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Episode 5: Top Mistakes To Avoid When Facing Tough Decisions · The Divorce Decision Podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Lucky in Love, a podcast where we explore what really makes and breaks relationships.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: So whether you're head over heels in love, caught up in the middle of some relationship drama, or just trying to figure it all out, you're in the right place.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Are you ready to be lucky in love?
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Join me.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Carrie Hoskins.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's jump in.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Hello friends.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the podcast.
• 0:30
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• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: So today I'm going to be talking about some of the common mistakes that I see people making when they're trying to make a hard decision.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as we go through these mistakes, I'm going to be sharing with you some of my suggestions on what you can do if you recognize that you're doing some of these.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then at the end of the episode, I will be sharing with you one strategy that will hopefully help make a hard decision a little bit easier.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: So what I mean by the common mistakes in air quotes is the things that people are doing that just make the whole process of making a choice all that more difficult, all that more stressful.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Before I became a coach, I was a college professor for over 20 years.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And during that time, I had countless students of all ages come to me for my advice, my help, my guidance in making all kinds of decisions.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Everything from what should they major in, which job should they take, which university do they want to transfer to, how to navigate a challenging family situation, how to deal with something, you know, hard that was going on in the relationship.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: I even had a student ask me if he should propose to his girlfriend.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let me tell you, I don't mean to laugh, but let me tell you, if you are going to your college professor who doesn't even know your girlfriend to ask if you should propose to her, the answer is probably not quite yet.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just say that, right?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: But it was during my time as a college professor that I really started noticing the different habits and patterns that people have when they're trying to make a hard decision.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And after I became a relationship coach and started working with people on a much more like deeper, more intimate level, that's when I got really interested in decision psychology.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, decision psychology is a thing.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually a quite a big field of study.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's actually quite interesting.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I've spent the last several years really immersing myself in decision psychology so that I can do a better job at helping my clients make better decisions.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, really what I'm hoping for you today is that this episode gives you some insight and some self-awareness around how you're currently making decisions and just see if there's anything in there that you might be able to tweak in order to make your life a little bit easier.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: So before we jump into the mistakes, I thought we would go over just a few of the things that might make a decision feel hard.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is how high the stakes are.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: If the consequences of the choice that you're making can have a significant impact on your life, your relationships, or your finances, it's going to feel heavier, right?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: If there's a perceived long-term impact, meaning the decision that you make can affect your future opportunities, that's going to make the decision feel heavy.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Emotional attachments also play a role.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: So if one of the choices or if the decisions that you're trying to make is tied to or affects someone or people that you love, this is going to make it challenging.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Decisions that you perceive as tying in or being attached to your identity, either your personal identity, your relationship identity, or your professional identity, that's going to make it feel heavier.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And when you feel like the choice that you're having to make is pushing you up against a wall, meaning you didn't want to make this decision in the first place and someone is kind of forcing it on you.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's going to add a lot of weight to the decision.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: It also makes the decision challenging because in those cases, there's usually a little bit of resistance on your part and maybe some resentment because you didn't want to have to make this choice in the first place.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And with those kinds of choices, there's usually a time frame on it.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: So there's some extra like external pressure on your shoulders.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: So here are some of the common mistakes that I see people making when they're trying to make a hard decision.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is asking a lot of different people for their advice about what they think you should do.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: People do this all the time, right?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the deal: when you ask someone for their advice, they're going to give you their advice based on their life experience, based on how their life has turned out, their outcome.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: They're also giving it to you based on their perception of you and their perception of your circumstance or your situation.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now you times that by however many people you've asked.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've asked six people, you're likely going to get six different perspectives, six different opinions.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: And what this does is this starts to cloud your judgment.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I had a client reach out to me.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: She was trying to decide whether or not to get a divorce.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what a lot of people reach out to me for.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And during our first conversation, she had shared with me that she'd asked like all these people for their advice, what they thought she should do.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And she was, by the time she reached out to me, she was so confused, you guys.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: So the friends that were in happy marriages and had been married for a long time, they said absolutely not.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: They totally discouraged her from separating or considering a divorce.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Her friends that had been through a divorce and were happy with their decisions were encouraging her to separate and get a divorce.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And she thought she'd made up her mind.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then she asked a coworker who had just been through a divorce, and that person had a terrible experience.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a worst decision, the worst thing she'd ever done, the worst decision she'd ever made, and absolutely do not do it.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: So at this point, she was so frustrated and stressed out and confused, right?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so what I told her was look, if you're gonna work with me, the first rule is you have to stop asking other people for their opinions and for their advice.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: I told her, you have all these other people's thoughts and beliefs and outcomes in your mind, and it's clouding your own.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: So please just stop.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, thankfully, she did decide to work with me and she did stop asking people, which helped us help her come to a decision.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: So if this is uh one of your tendencies, I would suggest that you pick one or two people who you really trust and respect and who have similar values as you and who have been through some similar things as you.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the people that you ask for their advice, but you only stick to one or two and no more than that.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Mistake number two is shopping around for the opinion that you really want.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is called confirmation bias.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's seeking out information or opinions that confirm your existing beliefs, meaning it kind of goes along with what we already want, right?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: It confirms what you already want, what you already believe, and what you already think.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And all this does is it prolongs the decision-making process.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it also means that when you're asking other people, you're not really open to receiving information that you don't like to hear.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: So why are you asking them in the first place, right?
