing that we wanted to avoid the most is our child going through pain, right?
Pain is an amazing teacher. And the best thing that we can do is teach them how to embrace it, lean in and learn from it.
The other thing, too, is that another great gift that we can give our child, in fact probably one of the best ones, is to be your best self. And if you are in a situation right now that you’ve already intuitively made a choice, then chances are that situation right now – your child is observing. And your child might be downloading a lot of these things that are happening, you know, just as he or she is watching you at all times even when you don’t think you are being watched. And you see the part of the brain that has to do with all of our go-to, i.e., coping mechanisms in the moment, that is also the same place in our brain where all of our automatic downloads are stored.
What does it mean when we consider others’ thoughts?
So, one thing that I also want to keep in mind too is that when we are overly concerned about how other people are going to feel, is we are actually making it about ourselves. And it’s not intentional, it comes from a positive place that you care about other people but then there is point at which we make it about ourselves; the thought of them potentially being disappointed in us. So sometimes it’s really important to just start asking “Why?” over and over again. So for instance let’s say if we are afraid that maybe one of our friends might be a little disapproving of us and say why is that so important? What does it really mean about me?
And when you start to ask those questions over and over again what you are going to do is your going to get into the essence of what that truly is. And when you get into the essence of that then what you can do is you can work with that feeling. Work with that core emotion. But when we think about how other people are going to feel keep in mind too that 90% of the things that we worry about never, ever happen.
Meet people from a place of our highest energy
And one of the best things that we can do when we love somebody whether it’s a friend, a colleague, a child or spouse, one of the best things that we can do is meet them from a place of our highest energy.
Loving Kindness Technique
And the way that we can do that is through a technique called loving kindness. Now many have heard of loving kindness. There are multiple adaptations of it but basically the premise of it is that when we are concerned about how other people are going to feel, instead of absorbing all that negative energy that low-frequency energy of fear, of being afraid that they might not react or adapt in a positive way, a more productive way, a way that is actually energy gaining for you is to be able to do a loving kindness meditation.
You can do this with your eyes open, eyes closed, you can do this even when you are around people or you’re by yourself. But it is a really great way to actually be able to send a lot of really high-frequency energy somebody else’s way.
If you pray, praying is another amazing option. For today, I’m going to show you loving kindness meditation.
So in a nutshell, the loving kindness meditation consists of a couple of different verses. And you can plug in different words in each verse but I’m going to show the way that I use it. And this is a really powerful technique and let’s says that you were a little frustrated or a little upset or little worried about the decision.
And what you could do is say, who is that person I am concerned might be negatively impacted by this. And let’s say that person is Maria (I’m just making up a name here). But what we can do is envision as if Maria’s face was right here, as if I’m looking at Maria. And in our minds what we say to ourselves is:
“Maria, I wish you love, I wish you joy, I wish you peace, and I wish you kindness.”
You want to be able to repeat that 3x because what you’re doing is your rewiring yourself back into a place of love instead of fear; you’re operating from love chemistry.
When you come from a place of love, all your resourcefulness and all of your great ideas, they are going to be accessible for you. When you have a place of fear they are not because they are under bundles of just stories and fears and limiting beliefs.