Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #109| Pro-Con Lists Are Failing You: The Real Way To Make Empowered Decisions That Work and Help You Gain Productivity
Transcript
- 0:00Bridget Meadows: The people who are happiest in their careers hold their career paths lightly and treat them like an experiment, not an identity.
- 0:13Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:20Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
- 0:25Michelle Gauthier: On this show we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences and in each episode you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease and relaxation to your life.
- 0:36Michelle Gauthier: Hey friend, thanks for joining today.
- 0:45Michelle Gauthier: I hope you're feeling good and back into your regularly scheduled life.
- 0:49Michelle Gauthier: For me, January started off a little bit rocky around here, but we are cooking with gas now.
- 0:55Michelle Gauthier: I've got a great episode for you today and I'm really excited to share it with you.
- 0:59Michelle Gauthier: I'm going to be talking with Bridget Meadows.
- 1:01Michelle Gauthier: She's also a coach and she has a very interesting transformation story herself.
- 1:06Michelle Gauthier: She had a long career in science and innovation and now she is a coach and she focuses a lot on decision making.
- 1:13Michelle Gauthier: So today she's going to teach us about how to make decisions, big or small, without the stress and self-doubt that we often feel when we're making decisions.
- 1:23Michelle Gauthier: There are a couple great actionable things in this podcast episode that you will be able to just take and start using in your day-to-day life.
- 1:32Michelle Gauthier: So thank you so much, Bridget, for joining me today and let's say hello.
- 1:36Michelle Gauthier: Hi, michelle.
- 1:38Michelle Gauthier: Thank you, I'm excited too.
- 1:39Michelle Gauthier: Yes, okay, so tell us how you got into coaching.
- 1:44Bridget Meadows: Well, it sort of happened really slowly over time and also suddenly and all at once.
- 1:50Bridget Meadows: So I had a long career in science and innovation roles.
- 1:55Bridget Meadows: I did a lot of different roles and had really fun things that I did, exciting work in, like launching new products and putting on big training programs and mitigating big risks, and all with the background of just science, research, technology.
- 2:10Bridget Meadows: I couldn't have imagined I had sort of any entrepreneurial spirit at all.
- 2:14Bridget Meadows: I really liked the security of working for others and being able to drive change through an organization with the subject matter expert that I was.
- 2:23Bridget Meadows: And then also I had this like slow, creeping realization that I really just wasn't happy.
- 2:31Bridget Meadows: You know I had kind of achieved that goal.
- 2:33Bridget Meadows: This is a common thing I hear among you know, women, my age-ish, you know, I loved a lot of things about my work still, I loved my teams, I loved helping them solve problems, bringing the new products to launch, big changes, getting paid, having a flexible schedule and you know, sort of the stability of working for a company felt really good and I was great at it.
- 2:57Bridget Meadows: But there was still something that was just sort of on the edges, just digging at me, like I wanted something else, something was missing and I just felt really disconnected to the way I kind of wanted to be connected to my work.
- 3:09Bridget Meadows: I don't know if it was a little bit of maybe burnout or you know, COVID, the world, the way the industry has changed, but that was just this slow creep in the background and then three things happened all at once.
- 3:21Bridget Meadows: I had a very dear friend who died just very suddenly, and those things, you know, they just turn everything upside down when they happened.
- 3:30Bridget Meadows: So of course, there's that big period of grieving and crisis, but when you come out of that immediate crisis mode, you have a perspective that has shifted.
- 3:39Bridget Meadows: And that's really what happened to me.
- 3:42Bridget Meadows: I went from thinking, you know, it is what it is and work is fine and I should be grateful and things are great - they're great, right?
- 3:50Bridget Meadows: To completely going, I cannot feel this way anymore.
- 3:54Bridget Meadows: I just can't.
- 3:55Bridget Meadows: Something has to change and it was really a big shift.
- 3:59Bridget Meadows: It's cliche, but it was that whole, like, life is too short.
- 4:02Bridget Meadows: I just can't feel this way anymore.
- 4:04Bridget Meadows: I also started working with you in that same time frame, so became a client of yours to help me with this sort of like overwhelm I was feeling and also partnering that with, like I'm ready for a big change.