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: So look, if you are looking for validation, if you are looking for permission to go through with what it is you really want to go through with, with the choice you really want to make, permission granted, make the decision, make a plan, and move on.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Mistake number three is second guessing and overanalyzing.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: So second guessing is the act of questioning or doubting your decision or choice once you've made it.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it usually involves like re-evaluating information, and you're doing this out of fear of making the wrong decision.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens is you start ruminating on all these little pieces of information and you start trying to analyze it from all these different perspectives so that you can avoid pain in the future, because ultimately that's why we're afraid of making the wrong choice, right?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're afraid of choosing wrong because we're gonna feel bad.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the deal you cannot predict the future.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: You do not know how something is gonna turn out until you make a decision and it turns out or it doesn't.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Up until that point, it's an educated guess.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: So if you have a tendency to do this, gather some information, do a little bit of analysis, and then once you have enough information to make an educated guess, make your decision and stick to it.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Mistake number four, and this is my pet peeve, actually, you guys.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: So mistake number four is telling yourself that you are not or that you are confused.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Friends, you are not confused.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Please stop telling yourself that.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: When you tell yourself that, what you do is you activate a state of uncertainty in your mind automatically.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And this adds to what they call mental disorientation, which makes it harder for you to focus and harder for you to process information logically and clearly.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it leads to questioning your own judgment, which can trigger feelings of anxiety, which is completely counterproductive to making a good choice.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: So please stop telling yourself and other people that you are confused.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, tell yourself and other people I'm figuring it out.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Once you tell yourself I'm figuring it out, your mind goes to work on figuring it out.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: A mistake number five that I see is trying to make a decision out of fear or from fear.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: So making a decision from fear does not lend itself to good decision making.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: So some examples would be not allowing your child to play hockey or football or cheerleading or whatever sport that you deem like dangerous because you're afraid that they're going to get hurt, right?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Many of us do this.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: But if you follow that logic, you would never let your kid get into a car or on an airplane, for goodness sakes, right?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're saying no because I'm afraid you can get hurt, you're potentially having them miss out on all the benefits of that sport, of the making friends and the teamwork and all the good stuff that goes into that quote unquote dangerous sport.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Making a choice to not ask for the promotion out of fear that you're gonna be rejected or that you're not good enough prevents you from finding out.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it also prevents you from the potential of some professional and personal growth.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Making the choice to stay in a dysfunctional or toxic relationship because you're afraid you're gonna end up alone or you're scared of what other people are going to think means that you're gonna stay stuck in a bad toxic relationship.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: So what do you do instead?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, you identify the fears or anxieties that you have and you decide what you're going to do if those things happen.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's how you deal with that.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now I do want to share with you because it's very relevant.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: About 20 years ago, when my daughter Katie was four years old, I had to make the decision, and I was making it basically by myself, of whether or not we should go through with neurosurgery.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Katie had non-distended, or we thought she had non-distended tethered cord, which is tethered cord that hasn't dropped down yet.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so she had all the symptoms of tethered cord, but it wasn't showing up in the MRIs.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so we didn't know for sure.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the only way to know was for us to go through with the neurosurgery.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: There was so much fear here for me.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna lie.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: There was fear for a few reasons.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: On the neurosurgery side, there are so many risks associated with that, right?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many bad things that can happen when you go into somebody's spinal cord.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: But on the other side, if she did have this and we didn't do anything about it, she could become paralyzed.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was really having to weigh all of these unknowns, right?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: So what I ended up doing was I called the pediatrician and I had a conversation with her and asked her what her thoughts were.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: She was somebody that I really respected and I valued her opinion.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And as it turns out, we went ahead and went through the surgery.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so glad that we did because when the neurosurgeon came out, he told us she did have non-distended tethic cord.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And had we not gone through with the surgery, she likely would have been paralyzed within two years.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a good decision.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: So the way that you think about your decision affects how easy or hard the process is going to be for you, and it's also going to affect the kind of choice that you make.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought I'd share with you just a few things to help you get into a good frame of mind or a good way of thinking about the decision.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: So the first one is to not look at it as a right or a wrong decision.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Look at it as what is the best choice based off the information that I have now and based off of what I value and what I want for my life.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in this last example that I gave with Katie, there was a right or wrong decision.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, had I not, had we not decided to go through this, she would have been paralyzed.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: But what I can tell you is, and here was my thought process.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: My thought process was, well, I'm willing to take the risks because what I know now is she has all of these symptoms, even though we don't know for sure.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if we don't go through with the surgery, I think the the consequences of not trying is going to be worse than the consequences of, you know, the potential consequences of the surgery.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I would definitely go with the what's the best option for what I know now.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Another way to approach this is what would make this decision easy?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: So you answer that.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: What would make the decision easy?