63. How to Stop Overthinking and Start Making Decisions
Do you ever find yourself stuck in the spiral of overthinking, where every decision feels like a mountain? Whether it's choosing the right business idea, what to have for dinner, or deciding when to take the leap, indecision can quickly drain your energy and time. But here’s the thing: the real issue isn’t a lack of time—it's the time spent stuck in mental limbo. When we avoid making decisions, we’re wasting precious energy that could be used to move forward.
In this episode, I’ll share a simple but powerful shift to stop overthinking and start making decisions quickly. You’ll learn how to identify your brain’s common barriers to decision-making, and how to reframe those mental blocks into actionable steps. By recognizing how perfectionism, fear, and uncertainty hold us back, you can begin making decisions confidently—even when you don’t have all the answers.
Ready to stop the mental spinning and start making decisions that move you closer to your goals? Listen in now to learn how to reclaim your time, energy, and momentum with swift, decisive action.
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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why moms make exponentially more than the average 20,000 daily decisions and how this impacts your energy.
The three decision-making errors (overthinking, stress, and perfectionism) that drain your time and bandwidth.
How to make small decisions instantly without second-guessing or seeking outside input.
Powerful questions to ask yourself when facing big decisions instead of making pros and cons lists.
Why setting deadlines and limiting outside opinions accelerates confident decision-making.
How stress creates cortisol that literally blocks your brain's executive decision-making abilities.
The upward spiral created when swift decisions lead to action, which creates clarity and momentum.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Once you make a decision, you're able to move forward, which feels energizing. What you've decided matters far less than you think, because there is no right or wrong answer. The wrong answer is spinning in indecision and wasting time and energy in the land of I don't know.
That's all well and good, but then I'm sure you're asking, how then do I become a better decision-maker? Okay, and I want to provide practical tools that you can use starting today.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi, mom friends. Today, I want to talk about something that happened to me just this morning, and I'm willing to bet it's going to sound incredibly familiar. So I was meeting up with a friend who's currently on maternity leave, one of those precious catch-up sessions that we have with our friends with their little babes over coffee and breakfast sandwiches. It was a simple plan, except I needed to go to two different locations to get what we wanted. And suddenly, I found myself completely overthinking about what was the most efficient route.
And I was thinking, should I pick up the sandwiches first and then coffee, coffee first, and then sandwiches? What would save the most time? And I'm sitting there, mentally mapping it out on Google Maps, calculating drive times, and then it hit me. I was spending more time trying to optimize the decision than the actual wrong choice would have cost me. Because the wrong choice would have been maybe like 5 to 10 minutes difference, max.
Thankfully, I've been preparing for today's episode, so I caught myself and thought, this is exactly what I'm talking about today: the cost of being in indecision, the cost of trying to find the perfect answer instead of just taking action and moving forward. And this is so important because this is what we do as moms all day long. We get stuck on decisions, big and small, whether to hire that babysitter so we can work on our business ideas, even for just an hour on Saturday morning, whether to have a conversation with our boss about having a side business, whether to wake up early tomorrow or sleep in.
Even what to make for dinner becomes this whole production, which I'll talk about a little bit more in this episode as one of the examples. But if you're anything like me, my clients, and many of the amazing moms in my life, you are spending way too much time and energy on decisions. And here's what I also know is that time and energy that we're wasting in decision limbo, that's exactly the time and energy we've been desperately searching for. We've been saying, I don't have enough time and energy, but I promise that time and energy is in these micro-moments, the endless decisions.
And this is just one place that we can start changing our process and behaviors, and it will give us back the time and energy we need to really start being intentional about building a life and business we love. So my goal for today's episode is simple. I want to make you a better decision-maker. Because honestly, helping moms make decisions is what my job boils down to, and I want to give you immediate results today. So by the end of our time together, you're going to understand why the average person makes 20,000 decisions a day, but as a mom, you are making exponentially more.
You'll see exactly how your current decision-making process is bleeding you dry of time and energy. And most importantly, I'm going to show you a completely different way to approach decisions that will transform not just your daily routine, but your entire week and life trajectory. And yes, I'm not being hyperbolic. This is going to be amazing.
Your day is filled with decisions, whether you like it or not. And honestly, I don't love it. I don't love all the decisions, but I know it's a good thing because it means we get to shape our lives. We have the power of choice, and that's one of the greatest gifts that we can have.
