Episode 112: Making Your Decisions Right

You’re listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast, episode 112. Today, we’re talking all about making your decisions right. You ready? Let’s go. 

Welcome to The Less Stressed Lawyer, the only podcast that teaches you how to manage your mind so you can live a life with less stress and far more fulfilment. If you’re a lawyer who’s over the overwhelm and tired of trying to hustle your way to happiness, you’re in the right place. Now, here’s your host, lawyer turned life coach Olivia Vizachero.

Well, hello there. How are we doing this week? I hope you are good. I just had the best night. This is just a friendly segue reminder to do things that bring you joy. I just went to dinner with my dad. I don’t often go out during the week. I normally like to stay home during weeknights and then I use my weekends to go out to dinner, but my dad loves this place in downtown Detroit and since I’m back in Michigan for the summer, we’ve been making it a point to get to spend time together since I was gone all winter long down south and he loves this place in Detroit. It’s like our spot we go to to have dinner and it was just one of those perfect summer nights. We walked to get ice cream. I got to show him some parts of downtown that he wasn’t super familiar with and it was just a really lovely evening. 

And one of the things, this is, again, just totally a side note to this episode, but I made it a point a couple years ago to have better conversations with the people in my life, and I really made that my mission. And I just want to tell you, that has been one of the most meaningful, worthwhile endeavors that I’ve undertaken in as long as I can remember. I’ve really focused on being intentional about what I talk to people about, sharing more about what’s going on in my life rather than just having surface level conversations. And we had just the greatest conversation at dinner. So I’m coming off a really great night. And now I’m excited to talk to you about what we’re going to talk about in this episode and make it an even better night, kind of a nice nightcap, if you will. 

So let’s dive into today’s topic, making your decisions right. This has come up on a bunch of my coaching calls lately and I found myself repeating it over and over again. And whenever that happens, I think to myself, ooh, this would make a great topic for a podcast. And I’ve talked a little bit on the podcast before about making decisions, but I really wanted to cover this specifically because like I said, it’s something I’ve been talking about quite a lot recently. 

So one of the biggest misconceptions that people face when it comes to making decisions is that they believe that there’s a right decision to make. And when you tell yourself that there’s a right decision to make when you’re presented with a choice. Maybe you’re just choosing between two things or you have a lot of different options that might even lead to more overwhelm. But when you’re telling yourself that there’s a right choice and then you’re telling yourself you need to make that right choice, you create a lot of pressure for yourself. You also create a ton of worry because you’re worried on the front end about how you’ll feel on the back end of the decision and you’re really afraid that you’re going to feel regretful once you’ve made the decision and you’ve seen how it played out. 

Now, I talked about this a little bit in the episode that I did on the sliding doors fallacy because what we really want is to be able to see how every option plays out and then choose our choice based on having all that information. And that’s just not how the human experience works. We have to make the decision without having all of the information. Unfortunately or fortunately, however you want to think about that, that’s just the way that these decisions work. But what I want you to think about, we’re really going to challenge today in this episode the concept of making right decisions, all right? 

And maybe you don’t use that language. You don’t focus on making the right decision. Instead, you might think to yourself, I want to make the best decision I possibly can. And I’ve talked about this on the podcast before as well, especially in the episode that I did on perfectionist tendencies. If you’re using the phrase or the term best, I really want you to be on the lookout for that. That’s a big pink flag, okay? When you use that language, you want to spot it for what it is. It’s your perfectionism in sheep’s clothing. It doesn’t sound like perfectionism because you’re not using the word perfect. You’re not saying I want to make a perfect choice, a perfect decision. You’re just using the word best. But most oftentimes, people don’t define best and they’re really just using best as a synonym for perfect. 

So that’s probably what’s happening here when you’re thinking about making a decision and you want to make the best decision possible, you really want to get it right. You want it to be perfect, all right? So you prevent yourself from experiencing any of that regret. You don’t want to experience FOMO. You don’t want to experience that worry. You don’t want to experience any of that discomfort. 