- 4:16Bridget Meadows: And the last thing and maybe the most sort of groundbreaking to my perspective, believe it or not, was I got this piece of advice that sort of brought it all together, and it was this - I want to read it because I want to make sure I'm getting it absolutely right: The people who are happiest in their careers hold their career paths lightly and treat them like an experiment, not an identity.
- 4:36Bridget Meadows: I wish I could remember where I heard that from Listening to a lot of podcasts and reading a lot, but that hit me just in like this big mind- blowing way and just opened up all this freedom to think about my career path not as a thing I could fail at or a thing that was my identity, but an experiment where I could go try new things.
- 4:56Michelle Gauthier: Yes, oh, that's amazing and that's such such a gift that came out of such a tough situation.
- 5:03Michelle Gauthier: It just sounds like your intuition was kind of knocking on your door and you were able to not listen to it until you tragically lost your friend.
- 5:12Michelle Gauthier: And then you were able to say, I've really got to do something about this, and then just let - because I work with lots of people who are in that exact same position as you are, and I too was in that exact same position of, I don't know what it is, but I can't do this anymore.
- 5:25Michelle Gauthier: The thoughts, like, you're talking about, like, but this is who I am, I'm a scientist, I work in this certain industry, I can't live without my paycheck, you know we have all these thoughts about it, and so I think it's wonderful that you came across that quote that spoke so much to you of it's all just an experiment.
- 5:43Michelle Gauthier: Let's just give it a try and see what happens.
- 5:46Bridget Meadows: Yeah, and I do not recommend a major life crisis being the thing that makes you listen to yourself a little bit harder.
- 5:53Bridget Meadows: Yeah, I don't wish that on anybody, but inevitably, if something that makes you listen to your own intuition like that, you really ought to start doing and I did, and I felt suddenly this sense of clarity I had not had in a long time and I realized I was really actually very well set up to make a big shift and to take a risk, and maybe even those risks weren't as risky as I thought they were.
- 6:18Bridget Meadows: From that, if I were to share something with the listeners, it would be, when your intuition is whispering, start paying attention.
- 6:25Bridget Meadows: You don't have to wait till it's screaming.
- 6:26Michelle Gauthier: Yes, I waited till it screamed too, though I feel like it's human nature to be like it's fine, it's fine.
- 6:31Michelle Gauthier: Well, I invited you on the podcast today because I absolutely love the work that you're doing and I think it's such an important thing for women, and especially overwhelmed women, and that is focusing on making decisions, and I can't wait to get your expert advice on how we can all become better at making decisions.
- 6:51Michelle Gauthier: But let's start by having you tell us are women sometimes bad at making decisions, and why is it so hard to make big decisions?
- 7:00Bridget Meadows: Right.
- 7:00Bridget Meadows: I mean, it's a super good question and I think it's fair to say that it's super hard, right?
- 7:04Bridget Meadows: Maybe we're not bad at it.
- 7:05Bridget Meadows: You could say, actually, that we're really really good at it, because we make a lot of decisions in a day.
- 7:13Bridget Meadows: The average adult makes like 35,000 decisions in a day, micro- decisions, most of them.
- 7:19Bridget Meadows: I would probably venture a guess that women make more than that, if that's the average, because I imagine we're having to handle a lot of it.
- 7:27Bridget Meadows: There's still decisions being made, but micro- decisions are things like what to wear, what to eat, do I take the interstate or the back road?
- 7:35Bridget Meadows: When do I put gas in my tank?
- 7:37Bridget Meadows: What do I say in the meeting?
- 7:38Bridget Meadows: Do I say anything?
- 7:39Bridget Meadows: Just those all day long decisions.
- 7:42Bridget Meadows: By comparison, children make like three thousand in a day, which is still a lot, but they've got so much more order and structure on their lives and we live in this adult world with so many choices and so many options that, frankly, it's a lot to process and the effort of making all those micro- decisions accumulates over the day, accumulates over the day and by the end of the day we're in this almost like decision fatigue, exhaustion state, because it's just like I can't decide one more thing.
- 8:10Bridget Meadows: Would somebody else just choose something for dinner?