So, let's start with a truth that might feel a little overwhelming at first, but I want you to stick with me because it's actually empowering. Your life and everything in it is ultimately the result of millions of decisions, more than 7 million decisions each year, which is absurd. Every decision, big, small, either moves you closer to where you want to be or keeps you exactly where you are. I want you to think about it.
You want to start a business but don't have the time or energy. That changes with decisions. Okay? Maybe texting the babysitter to watch the kids for 2 hours on Friday. Maybe it's talking to friends and family, making the decision to talk about it to get resources. Let's say you want to lose weight. Every meal is a decision. Every day is a decision on whether to move your body and what to put into your body. The choice between a salad or pasta might seem trivial in each moment, but these small decisions compound and shape who you become. The daily decision of what time to get up or go to bed could be the difference between having energy or feeling depleted all day.
For moms, decision-making is even more serious and intense because we're not just making decisions for ourselves, which I know you know. We're also making them for each of our littles and our family as a whole. If the average person makes 20,000 decisions a day, I would argue that you have to double that for every member of the household and every pet for us moms.
We have to decide whether to wake the kids up or let them sleep, what temperature to keep the house, what the kids wear, what goes in the lunch, what's for breakfast, whether to call the doctor or wait, whether to give another dose of Tylenol, whether it's dance class or taekwondo. It's endless.
So moms more than anyone need to be great decision-makers. A great decision-maker is somebody who makes decisions swiftly, with confidence, and really who doesn't second-guess that decision after it's made. Okay, it's someone who has a process for working through the big decisions and a faster is better mentality for all those small decisions that we make throughout the day.
I want to talk about how most moms are making decisions right now, and this also comes from a very personal place of how I used to make decisions, right? And I want you to consider if this sounds familiar. Okay, so let's think of the big decision or a big decision of starting a business. You have a decision to make about starting a business, and it starts innocently enough, right? You're driving to work and that little voice whispers, what if I started my own thing?
So then you begin to think about it and think about it and think about it some more. For weeks, maybe months, if you're like me, maybe years, you're mentally ping-ponging between yes, I should do this, and no, this is absurd. You're researching business ideas during lunch breaks, maybe you're bookmarking articles that you never finish reading, having the same circular conversation with your partner every few weeks.
You're spending mental energy on this decision every single day, but you're not getting any closer to a choice, right? You're spinning like one of those playground merry-go-rounds that go round and round but never actually take you anywhere. And then your brain starts catastrophizing. If I start a business, I'll work evenings and weekends. When will I spend time with the kids? What if I fail and we lose our savings? What if my boss finds out and thinks I'm not committed?
Making this decision feels like choosing between your family's security and your fulfillment, and that weight is crushing. So you decide you need more information. You're going to research until you find the right business idea, the one with guaranteed success and minimal risk, right? You tell yourself, once I figure out exactly what to do and how to do it perfectly, then I'll decide. But that day never comes because perfect doesn't exist, which I hope we all know.
And so you stay stuck in research mode indefinitely, in brainstorming mode indefinitely. Meanwhile, months are passing, you're exhausted from carrying this unmade decision, frustrated with yourself for not moving forward, and no closer to the life you've been envisioning, where you're able to pick up your kids from school at 3:00 PM, travel more with them in the summer, and even be the chaperone for all the trips.
And yes, all of that is exhausting. It takes up a lot of time and energy. But it's not just about the big decisions like starting a business. This also happens in little decisions or everyday decisions, right? So let's bring this down to something that happens every single day: deciding what to make for dinner. Imagine it's 3:00 PM and you're already thinking about dinner. You mentally scan what's in the fridge, what the kids will actually eat, what you have time to make, what's healthy enough that you don't feel like a terrible mom for making.
Maybe you text your partner, what do you want for dinner, even though you know they'll say, I don't care, whatever. But you wait 10 minutes for their text response, and then are maybe a bit frustrated when it takes longer than you expected for them to respond. You're scrolling through Pinterest for those 30-minute family meals, feeling guilty that you don't have a meal plan like all those organized moms. And by 5:00 PM, you've considered and rejected eight different options but still haven't started cooking anything.
