A Spell for Making Decisions

Life is full of decisions to be made, and perhaps you - like me - find them perplexing sometimes.

This episode exposes some of the mind tricks that make decision-making difficult, redefines what a “good” decision actually is, and gives you the most helpful thing to consider as you’re choosing your next step forward.

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Mentioned:

Mind Witchery Episode 11, A Spell for Trusting Your Next Move.

Make Magic:

Wherever it’s time for you to make a decision, shift away from Right/Wrong and toward Values and Qualities.

What values are most important that area of your life?

What qualities do you want to cultivate?

Who do you want to be and become?

Which next step takes you in that direction?

Transcript: A Spell for Making Decisions

Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here. 

Hello, my love. I’m glad that you’re here with me today to think about decision-making. This is up for me personally right now because just last week, I made a, well, what felt like a really big decision. I decided to make an investment in myself and my business, and it is both exciting and scary, as many decisions are. It is making me feel expansive but also it’s unmoored me a little bit. I feel not as solid underneath my feet.

So, I’ve been thinking about my decision-making process, and some of my thinking around decision-making, and I’m noticing that depending on the way I am thinking about what a decision even is, I will feel either better and more excited and more hopeful about it, or I will feel worse and more scared and more anxious about it. So, I wanted to share with you some of that thinking, and then finally sort of a spell or a way of approaching a decision that I think is most helpful.

All right. So, let’s start out with some lies. [laugh] Let’s start out with some lies that our brain, maybe our culture but certainly our human minds will tell us about decisions. 

Here’s the first one. That there exists a right decision, a correct decision. I’m going to say that is very, very rarely true because of the co-creative nature of reality. That is, I am not the only one deciding out here. We’re all deciding. We’re all making decisions, and we’re all making decisions together. So, my one decision has an impact, but my one decision is not the end-all, be-all. 

Additionally, when I’m making a decision, I know what I know, which is not everything. I’m not omniscient. I don’t know every single piece that’s in play. I don’t know exactly what is going to happen. So, how could I possibly make the right decision when I neither know everything nor am in charge completely? OK. So, there’s no right decision. 

Also, there are almost no final decisions. Right? [laugh] I just—when I hear “final decision,” I get in my mind that Who Wants to be a Millionaire show—is that what that show is called? Who Wants to be a Millionaire, where it’s like, “Is that your final answer? Is this your final decision?”

I cannot think of very many decisions at all that are final because life keeps going after this decision is made. So, you decide to buy the house, and co-creation continues in that house, in that neighborhood, in your work, in your family. Buying the house is a decision that now gives you a new set of decisions. 

Let’s say you decide to leave the relationship. OK. But that other person still exists in the world, and may change or not. Maybe that decision to leave the relationship starts a whole new chain of events where things really change within the relationship. Again, reality continues to be co-created. And, yes, I have made a substantial contribution to that co-creation by saying, “I’m done here.” But that doesn’t mean that we’re all done. We will continue to step forward.

What I’ve done is I have now created for myself new decisions to make. Will I move away? Will I start dating? Will I hire a therapist? I have new decisions now to make within the context of I’m done with the relationship that I left.

OK. So, (a) no right decisions; (b) very, very, very few final decisions. One more. If you’re feeling pressure around a, quote, “big decision”—around a big decision—it can be helpful to remember that a great deal of small decisions end up having really big impacts. I have a fun example for this.

Once upon a time, almost two years ago, I swiped right on a Bumble profile. I swiped right on a dating app. I said, “Yeah, this guy seems interesting.” And that decision—that little, tiny decision to swipe right, which is something I did—OK, to be honest, I did not do it that often. I was pretty picky. But that decision to swipe right ended up bringing me into a relationship with a great partner, and actually a partner who is largely responsible for getting me finally to create this podcast.

He listened to me speak and work a lot, especially in the COVID days, the pandemic days, when we were locked down in 2020, and he kept encouraging me to begin. He kept encouraging me to start the podcast, and to get it out into the world. And, very honestly, without that encouragement, I don’t know if I would have done it or if I would have done it so quickly.