- 8:12Bridget Meadows: I cannot make one more decision.
- 8:13Bridget Meadows: Or like what are we going to watch on TV?
- 8:15Bridget Meadows: I'm exhausted, I'm just decisioned out.
- 8:17Bridget Meadows: So we're starting at a little bit of a deficit already, and then we get into a bigger decision, not a micro one, not one that's going to be minimally important to our day, but the one where the stakes get higher.
- 8:29Bridget Meadows: And these decisions are things like what job do I take, or do I move to another location, or do I bring up this topic that's going to cause a big conflict, that has bigger potential sort of ripple effects in your life, and we just we get so worried about messing it up.
- 8:46Bridget Meadows: And it's just the stakes are so big and we're already in this deficit that we just we don't know what to do with it.
- 8:51Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so I'm pulling out a couple of things that you just said that I feel like are moments for me.
- 8:56Michelle Gauthier: Number one is that children make 3000 decisions a day versus us.
- 9:00Michelle Gauthier: I know you said 35,000 for the average adult.
- 9:02Michelle Gauthier: The reason why that really stuck out to me is it's just a good reminder that when they say kids like structure and maybe that's why maybe they like it because they don't have to make so many decisions all the time.
- 9:14Bridget Meadows: Yeah, they depend on it.
- 9:14Bridget Meadows: Their brains and their bodies are doing so much growing and other things that frankly ours are sort of done doing, yeah, that they need that kind of structure.
- 9:22Bridget Meadows: And it's also worth saying you know, you think about kids and decision making.
- 9:26Bridget Meadows: There's that saying that, like you know, teenagers, their brains aren't fully developed and they're reckless and whatever.
- 9:32Bridget Meadows: They're impulsive and bad at decision making.
- 9:34Bridget Meadows: Their portions of the brain are literally not as skilled as an adult in evaluating what can go wrong.
- 9:41Bridget Meadows: So they're not bad at making decisions,
- 9:46Bridget Meadows: they're bad at thinking of the consequences of decisions because their brain just hasn't developed that capability yet.
- 9:50Bridget Meadows: Unlike adults, we're super good at evaluating all the things that can go wrong, actually.
- 9:55Bridget Meadows: Maybe too good.
- 9:57Bridget Meadows: It's a little good sometimes.
- 9:58Bridget Meadows: So we get - and this is why things like pro and con lists aren't always helpful.
- 10:03Bridget Meadows: You know, you make a pro and con list, I'm going to figure this out myself, I am a smart person, I can do this.
- 10:09Bridget Meadows: Here's all the pros and here's all the cons.
- 10:11Bridget Meadows: And then you have a couple lists full of facts.
- 10:14Bridget Meadows: That has not moved you any closer to making a decision, because you're still thinking of all those sort of bad things that could go wrong.
- 10:21Bridget Meadows: Because our brain has literally evolved to keep us safe.
- 10:25Bridget Meadows: It doesn't want us to be happy, it wants us to be safe.
- 10:29Michelle Gauthier: I love that.
- 10:30Michelle Gauthier: That is such a good realization.
- 10:32Michelle Gauthier: It's such a good point.
- 10:33Michelle Gauthier: I was talking on the phone the other day.
- 10:35Michelle Gauthier: I had to call a lawyer because my son got another speeding ticket, and in Missouri you can keep points off your license by hiring a lawyer, and they do all the stuff behind the scenes to get it to where you don't get points, et cetera, et cetera.
- 10:48Michelle Gauthier: But anyway, I called this woman on a Monday morning.
- 10:50Michelle Gauthier: I explained to her my son, who's 17, got a ticket, blah, blah, blah.
- 10:53Michelle Gauthier: And she's like, yeah, those 17 to 25 year- olds really keep me in business.
- 10:57Michelle Gauthier: And I thought, that is such an interesting - I mean, when you just said that I'm like, yeah, because I never speed, it's like the consequences aren't worth it.
- 11:06Michelle Gauthier: You get there seconds faster or you might have to get a ticket, whatever.
- 11:09Michelle Gauthier: Those are the kinds of things that are always going through my head that, apparently, my son is as of yet unable to do.
- 11:15Michelle Gauthier: So I just I love that.