Now, when this happens, what I want you to do is come back to what I’m going to teach you in this episode. I want you to remind yourself that there is no such thing as a right decision, okay? Thinking that something is right will always be an opinion. It’s never going to be a fact. I know that seems counterintuitive because we’re so used to academia and in school, there is a right answer to a question, but life isn’t like school. And I see that come up in a lot of different ways. I’ve talked about that with wanting to be done with everything and finish your to-do list, get to the bottom of it, because we’re craving that sense of completion. That’s a carryover from academia. This is too, thinking that there are right answers to things. In life, there aren’t right answers. There are just different answers, okay? 

So it’s always going to be an opinion that something was a right decision or a wrong decision, and you get to choose to just not think that you made a wrong decision. Instead of believing that there’s a right decision and pressuring yourself into making that right decision, what I want you to do is flip it. Instead of focusing on making the right decision on the front end, instead, you’re going to make a decision and then make your decision right, all right? Making it right is a choice by how you treat yourself after you’ve decided. You can decide, and then you can second guess, and you can question your choice, and you can beat yourself up, and you can look for all of the reasons that you made the wrong choice. That’s making your decision wrong, not making your decision right. 

Instead, what I want you to do is after you’ve decided something, sell yourself on it. Continue to sell yourself on it every single day. Another way to think about this is you continue to choose your choice day in and day out after you’ve made it. You don’t just make the choice once, you keep choosing it over and over and over again. You keep making it right for yourself. 

So I want to walk you through a couple different examples so you can see how this plays out. This came up today on our lawyers only call. Someone was contemplating making a career change. So if you’re contemplating making a career change, you might be creating a lot of pressure yourself telling yourself you need to make the right decision. Should I stay in my current job or should I make the switch? Should I quit my job and go do something else? And you’re worried about making the right decision. There is no right decision here, okay? 

Now there may be a decision that is more in line with your preferences, and I highly recommend that you spend time exploring what are your preferences, answering that question, figuring out what you prefer, what you like and what you dislike and seeing which decision, which choice more closely aligns with those preferences. But you may come up with a list of pros and cons that support you choosing either option or any of the options that are available to you. In this instance, when there’s not a clear winner, all you have left to do is decide you want to be thoughtful about your decision. That’s always the standard that I use myself. And then you’re going to make your decision right. 

And that means you’re going to focus, after you’ve made the decision, on all of the reasons why you chose it in the first place. So if you’re deciding to go to a new firm, what are all of the reasons that you’re going to make that decision? And then, once you’ve made that decision, remind yourself those were all the reasons that you made the decision. It was the right decision for you because you liked the reasons you made it when you made it. 

Instead, what a lot of people do is they make the change, they decide to quit their job, they go to a new job, and they focus on all of the things at the new job that they don’t like. And then they make their decision wrong after the fact, which is really a lose-lose scenario, right? Because you can’t go back in time and unmake the decision. You may be able to go back to the previous job, that’s something that’s available to you, but the ground’s going to shift a little bit while you’ve been gone, so you’re not going back to the exact same situation. Now that may be okay, that may not be okay, depending on how things shift while you’re away. But instead of beating yourself up and creating all of this regret for yourself, remember, regret is a feeling, so it’s going to be caused by your thinking. It’s not something that happens to you against your will. It’s an experience you create for yourself by the thoughts you choose to think. And you can prevent yourself from experiencing regret by choosing not to think those thoughts, by selling yourself after you’ve made the decision on why it was the “right” decision for you, even though there is no such thing as a right decision factually. You just believe for yourself that it was right and it was right because you liked your reasons for making it, you knew what those reasons were, you were thoughtful about it, and then you went ahead and executed. 

Maybe you’re new in your legal career and you’re trying to decide what type of law you’d like to practice, and you’re really worried about making the wrong choice. You want to pick the right practice to focus on. Again, there is no right choice here. There are a lot of different options available to you, and you get to just choose the one that you prefer the most. And then you make that choice right, moving forward, by not setting yourself up for failure second-guessing it, by focusing on the things you like about the practice area, by recommitting to it, by choosing it day in and day out rather than second-guessing it and fantasizing about doing something else. You make the decision you made initially right by how you talk to yourself about it afterwards. 