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: In my mind at that time, what would have made the decision easy, what would have made the decision a no-brainer was if the neurosurgeon had said, look, here's the MRI, here's the physical evidence, we can fix this, right?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where your hangup is.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever your answer to, what would make this decision easier, that's the issues that you need to clean up your mind around.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the issues and the things that you need to work through so that you can come to a good decision.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: The second suggestion that I have, a way to think about things, is that every choice has risk associated.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you decide not to make a decision, not making decision is making a decision.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And even that has risks.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: So people like studies have shown that people who are more risk tolerant tend to make better decisions than those people that are not as risk tolerant.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I happen to be pretty risk tolerant.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like risks do not scare me very much, though they did scare me with the neurosurgery.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: But generally speaking, they don't really scare me very much.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so I thought I'd share with you what I do.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: So what I do is I will write down on a separate piece of paper for every choice that I have all of the risks associated with that choice or that decision, and then what I would do if those things happen.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then I look at, I look at my pieces of paper and I look at all of the risks, and I decide which set of risks am I most willing to live with and are the most palatable.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's the choice that I go with.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Suggestion number three is to be willing to feel bad.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that makes making a decision hard is we're afraid of feeling bad.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: We want to avoid pain and we want to avoid other people in our lives feeling bad.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: So if you can just accept that you're probably going to feel bad with whatever choice you make at some point and learn how to deal with those uncomfortable, painful, or negative emotions, you're going to be better off.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: And once you recognize that other people's like other people's feelings are other people's feelings and that's not really your responsibility, that's going to help you make better decisions as well.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: The next thing that I want to suggest is thinking about it in terms of the outcome.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: If the decision that you make does not turn out the way that you wanted, hoped, or expected, consider it a life lesson.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: It is part of your journey.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell you right now, I've made lots of fantastic, amazing decisions.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I've also made lots of not so great ones.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I have learned the most from my bad decisions because those have been my life lessons.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I would like to leave you with one strategy, one thing that could most likely help you make a decision a little bit easier.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's a value list.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: So what I suggest that you do, and you can even do this if you don't have a decision right now to make, but I suggest that you write down three to five of the most important things to you in regard to your life and whatever area you're trying to make this decision in.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: So work slash life, relationship slash life, money slash life, living environment slash life.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: I added that one in there at the last minute because my husband and I were trying to decide if we want to stay in California or if we want to move out of state.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so part of our decision-making process is if we want to move out of state, which state are we gonna pick, right?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: How are we gonna make that decision?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so we've created a list of what we value and what we want out of where we're living next, right?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what I mean by that.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to do this in regard to your life and whatever area you're trying to make this decision around.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you write down three to five of your values, and then you want to rank them your most important all the way down to the least important, okay?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: I would also suggest that you figure out where money ties into all of this, because money is a part of almost every single decision that you make, every big decision that you make, even relationship decisions.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: So when people come to me trying to figure out if they want to stay together or break up, money always comes into it.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: The person that doesn't make as much money or doesn't make any money at all, like they're dependent on their significant other for money.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: They, one of the things that stops them from making a decision is, you know, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to, how am I gonna be able to live?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: How am I gonna make money?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: How am I gonna support myself if I make the decision to leave?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then conversely, people will come to me and they are the person that makes more money and they don't want to give up half their money.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: They don't want to give up half their stuff.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: So they'll really kind of feel like they're in a conundrum there, right?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the deal: money is part of most decisions.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure you understand where it is in your hierarchy of values because it will be a part of your decision-making process.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: So then what you do is you write down your top three to five values, and then you look at them, you look at each of your choices, and you try to see which choice is in most alignment with your values.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: That is a wonderful place to start when you're trying to make a hard decision.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the last thing that I'm going to say on this topic.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: I want to tell you that research has shown that the people who have the option of reversing or going back on their decision tend to be less satisfied and less happy than the people that simply make a decision and stick with it even when it gets hard.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the people that tend to self-report being happier or most satisfied, not only with their decision, but with their life.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what I want to leave you with today.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: All right, my friends, I hope that this was helpful.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'll talk to you next week.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, if you're at a crossroads in your relationship and you do not know what to do, maybe you're wondering if it can work, maybe you're not even sure if that's what you want.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: I have some good news for you.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: You do not have to figure this out alone.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: I invite you to go check out my 12-week coaching program called Before You Break Up.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of our time together, you are either going to feel more connected to your partner or spouse, or you're going to have the clarity and the confidence to know that parting ways is the best choice.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: So stop what you're doing and go visit kahoskins.com to learn more.