So, this tiny decision—“Oh, I’ll swipe right here. Oh, I’ll go for drinks with this guy”—ends up having enormous effects. And I’m sure if you look back into your life, you can find tiny decisions—itsy-bitsy decisions—to check something out, to delay a trip, to go on a trip, to strike up a conversation with someone—tiny decisions that ended up having huge effects.

So, if you happen to be—like I was last week—in the drama of, oh, my gosh, this is such a big decision, just remind yourself, hmm, we actually never know how big a decision is going to end up being. Little decisions can be big too.

OK. So, with that out of the way—no right decisions; no final decisions; there are big decisions but we maybe don’t know which are big and which aren’t—with all that pressure somewhat alleviated, let’s talk about what a decision is. What I think a decision is is it is a next step in your journey. It’s just the next step you’re going to take—which means a couple of things. 

One, there have been many steps before this, and, through those steps, you have learned about this terrain of life. You have built some strength. You have learned some lessons, and you can trust that even if you have made decisions in the past that have not turned out the way you hoped or wanted, all of that gave you incredibly valuable perspective and strength and wisdom.

Also, the journey is not done here. The journey will continue. Like I was saying before, a decision is very, very rarely final. A decision, a step, it just takes you the next decisions. So, if we think about decision-making in this kind of context of journeying, then really what we’re doing is we’re taking the next step. Each decision is a next step.

And, yes, some of them can feel dramatic when you spend a lot of money, when you step toward revealing something that’s been true for you that you’ve heretofore concealed. When you take a step that changes your circumstances significantly, that can feel enormous and, yet, it’s a step. You did not get to this point by accident. You’ve been stepping all the way, journeying all the way. And this is not the end of the journey. There are many steps to come.

So, when we are ready for the next step, but hesitating because we’re afraid or anxious or doubtful, how do we decide ourselves into a promising direction—again, not the right direction, not the good direction—in a way that is promising? Well, the first thing we need to do is to ask yourselves what are our most important values in this situation? What are the values I really want to cultivate? 

I have a client right now who is about to hire a full-time employee, and give this employee benefits and all the things. It will be a significant change in my client’s business. And, so, of course, it feels big, and it feels scary, and it feels unsettling, and there’s a lot of thoughts like, “Oh, am I making the right decision or is this a bad decision? Is this the right choice? Is this the wrong choice?”

So, in this situation, the thing to do is to say, OK, what are the values I am cultivating here inside of my business? How do I want it to feel? What do I want it to be richer in? What are the qualities I’m going for?

For this particular client, she wants more spaciousness. She wants more spaciousness—less crunch, less workload, more space—OK, spaciousness. For this client, she wants more co-creativity. There are things that she does not like doing anymore. Once upon a time, she was fine doing them. Now, she doesn’t want to. 

She wants to co-create with someone else. She wants someone else in this kitchen making these meals. She’s not a chef. That’s a metaphor. [laugh] So, she wants spaciousness. She wants co-creativity. And then for herself, she’s ready to grow in a new direction. She’s ready to grow. So, there’s growth, also, personal growth. 

So, when she comes back to this decision, “I’m going to hire a full-time employee,” and she checks in with what is she trying to cultivate—spaciousness—OK, does having another person on board help with spaciousness? In most ways, yes. In the budget, hmm, it crowds the budget a bit. But in so many ways, it helps immensely. 

Does she get more co-creativity? Definitely. Someone else is working. Someone else is creating within the business. Does she get more personal growth? Yes, she steps into a leadership role, and she makes more space for her to be able to pursue the new endeavors that she is really excited to cultivate. 

All right. So, let’s look at my decision now. My decision is also an investment but a different one. It’s an investment in coaching, actually. Investing—I, myself, am investing in a coach to help me in my next phase of creation and business.

So, as I’m making this decision, I’m asking myself, “OK. What are my values? What is important to me right now?” And, you know, my friends, growth is always important to me. Personal growth is always important to me. So, definitely that. Does investing in a coach help me grow? Yes, it does.