- 11:17Michelle Gauthier: And then your second point about the pro con list.
- 11:20Michelle Gauthier: I've had many clients come to me with a pro-con list and the list is there and there are facts there and probably all true, but it seems to not help.
- 11:28Michelle Gauthier: So what do you suggest instead?
- 11:30Michelle Gauthier: What would be something better to do?
- 11:33Bridget Meadows: Pro-con lists are great because it does get the facts down, but what we have to kind of look into deeper and as a coach you understand this too, those might not all be on that sheet.
- 11:48Bridget Meadows: You know that's a fear or something that hasn't actually been worried all the way through.
- 11:50Bridget Meadows: You know the teenager is speeding because I got to get somewhere and no big deal.
- 11:53Bridget Meadows: You're not speeding because you're going, this is not worth it.
- 11:57Bridget Meadows: I could get, you know, I could get into an accident, my insurance could go up, I could get really hurt.
- 12:01Bridget Meadows: I don't have time to take off.
- 12:05Bridget Meadows: I don't want this to be on my record.
- 12:06Bridget Meadows: Like you can see all those potential things and that's a good skill to keep us safe, but it's not a good skill to bring change to our lives.
- 12:11Bridget Meadows: So part of what I do with my clients is talk them through all those, oh this could happen and see if that's actually true, cause sometimes it's not.
- 12:20Bridget Meadows: And so the pro and con list can be a helpful starting point.
- 12:23Bridget Meadows: But really we have to get to the feelings underneath that, like there's a paradox of knowledge here, that we know all these things and also we don't know a lot of things and the things we imagine to be true are almost never that bad, and the things we don't imagine to be true are almost always better than we're going to assume, like our brains really are kind of, I mean, they're kind of jerks to us in this way, because it's all about safety, it's all about keeping us from being unsafe.
- 12:50Michelle Gauthier: They always just want us to stay - yes.
- 12:52Michelle Gauthier: They're like just stay the same, you don't need any changes.
- 12:54Bridget Meadows: Just keep on doing this forever.
- 12:56Bridget Meadows: Yes, exactly yeah, yeah.
- 12:58Bridget Meadows: And so that's why people turn to pro and con lists.
- 13:01Bridget Meadows: That's even why people turn to things like unplugging from the decision completely, like I can't do it, I'm going to let the universe tell me.
- 13:08Bridget Meadows: And then they do nothing because they're waiting for the universe to tell them and like no shade on the universe.
- 13:12Bridget Meadows: But I don't want to wait for the universe to tell me what to do.
- 13:16Bridget Meadows: I know we can figure it out, and so that's where we kind of come together to be like okay, would we do if we could?
- 13:30Bridget Meadows: You know, because one of my superpowers from my career and history that I bring into the coaching space is I am really really good at risk assessments.
- 13:33Bridget Meadows: So, this could happen.
- 13:34Bridget Meadows: Well, what can we do to prevent it from happening?
- 13:35Bridget Meadows: Is it likely to happen?
- 13:37Bridget Meadows: How severe would it be if it would?
- 13:38Bridget Meadows: Maybe a little bit what my kids call neuro spicy in my wiring, a little bit too.
- 13:44Bridget Meadows: So like thinking through those things in a very sort of like systemic way is something that I think is really helpful to help people see the possibilities in front of them and not be hampered by all these cons.
- 13:59Bridget Meadows: And so when you go back to that pro and con list we started with, but really dig into not only the emotions but the realities of what we fear and what is actually real.
- 14:07Bridget Meadows: Some of the cons go away, some of the pros go away and new possibilities sort of emerge.
- 14:15Michelle Gauthier: So if you and I would have been talking about this when I was considering quitting my job and starting a coaching business, my cons would have been no regular paycheck.
- 14:26Michelle Gauthier: I think is one of the first things that I would have said.
- 14:29Michelle Gauthier: So like if I were doing a decision session with you.
- 14:32Michelle Gauthier: What would you say to that?
- 14:33Michelle Gauthier: Or how would you help me think through that?
- 14:35Bridget Meadows: Yeah, that's a great question.
- 14:37Bridget Meadows: So we take those things that I call what ifs.