And now the pressure hips, it's 5:30. Everyone's hungry, everyone's hangry and whining, especially if you're in my house. And you still don't know what you're making. And your brain starts racing. If I make pasta again, there are too many carbs. If I make chicken, I need to thaw the chicken and we don't have time for that. I can't do takeout again. You never know what's in those foods and we did it last night. You want something healthy, delicious, quick, budget-friendly, and something everyone will enjoy. You're trying to solve for six different variables with one meal, and since that perfect solution doesn't exist, you end up paralyzed, staring into the open fridge like the answer will magically appear. Finally, you throw together maybe whatever you can find, but you're feeling frustrated that something so simple became so complicated day after day.
And I want you to be honest, do you see yourself in some of these stories? I know that I see myself in these stories to some degree with little and big decisions, like my Starbucks example, and even this dinner example comes from a very real place.
So I want to talk about what's really happening in those scenarios. Both scenarios, there are three things happening that are absolutely draining your time and energy on a moment-to-moment basis in decisions. First, massive overthinking. You're considering every little detail going back and forth endlessly, and this isn't productive, careful consideration. It's mental spinning that gets you nowhere.
The second thing is stress and overwhelm while in decision limbo. Okay, when you're stressed, your brain literally cannot make optimal decisions. The amygdala kicks in, which is not the part of your brain that moves you toward who you want to become. Third, perfectionism. You're thinking there's a right answer, and you're going to try to figure it out. And there's a part of you that's worried about failure, right? No matter how big or small the decision is, whether that's the idea of the business failing and what that means about you or fixing a meal that everyone hates and it and is clearly a failure, right? All of this, those three errors require massive amounts of time and energy. Every conversation with your partner, all the time spent researching and daydreaming, the mental spinning, this all costs precious bandwidth.
Now, I'd like to take a minute to illustrate, to talk through a different way, a completely different way to handle those exact same decisions that I mentioned earlier, right, the starting the business and the dinner. Okay, so let's imagine that you notice the business idea keeps coming up. So you schedule focus time to give it attention rather than letting it consume random mental space throughout your days, space when you're mostly multitasking or distracted, right? You set aside two intentional sessions, an hour on Saturday morning with your coffee and an hour the following weekend to really think this through. And you're not casually pondering it during your commute or letting it ping pong around in your brain while you're making dinner.
You acknowledge that this is a big decision with real implications, but you don't catastrophize. Okay? You ask practical questions. What would starting small look like? What's the actual worst-case scenario if I try this and it doesn't work? What's the best-case scenario if I exceed expectations? What's the worst-case scenario if I don't try and stay exactly where I am? Where do I see myself and my family 5 years from now? Does this align with that vision?
You realize you can start a business without quitting your job, at least not immediately. And that would allow you to start a business without risking your family's security, without it being an all-or-nothing decision. You accept that you can't predict the future or eliminate all the risks, and you ask yourself, do I have enough information to make a good decision right now? What would I need to feel confident moving forward?
Maybe you decide to talk to three people who've started businesses. You know, you research the legal steps and figure out what you could do with 3 hours per week because you look at your current schedule and see there are a few pockets you could create for the business. And once you have that information, you set a deadline: 2 weeks from today. You decide.
In 3 weeks total, you've made a thoughtful decision instead of carrying this mental load for months or like me for years. And whether you decide yes or no, you move forward with clarity. This sounds like a win-win. You're able to make a decision faster and also a more informed decision by staying out of stress and overwhelm and not spending too much time or energy overthinking.
But again, starting a business is a big decision. Those aren't everyday decisions. So let's talk about a different way to handle the small decisions daily. Right, the dinner example. It's 3:00 PM and you're thinking about dinner. And so you check what you have on hand, you consider what you're in the mood to cook, and you pick something. Maybe it's pasta with marinara and a side salad. It's not fancy, but it's dinner.
You don't scroll Pinterest or text your partner for input. You just decide. And by 3:05, you know exactly what you're making. And you can put it on your mental schedule and move on to other things. When dinner time comes, you execute the plan instead of standing in the kitchen trying to figure out what to make, especially when you're doing that while everyone is asking when food will be ready, right?
Do you see the difference there? Here's what I want you to understand. Decisions happen in an instant. Even with the business example, I talked through a more robust consideration process, but the actual decision itself happens in an instant. You just decide. When you decide to make decisions quickly, it frees up your time and energy to focus on other things, to be present with your family, to start taking action, to get more done, and maybe even to get more sleep. And that's huge, right, for anyone who loses sleep over decisions.