Maybe you’re thinking about starting your own business. Maybe you want to have your own law firm, you’re sick of working for other people. You might be really worried about leaving a job with a “steady paycheck” to go and hang your own shingle. Now, if you go and hang your own shingle and it is different than what you expect, which I promise you, it will be different from what you expect because you don’t know what to expect until you embark upon it and you start to figure out what running your own business is actually like. You can decide that you made a big mistake and that you screwed everything up and that you were foolish in the decision you made. That’s making your choice wrong, not making your choice right after the fact. 

Or you can recognize, hey, there’s going to be some things that are unexpected. And I’m going to navigate that. And I’m not going to second guess this decision. I’m going to go all in on it. I’m going to commit to it. I’m going to commit to the finish. I’ve talked about that on the podcast before as well. And I’m going to focus on all of the things that I love about running my own business, about having my own law firm. You keep making the decision right for you by how you think about it after you’ve decided. 

Another area where I see people really fret about making the “right” decision is what am I going to charge? What rate am I going to charge? Or how am I going to bill people? Am I going to pay a flat fee? Am I going to bill hourly? Whatever billing decisions you’re making, you might be questioning them and wanting to make the right choice. There is no right choice. There’s no right amount to charge a client. You have to learn how to sell whatever amount you’re going to charge. There’s no right offer or right structure for your services. There’s no right way to package them. There’s just how you choose to package them. And then you sell yourself on why the way you chose to structure them or price them is the best. And you continue to sell yourself on that day in and day out. You continue to build your belief. 

Why am I worth what I charge? Why is what I charge worth what it’s worth? Why is the service I provide valuable? Is it worth what I charge? How is it worth it? You just keep answering those questions in as many different ways as you possibly can. That’s how you sell yourself. Why is this structure or setup better? List out all of the reasons why you think it’s advantageous for you to structure your offerings the way that you do. 

I see this a ton when people come to me wondering, what should I charge for public speaking if you’ve been asked to speak at something? There is no right price. You’re going to pick a number. People will either pay it or they won’t. You might have to overcome objections and learn how to talk people through it in order to sell whatever service you’re offering. But if people say no to you, it’s not because you picked the wrong number, you picked the wrong price point. It’s because you haven’t learned how to sell it effectively. And instead of questioning what it’s worth, questioning the value, you have to believe that it’s worth what you’re charging and continue to find reasons why it’s worth that, sell yourself on it and believe that you chose right for yourself, even though there is no one right answer, okay? You make your choice right after the fact. 

A couple other examples of this. Let’s take it into the personal arena, all right? Maybe you’re thinking about moving. Should I buy this house or not? I’ve watched and coached a lot of people facing that question for themselves, and they hem and haw and they spin in indecision and they worry, am I going to be able to make this mortgage payment? Am I biting off more than I can chew? You’ll really worry about making the wrong or right choice. Instead, look at the numbers. Can you technically afford it on paper? Be thoughtful about your decision. And then once you’ve made it, make your choice right. Make the decision right by continuing to sell yourself on it. 

Yes, I wanted to live in this neighborhood. Yes, I wanted to live in this city. Yes, I wanted to live in a place that looked like this. Yes, I’m willing to spend this amount. Yes, I can afford this. Yes, I’ll do whatever I need to do to figure out the money. I believe that I’m capable of coming up with the money even when my shoes pinch a little bit. You continue to sell yourself on why it was a good decision, the right decision for you at the time based on the information you had available to you, instead of finding all the reasons why it was a bad decision and why you shouldn’t have made it. You get to decide to sell yourself on why you should have made it and why you did make it instead of selling yourself on the opposite, on why you shouldn’t have, okay? It’s all about how you talk to yourself once you’ve decided. 

The area that I see this becoming the most evident to me is in deciding who you’re going to spend your life with, okay? If you think about people picking a partner, I think one of the biggest misconceptions that people have that leads to so much discontentment in relationships these days is people believe that there’s one right person for them, okay? And they’re on a quest to find that right person. And when they’re dating someone, they’re constantly thinking to themselves, is there someone better out there? Am I with the right person? Is the right person out there waiting for me and I’m with someone else? They really hyper fixate on the idea of being with that one perfect person. 