- 14:40Bridget Meadows: What if I can't get a regular paycheck?
- 15:04Bridget Meadows: That encourages again, like our brain, to spiral and catastrophize.
- 15:05Bridget Meadows: If I can't get a paycheck, I won't be able to pay my bills, I won't be able to afford my house, I'm going to become homeless and penniless.
- 15:08Bridget Meadows: And you know what will I do then?
- 15:09Bridget Meadows: We shift the what if, and this is a hack people can do at home, shift into even if.
- 15:11Bridget Meadows: Okay.
- 15:11Bridget Meadows: So, even if you don't have a regular paycheck, that, even if literally turns on your brain center that is a problem solving center gets you out of that emotional like catastrophizing center, because your brain is also really smart and it shifts you into even if even if I don't have a regular paycheck, I can, and then it's whatever the situation is.
- 15:29Bridget Meadows: Oh my gosh, that's brilliant advice.
- 15:31Bridget Meadows: I can rely on my savings.
- 15:33Bridget Meadows: I could consult part-time, so it opens up possibilities instead of shutting down like this bad thing is going to happen.
- 15:42Michelle Gauthier: Yes, I love that so much.
- 15:42Michelle Gauthier: Oh my gosh.
- 15:42Michelle Gauthier: Write that down everybody.
- 15:43Michelle Gauthier: Even if, instead of what if?
- 15:45Michelle Gauthier: Because even when you just reworded it, I felt more calm inside.
- 15:50Bridget Meadows: It's just, it turns off that limbic system and turns on the thinking part you know, turns on the part that is really working on your sort of true logic centers.
- 15:59Bridget Meadows: You could also look at like just flip the worry on its head, right, but it becomes a little bit of toxic positivity, like what you know, what if they hate it?
- 16:08Bridget Meadows: It becomes well, what if they love it?
- 16:09Bridget Meadows: But it's harder to believe that.
- 16:12Bridget Meadows: And so if you use something that's a little more neutral and even if you can reassure yourself that, yeah, a bad thing could happen, but I'm resilient enough to make a plan, I can overcome it, and sometimes just having those plans, that's mitigating the risk.
- 16:26Bridget Meadows: That is, taking the fear right out of the bad thing that we were just so worried about to begin with.
- 16:31Michelle Gauthier: Yes, I think that's so great, because when you said, even if I don't have a steady paycheck, my brain immediately filled in as you asked the question I'll figure it out.
- 16:39Michelle Gauthier: I didn't even have the specific steps, but just I'll figure it out instead of - I'm making sure that I'm totally understanding what you're saying - instead of me trying to say I'll always have a paycheck, because that didn't feel true.
- 16:52Bridget Meadows: Even money will appear is a toxic positivity kind of thing.
- 16:56Bridget Meadows: You can just believe in that.
- 16:57Bridget Meadows: Well, that's not very realistic for most people.
- 16:59Bridget Meadows: But you know, if you understand, like, oh, even if that doesn't happen in the way that I imagined it should, I'm letting go of that should and offering up.
- 17:10Bridget Meadows: You know, my brain can offer up so many more possibilities of what happens.
- 17:13Michelle Gauthier: Yes, oh my gosh, that's so good.
- 17:14Michelle Gauthier: I love it.
- 17:15Michelle Gauthier: Awesome.
- 17:16Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so if you're working with someone and you're helping them get to a decision and they make the decision and then they go do it, what if it's the wrong one?
- 17:25Bridget Meadows: Well, that's a really good question too.
- 17:27Bridget Meadows: I think it's important to remember that most decisions are not as permanent as we think they are, so I'll encourage you to look at decisions this way and this is not my material, this is somebody else's and I think it's very relevant and helpful here.
- 17:39Bridget Meadows: Decisions can be a hat, a haircut, or a tattoo.
- 17:43Bridget Meadows: So you've got three categories there.
- 17:46Bridget Meadows: A hat can be changed instantly, right, and you can try another quickly.
- 17:50Bridget Meadows: So you know, like what am I going to eat that day?
- 17:52Bridget Meadows: That's a hat, like I can change that, I can save that for tomorrow, whatever.