Once you make a decision, you're able to move forward, which feels energizing. What you've decided matters far less than you think, because there is no right or wrong answer. The wrong answer is spinning in indecision and wasting time and energy in the land of I don't know.
That's all well and good, but then I'm sure you're asking, how then do I become a better decision-maker? Okay, and I want to provide practical tools that you can use starting today. So for small decisions, just decide and learn. It's not complicated. This is advice I'm taking and putting in my own back pocket. If you make pasta with marinara and it's a disaster, make a mental note. Don't spend excessive time on low-stakes choices. Just pick one. I promise that it's in these micro-moments, it's in these decisions that we get back time and energy. I promise. So practice getting better at just deciding.
For big decisions, I want to share some more tools, some different tools because I know we can't just easily just decide. First, I want you to ditch the pros and cons list. Okay? We like them because our logical brain feels like we're doing due diligence, but we're usually just creating subjective evidence to support whichever option we're leaning based on whether we're feeling excited or fearful. Okay, if you must make a list, have a system for moving forward afterward. Okay, don't get caught up in just continuing to weigh the pros and cons.
The second thing, I want you to ask yourself powerful questions during the process. If you knew you'd succeed at both options, which would you choose? If failure didn't matter, what would you do? What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail? What would your future self tell you to do who is the future you 10 years from now? What would love do in this situation?
I love that question. What would love do? Because love isn't always saying yes. Love isn't always starting the business. Love isn't always staying in the relationship, right? What moves you toward who you want to be? I encourage you to check out the transcript of this episode in the show notes, jenna.coach/63, and keep this list of questions accessible. So whenever you catch yourself overthinking, you can ask yourself some of these questions to really guide that thinking in an effective way instead of spinning and indulging in indecision.
Another tool is I want you to force yourself to consider best-case scenarios. And yes, I said force yourself. Our brains automatically give us the worst-case scenarios. I want you to deliberately imagine the best-case scenario too. The worst-case scenario of starting a business, we may think is failing, but spend time imagining what the best case of starting a business is, right? Making money, building something of your own, creating your own schedule, loving your work. Oftentimes, I think the worst-case scenario is not failing. The worst-case scenario is missing out on the best-case scenario.
Another tool, I want you to make sure you like your reason for whatever you decide. Whatever you decide, own it completely. Don't choose something because you should. Right? This question truly is a game-changer with any decision. It's easy to make decisions out of fear. I just coached someone the other day about a decision on whether to take an international trip, right, to visit a friend. And I said, if you decide not to go, do you like your reason? And if you decide to go, would you like your reason? And it was immediately obvious that she was afraid of all the things that could go wrong when traveling. And so she was hesitating to say yes out of fear. And she didn't want to make a decision out of fear.
Another tool is to consider if there are more than two options. Okay? Often, we get stuck in either/or thinking when there might be multiple paths forward. This happens all the time when moms are thinking about starting a business, they often think, I can't do that because I need to be able to support my family. And I say to them, why not start a business and keep your bi-weekly paycheck? Sometimes the third option, the one that isn't all or nothing, doesn't occur to us. We need to force our brain to go there.
The next tool, set deadlines and stick to them. Give yourself a reasonable timeframe to decide, and then move forward. Just decide. The decision happens in an instant. And once the decision is made, you can start taking action, which will energize you. Being in indecision will drain you 100%.
I also want you to limit outside opinions. Only consider trusted and necessary viewpoints. Too many opinions create more confusion. And I'm guilty of this. When I was deciding whether to move forward with the mastermind I mentioned, I did the terrible thing of going on Reddit and reading reviews about the mastermind. And I read comments that bashed the mastermind and even bashed the entire coaching profession. And thankfully, I still made the decision to move forward with the mastermind. And this mastermind will 100% change my life in the most powerful ways. And I know that now that I've taken action and seen for myself what the mastermind is all about, and I'm so glad I didn't succumb to the faceless opinions on the internet.
And real talk, your life will be amazing no matter what you choose. When you truly believe this, decision-making becomes so much easier. Whether you start a business or don't start a business, your life will be amazing. This takes the weight and pressure off of decision-making, and I promise it's true. Your life will be amazing no matter what you choose.