Another thing that I am investing in is potency. I want my business to be more potent. I want my words to reach more people. I want my coaching to be even more robust and resourceful. I have all these ideas. I want to have more potency in my business. And I know that with the help of a coach, with the bit of accountability and the focus that comes with that, I believe that’s a step in the direction of potency. 

And then finally, another thing I’m always cultivating is self-trust. I want to trust myself even more. I want to believe in my abilities even more. I want to have my own back even more. And, for me, hiring a coach helps me to do that. 

So, when we’re deciding about the step we’re ready to take, it can be helpful to kind of zoom out, and think of it in terms of values, in terms of what are the values, what are the qualities I’m wanting to create in this area of my life? What do I want more of? How do I want to feel? What’s important to me?

Let’s say you’re in a troubled relationship, and you’ve been holding back some truths because they’re scary to say. You might ask yourself, “What do I value in this relationship? What is important? What are my values here? Who do I want to be in this relationship? What are the qualities that are important to me in a relationship?”

So often we find ourselves in this place of worrying what the other person might do or might say, how they’ll react. But that’s co-creativity. We can’t know that. That’s for them to decide. The step that is ours to take—that’s yours to take, that’s mine to take—is the step in the direction of the values that we hold dearest.

OK. Our minds are very, very good at calculating the cost of something, calculating how much it will take away. How much will the new employee cost? How much will the investment in the coach cost? How much might it cost to tell the truth in this relationship? Brains are very, very good at calculating that.

Brains are not as good at calculating the return on investment—they’re just not. And I think this probably has something to do with our native negativity bias. You’ve probably heard about this. The human brain is way more attentive to the negatives in a situation than it is to the positives. And this is like, you know, evolutionary. You need to be more aware of dangers if you’re going to survive. 

And, at the same time, if you want to thrive, then a focus on costs, on the negative is not very helpful. From where I am sitting right here, it is very easy to imagine a monthly debit from my checking account to pay for my coach. It’s easy to think about looking at that negative number in my bank statement, and reckoning with that. 

What is less easy from here, from this place where I am now, this place where I’ve been tangled up in indecision, it’s less easy to imagine how it will feel to have momentum on some of these projects that I’m excited about. It’s less easy to imagine how good it will feel to have the support of a coach as I’m working through some of the decisions that I want to make. 

Do you see? From here, from the place where I am right now, this place that’s already a little anxious, it’s easy to imagine feeling anxious. It’s less easy to imagine feeling empowered, feeling excited, feeling potent and self-trusting, and like I’m really growing. 

So, I share this personal example because I want you to know this project here, this is never done. Ideally [laugh], we are growing and learning. We are gathering strength so that the steps we can take get bolder and more autonomous, more sovereign, and, yes, very possibly more impactful also. That’s the idea, isn’t it?

If you’re listening to this podcast, I think that is the idea for you. I think you’re here for that. You’re here to step more fully into your magic, and to learn how to practice it in the world. So, yes, that is going to entail quite a few decisions.

So, the spell for making decisions, orient towards your values. What is important to me here, and what is the next step toward those values? Remembering that it’s all steps—you’ve been stepping to this point. You’ve learned. You’ve grown. You’ve gathered perspective and wisdom and calluses, and there’s journey yet to come. There are steps yet to come. 

This decision takes you in the direction of values that you want to cultivate. So, what are those, and what takes you in that direction? If you need more encouragement, may I refer you to Episode 11, which is the Spell for Trusting Your Next Move. It’s along these same lines but a little less practical, and it gives you a mantra to use, which I highly recommend. 

In the meantime, I’m so glad that you joined me here today. I’m so excited for the next step in your journey. And, by the way, this decision that you are considering is simply the next step. It doesn’t have to be right. In fact, maybe it can’t be right. It’s not final. Very, very few decisions are. It’s maybe even not that big. Maybe the big decision already happened, and this is just the next one on your path.

All right, my friend, trust yourself to keep going. Thanks for listening. Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday Letter at mindwitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world. 

Like all good things, this podcast is co-created by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, executive producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time.