- 17:55Bridget Meadows: Taking up a hobby that you can just drop - big deal.
- 17:58Bridget Meadows: That's a hat, so easily undone.
- 18:02Bridget Meadows: A haircut takes a bit to grow out but ultimately is reversible.
- 18:08Bridget Meadows: You might look a little foolish for a while.
- 18:11Bridget Meadows: You might have to work around some of the decisions that you've made and oh, what was I thinking when I got bangs?
- 18:15Bridget Meadows: But there's a styling tool like that and you can work around it and it will get back to where you want it to be at some point with some work.
- 18:25Bridget Meadows: And a lot of people think that their decision is a tattoo, permanent, so painful to remove.
- 18:32Bridget Meadows: Even if I remove it, it's going to leave a scar, like I just can't backtrack this.
- 18:36Bridget Meadows: A lot of people feel like a new job or taking a big step in education or moving to a new city is actually a tattoo, but most of them are haircuts.
- 18:44Bridget Meadows: Tattoos are things like getting married or divorced, having kids, or making a big investment you can't get back.
- 18:51Bridget Meadows: Tattoo decisions are pretty rare and those are the ones you want to really think about and be super sure you want to make them beforehand just like getting that tattoo stamped on your chest.
- 18:59Bridget Meadows: Before you do that, it is going to be uncomfortable to reverse that one.
- 19:03Bridget Meadows: Yes, you know, when you get a decision like a haircut and it's like, well, I can do this and worst case it'll grow back, you know, worst case I can fix that with a little bit of time.
- 19:12Bridget Meadows: But yeah, I help folks with all of these.
- 19:14Bridget Meadows: You know, sometimes we think they're huge and they're much smaller and we just work through the details of what can we do to make them feel manageable.
- 19:22Michelle Gauthier: I love it.
- 19:23Michelle Gauthier: That's so great.
- 19:23Michelle Gauthier: Ok, so one of my favorite things that I see you doing as a coach that I haven't seen before is offering a decision session.
- 19:32Michelle Gauthier: So it's like a one session, bring me the decision you're trying to decide on and then you work through it.
- 19:38Michelle Gauthier: So tell us a little bit about what that is and what it would look like if somebody is right now listening and they're trying to make a big decision in their life and they set up that session with you, what will happen?
- 19:48Bridget Meadows: Okay.
- 19:48Bridget Meadows: So the decision session is for capable, smart women who just find themselves at this decision point and you've been sitting with it for a while.
- 19:57Bridget Meadows: Right, you're thinking about it, you're overthinking about it, you're losing sleep.
- 20:00Bridget Meadows: You just can't find a way through.
- 20:01Bridget Meadows: And that is where we can kind of work together to dig out why that is.
- 20:08Bridget Meadows: I've helped people decide things like, do they quit their job or stay?
- 20:11Bridget Meadows: Do they move, not move?
- 20:13Bridget Meadows: I actually had a great example of a client who wanted to move to help some family and also didn't want to move because she really liked that she had some buffer space from her family and some peace from some other family members.
- 20:27Bridget Meadows: That were not the best relationships and she was worried that if she moved back she would be exposing herself to all these big feels and big relationship issues and she didn't know if she wanted to do that.
- 20:37Bridget Meadows: But as we started talking through it and talked about her values and talked about what it would mean to go and what it would mean to not go, her of not going would have disappeared because she would have felt so bad that she wasn't helping.
- 20:50Bridget Meadows: It was a really important person to her that she wanted to go help and the idea of not helping that person absolutely just evaporated the one thing that was keeping her.
- 21:01Bridget Meadows: She decided to go in that one hour session.
- 21:04Bridget Meadows: She got there.
- 21:05Bridget Meadows: S he was surprised, but we talked about that and decided, yeah, that was the right move for her, based on all the things out of her own brain.
- 21:12Bridget Meadows: You know this is not a decision I make for my clients, but it is me trying to pull out some of their real motivations and real fears and trying to help them sort of solve those, because that's a complicated problem to break down on your own.
- 21:25Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, for sure it is.
- 21:27Michelle Gauthier: And it's funny.
- 21:27Michelle Gauthier: Sometimes people say, oh, you're a life coach, you just tell people what to do.