Instead, what I have found to be true is there are a lot of people you can build a life with, okay? Whether that is a long-term commitment or a short-term commitment, there are a lot of people that you can make a relationship work with and find a lot of joy, contentment, and happiness with, okay? But it isn’t about finding the right fit. It’s about finding someone who meets enough of your preferences. There’s always going to be things that you love about someone, and there’s always going to be things that you don’t love about someone. That’s just the way life works. There’s always going to be that split. It’s about figuring out what you prefer, finding someone that aligns closely enough with those preferences, and then figuring out, can I tolerate the parts of them that I don’t really care for? Because there are parts of you that people won’t care for, and there are parts of other people that you won’t care for, and all of that is very normal. 

But then you choose to invest in that relationship. You choose to invest time into that person, effort into building that relationship, getting it to where you want it to be, and you continue to make your choice right. It’s not about making the right choice on the front end, but it’s about making the choice and then making the choice right on the back end by recommitting to it day in and day out. You continue to choose your choice by continuing to choose to invest time in that relationship, to continuing to choose to work on things, to resolve conflict, navigate hiccups and obstacles as they come, continuing to build upon that foundation that you’ve created together day in and day out. 

You continue to choose your choice and make it the right decision by looking for the things that you appreciate about the person, finding things that you’re grateful for in them, continuing to commit to work through those challenges rather than finding their faults, focusing on all of the things that you like about other people better, focusing on how unfulfilled you are and all of the things that you find lacking in the relationship That’s not choosing your choice. That’s looking for all of the reasons that you don’t like the choice you made in the first place and making the initial choice you made wrong, not right for you, okay? 

So I want you to look at the different decisions you make throughout your life. Big decisions, small decisions, doesn’t matter. This could be as simple as what you chose to work on in your day. I watch so many people make a decision about how to spend their time in a day, and then after they’ve deposited that time, they’ve spent that time a particular way, they beat themselves up for how they spent it. They say, oh, instead of responding to emails, I shouldn’t have done that. I should have worked on that big project instead. 

Now, I do think there’s value in exploring, why did I choose to respond to emails if what I really planned to do was work on that big project? Was I buffering with email? Was I avoiding some negative emotion that came with working on that big ticket item? If that’s the case, learn from that experience and then leverage that learning moving forward. But if you were always going to need to respond to emails and you planned to respond to emails for a particular amount of time during your day, don’t devote that time to your inbox and then tell yourself you should have spent your time differently. Instead, make the decision about how you’re going to spend your time and then make the decision right by selling yourself on why it was a good decision in the first place, rather than doing the opposite and telling yourself why you made the wrong decision and should have done something else. 

By doing this, you’re going to, on the front end of decision-making, really dial down the pressure that you create for yourself, okay? And the less pressure you have, the more ease you’ll find that you’re able to bring to the decision-making process. It’s going to be a lot less effort to make a decision when you’re not making the stakes so high because you’re focused on making the best right decision on the front end. On the back end, you’re really going to dial down the regret that you experienced because you’re going to know how to make the decision right by how you talk to yourself, by how you choose to intentionally talk to yourself about the decision you’ve already made. 

Even if you decide to pivot moving forward, you can still make the decision right for you by not beating yourself up, second-guessing yourself and telling yourself that you should have done something differently in the past, which you of course can’t change, okay? This is really going to dial down a lot of the negative emotion that you experience around decision-making. You will enjoy making decisions so much more when you know your emotional experience around decision-making is in your control based on how you choose to talk to yourself once you’ve made the decision, okay? No right or wrong decisions, just the decisions you make right. Make your decision, choose your choice, and then continue to choose it over and over and over again. Sell yourself on it, and you’re going to sell yourself on a much more pleasant experience when it comes to decision-making. 

All right, my friends. I hope you found this helpful. That’s what I’ve got for you this week. Go out there, make some decisions, and then make the decisions right after the fact. And I will talk to you in the next episode. I hope you have a beautiful week. Bye.

Thanks for listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast. If you want more info about Olivia Vizachero or the show’s notes and resources from today’s episode, visit www.TheLessStressedLawyer.com.