Episode 54 - Reconsidering Your Decisions - Is it a Good Idea or Are You just Being Flaky
Are you reconsidering something you decided on earlier?
But are you not sure whether this is a smart idea or a cop-out?
Then tune in for this week's episode where I give you a list of smart questions to help you figure it out.
With the questions, you'll quickly get clarity on whether it is a good idea to rethink things - or whether you are indeed being a bit flaky.
You'll learn how to differentiate between:
true goals vs. 'should' goals
avoidance of discomfort vs. change of circumstance
the superficial stories and the underlying motivations to change your decision
And last, but definitely not least: the importance of having your own back, always (as illustrated by a Brother's Grimm Fairytale).
You’ll also hear all about my decision to cancel a trip to Venice and spend a week in the North of the Netherlands instead…
Full Episode Text
Episode 54 - Reconsidering your decisions - when is it a good idea and when are you just being flaky?
Welcome to this episode of the managing the smart mind podcast with Master Certified Coach Else Kramer, a.k.a. Coach Kramer.
This week, we’re going to dive into the topic of coming back on your decisions.
And the reason this is top of mind for me is that we have just completely changed our plan for our Spring Break.
We were due to go to Venice for five days - I’d booked a beautiful apartment months ago and was excited to show my daughter this amazing city, see lots of art and enjoy some delicious seafood.
But as our departure approached I got more and more stressed out.
I noticed that I was actually dreading the whole trip. Which is weird, because
I love Venice
Spending hours in museums is my idea of a perfect time
We’d found a perfect relatively sensory-friendly place to stay.
I’d been looking forward to showing my now 16-yr old the city for over four years.
It wasn’t until my husband asked whether I wouldn’t prefer to cancel that I realised I did.
And even when I asked I needed a LOT of time to process - first the possibility of cancelling, of changing my mind. And then of coming to terms with it.
But…but….but… my brain went.
And of course, being a human with a human brain, I immediately started to feel bad. Bad because I started projecting the story that ‘I was ruining everybody’s holiday’.
Now I have the most amazing husband - and when I checked in with him he said ‘listen, it’s still mostly refundable, and I don’t want you to go on a holiday you dread. It’s not going to be fun for any of us. We’ll go to Venice some other time.”
Wise man.
Which left my daughter.
I asked her ‘hey, we’re actually considering canceling Venice - how do you feel about that?’ and I saw this massive relief in her face.
Turns out, she has a test week straight after and had been stressed out about it without even realising.
She admitted that it would be pretty amazing to NOT go to Venice.
Wow.
So this thing which I thought I had to force myself to go do and enjoy, turned out to be optional. AND my decision to not go helped someone else as well.
Now I’ll tell you more about what we ended up doing instead at the end of the podcast, but first let’s talk about figuring out when it makes sense to change your mind.
Because, are you not just being flaky (and for those of you whose 1st or 2nd language isn’t English, this means something like being unreliable, changing your mind all the time, all those things)? Shouldn’t you just tough it out, stick to your guns, move through the discomfort and DO IT ANYWAY?
Well, yes. Sometimes you should.
And sometimes you shouldn’t.
So how do you know which is which?
Which, by the way, is an essential ingredient in having/building self-trust: trusting yourself and your decisions to be SOLID.
So here’s how I look at this.
I run the decision past a list of questions. And I suggest you do the same.
So for the rest of this podcast, I want you to think of something you want or wanted to change your mind about so you can experience how it works in real time.
Got it?
Here goes.
First of all, go back to when you first made the decision.
Did you make it for the right reasons? (i.e. is this something YOU want?).
Or were you people-pleasing, status-satisfying, falling in line with cultural conditioning?
If it’s the latter then you definitely want to rethink your decision.
If you did make it for the right reasons, here is another important check:
Is your decision in alignment with your core values?
Maybe you volunteered for a position that is taking WAY more time than you expected - and this clashes with your core value of prioritising family time.
Or you got hired for a job where you’re asked to do things you consider unethical.
In those cases, you definitely want to reconsider.
OK, so if this hasn’t cleared things up for you yet, here’s the next question:
Do you know why you want to change your mind?