- 21:30Michelle Gauthier: I'm like, the opposite.
- 21:31Michelle Gauthier: I help people figure out what they want to do.
- 21:34Michelle Gauthier: It sounds like that's what you're doing.
- 21:35Michelle Gauthier: Yes, because we really would never want someone else to make a decision for us.
- 21:39Michelle Gauthier: In fact, we don't like it all when other people make decisions for us most of the time, unless I'm tired, you make dinner, decide whatever, but big decisions for sure.
- 21:49Bridget Meadows: And that decision session that is either, you know it can be a standalone session and that's all they need to get the ball rolling, or it can be an intro to working together for longer.
- 21:57Bridget Meadows: So I have some folks that I have just done the one and done and I have some folks that I've worked with for longer after that because that first decision kicked off other changes and they wanted to keep working together to kind of work through those issues.
- 22:09Michelle Gauthier: Yeah.
- 22:09Bridget Meadows: No, one hour doesn't seem like enough time, but I promise you, I'm really good at this we will get there, and if we don't get there in an hour, I will either keep working with you at no charge or you get your money back, so it's guaranteed.
- 22:21Bridget Meadows: Yes, it's a unique process and it's really fun to go through.
- 22:24Bridget Meadows: It's been incredibly helpful for me, and I love being able to be on the other side of it as well.
- 22:29Michelle Gauthier: Yeah yeah.
- 22:30Michelle Gauthier: It's such a cool combination of using and you're a really good example for people out there listening who are thinking well, I already have this steady job and I don't know if I want to get into something new, Although coaching is something new for you.
- 22:42Michelle Gauthier: There's so much of this particular skill you have that comes from being a scientist and from evaluating risk and all that stuff, so it's a perfect combination of everything that you've been your whole life and that you can give this unique service to women.
- 22:58Bridget Meadows: So I love that and my excellent coach, Michelle Gauthier, helped me see that in the process and helped me have that confidence of, yeah, I have a natural set of skills that lend themselves really well.
- 23:11Bridget Meadows: So, you know, from leading teams and coaching, individual direct reports and things that, to just sort of having this mindset of risk management, it all has been really possible to bring that together.
- 23:22Bridget Meadows: So coaching helped me and I love the idea of having it help others.
- 23:26Michelle Gauthier: That is so great.
- 23:27Michelle Gauthier: Just a random question, didn't you find me and my coaching from the podcast?
- 23:32Michelle Gauthier: Yes, did you listen to the podcast first?
- 23:35Michelle Gauthier: Ok, so when I'm always saying, if you love this podcast, would you rate and share so that it's shown to other people, it got shown to Bridget.
- 23:42Michelle Gauthier: Here she is bringing all this good into the world as a result of listening.
- 23:46Michelle Gauthier: So full circle moment, awesome.
- 23:50Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so we will put the link in the show notes about how to set up a decision session with you.
- 23:55Michelle Gauthier: Thank you, okay, that's it for today.
- 24:02Michelle Gauthier: Thank you so much to Bridget for joining us to talk all about how to make good decisions, and if you want to set up a decision session with her, you can do so in - you can do so by clicking on the link in the show notes and, like I mentioned before, if this podcast resonated with you or if any episodes have resonated with you, it would mean so much to me if you would take a minute and rate and review and share this podcast.
- 24:29Michelle Gauthier: I feel so lucky that Bridget found this podcast and that I got to work with her as a client, and now she is helping all kinds of other women, the good just keeps going along.
- 24:39Michelle Gauthier: Have a great week.
- 24:40Michelle Gauthier: The good just keeps spreading and getting bigger and bigger.
- 24:44Michelle Gauthier: Think about the power of someone.
- 24:48Michelle Gauthier: Think about the power of a coach who I worked with, empowering me, and then me doing the same for Bridget and now Bridget doing the same for a whole bunch of other women.
- 24:57Michelle Gauthier: It's just cool, the ripple effect that we can create as women who are dedicated to helping each other really just live our best lives and be empowered and be able to do what we want with our lives.
- 25:08Michelle Gauthier: Have a great week.
- 25:09Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 25:17Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthiercom.
- 25:23Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.