It could be that new information has come to light.
Or that circumstances have changed in a way that make you rethink the whole thing.
Or it could be that you decided to do something (like write a boot) which turns out to be much harder and uncomfortable than you’d imagined - you want to get away from the discomfort.
Whatever it is, figure out the reason or reasons you want to change your mind. And then ask:
Do you like these reasons?
Humans with smart minds are especially good at creating new stories and arguments why we shouldn’t finish project A but need to start project B instead - they’re so good that we often convince ourselves that we need to revisit our decisions.
But when we dig a little bit deeper into the motivation for changing our decision it becomes easier to see whether it’s ‘flaky’ or not.
Are wanting to change your decision to avoid uncomfortable emotions (including boredom)?
Then you probably don’t want to change your mind - try navigating the emotions unstead (and I have a whole series of podcasts on this with a workbook - I’ll leave a note about it in the show notes).
A lot of smart humans have created incredibly smart strategies to avoid uncomfortable emotions - and these include walking away from positions, plans and projects with what on the surface level look like amazingly good arguments.
Dig a little deeper and you’ll see that it’s just your brain’s coping strategy for avoiding discomfort.
Never a great reason to come back on a decision.
Do you want to change your decision because of emotions like guilt, shame, extreme anxiety?
These are not emotions you necessarily want to process - you want to instead find the thoughts that are causing them and change those (again, check out my mini-course on Emotional Agility to learn how to do this).
So again, not a good reason to change your mind.
Here’s another question to help you sort it out:
If success were (eventually) guaranteed, would you want to stick to your guns?
If you were able to solve all obstacles, would you want to do it?
If the answer is yes then you know what to do.
I also love a more holistic approach, dropping down into my body and then picturing the outcome of both the doing and the not doing - and checking in to see how they make me feel.
So for my holiday example pictured myself in Venice, just wandering around - and checked in how that felt - as well as the alternative, which I’ll tell you about in a minute. The latter felt so much more calm and spacious! My body immediately gave my brain the answer.
And this question is useful for decisions you made a while, sometimes even years ago:
Would you still want to do or have the same thing or experience or person in your life today?
Now there’s one final part we need to address here - because a lot of our decisions impact other people.
We’ve already talked about guilt not being a useful emotions to work from earlier, but how DO we then take into account other people’s needs in a constructive manner?
This is where you want to communicate, rather than solve the problem in your own head.
A lot of us think we know what other people are thinking.
We’re SO wrong.
I thought my daughter would be gutted if I cancelled Venice.
It wasn’t until I asked her that I learned that she was actually massively relieved.
So the rule here is: never assume. Just ask: how do you think it will impact you if I change my decision?
And if it they think it will impact them negatively, you have to check in with yourself and your values and priorities - and then consciously decide what you want to do (which may not necessarily be what they want - but it totally could).
Last but not least: whatever your decide to decide - don’t second-guess yourself.
Decide that this was the best decision ever (and if you are confused on how to do this check out the Episodes on decision making).
We decided to see whether we could rent a holiday home somewhere in the Netherlands instead of going to La Serenissima and lo and behold - an amazing villa we stayed in last year, with a beautiful view of a lake, was still available and actually massively discounted.
So instead of staying in beautiful Italy we are headed for the bleak North of Holland with a big box of crime novels and other books - and totally stoked about it.
And there is actually a tale by the Brothers’ Grimm about never making yourself wrong whatever you have decided, which drove me mad as a child.
It’s about Happy Hans, who gets a clump of gold, exchanges it for a horse, then the horse for a cow and so on and so forth until he actually ends up with nothing.
Which delights him - because it means no heavy load to carry.
So - if you want to change your mind about something, whether big or small, you now know which questions to ask to figure out whether you’re being smart or being flaky.
And whatever you do decide just make sure to be like Happy Hans and have your own back - always.
Have a fabulous, non-flaky week,
Else a.k.a. Coach Kramer
Are you ready to stop feeling unfocused, overstretched and disconnected? Then I can help. DM me on LinkedIn, or Instagram to learn how you can work with me, or email me via podcast@elsekramer.com.
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