Early on in my coaching, I did contract work for a company, and I coached a woman who was stuck in indecision on whether to stay in a relationship or not. It was by all accounts a healthy relationship, but she just didn't know if that's the person she should marry, right? And she thought there was a right answer. And I asked her, if your life was going to be amazing being married to this man, and if your life was going to be amazing not being married to this man, which would you choose?
All of these tools and strategies help us become better decision-makers because aside from the fantastic information they provide for us, they also keep our brain in check. They calm our overthinking, overwhelmed, and stressed-out brain. When you're stressed and overwhelmed, your brain literally cannot make good decisions. High stress creates cortisol, which blocks your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for the executive level decision-making.
When you train yourself to make decisions from a calm, centered place, you're using the most sophisticated part of your brain. Okay? Swift decision-makers practice emotional self-management. They understand that the quality of their decisions depends on their internal state when making them. So when you become a swift decision-maker, three powerful things happen. Okay? You reclaim your time and energy. You build unshakable confidence, right? Every time you make a decision and follow through, you prove to yourself that you can trust your judgment, right? You're practicing having your own back.
And the third thing is you create momentum. Action creates clarity, and clarity creates more confident decisions. It is an upward spiral. I promise. Decisions allow you to take action, and action allows you to learn and grow. Nothing is learned about ourselves when we are in decision limbo.
Major takeaways I want you to really allow to soak in. You are the result of your decisions. More than 7 million decisions each year are shaping who you're becoming and what you're creating. Every single day, you get to choose your direction. I want you to understand that decision-making is energy management. Okay? When you make decisions quickly and confidently, you preserve your mental and emotional energy for what matters most. You stop wasting precious bandwidth cycling through the same thoughts, and you find time and space for what really matters. And it's a beautiful thing because I know so many of us feel like we don't have time or energy. This is one of those things that we can shift and really get back more time and energy in our days and weeks.
I want you to build your swift decision-making muscle starting today. Okay, practice with small decisions. Set deadlines for the bigger ones. Use some of the powerful questions that I shared to cut through confusion. And I want you to trust yourself more than you think you should. You definitely have more wisdom than your fear wants you to believe. You can handle whatever consequences come from your choices. And remember that decisions happen in an instant. All the thinking beforehand is consideration. The actual decision is instantaneous. You just decide.
So as always, one action that I want you to take on this week, I want you to think about one decision you've been putting off. Set a deadline, a real deadline, maybe this Friday, to make that decision. Use the tools we talked about today, get clear on your options, understand the best-case scenario, ask yourself those powerful questions, and then choose, not because it's perfect, but because you're ready to move forward and because being in indecision is exhausting.
I want you to notice, catch yourself when you find yourself wasting time and energy on little decisions, just like I did this morning when I was picking up breakfast for my friend. When I caught myself, it was immediate relief. I know in that instant, I saved a ton of mental energy, energy that I was then able to invest in my friend and her cute little baby Rory.
Thank you for spending this time with me today. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with another mom who needs to hear this message. And if it resonated and you know you need accountability and personalized support in becoming a better decision-maker, go to the show notes, check out my website, jenna.coach/63, schedule a strategy session with me. It's completely free.
And if you're catching this live, I have a few individual coaching spots available. And like I said before, my job boils down to helping my clients make decisions. And it's not just business decisions, it's all the decisions that are impacting our time and energy, all the decisions that are keeping us from building a life and business we love.
Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss our upcoming episodes where we'll continue building the mindset and tools to get you closer to the version of yourself that you want to become. You've got this, and I'm cheering you on every step of the way. I'll see you next week.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
That's all well and good, but then I'm sure you're asking, how then do I become a better decision-maker? Okay, and I want to provide practical tools that you can use starting today.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi, mom friends. Today, I want to talk about something that happened to me just this morning, and I'm willing to bet it's going to sound incredibly familiar. So I was meeting up with a friend who's currently on maternity leave, one of those precious catch-up sessions that we have with our friends with their little babes over coffee and breakfast sandwiches. It was a simple plan, except I needed to go to two different locations to get what we wanted. And suddenly, I found myself completely overthinking about what was the most efficient route.
And I was thinking, should I pick up the sandwiches first and then coffee, coffee first, and then sandwiches? What would save the most time? And I'm sitting there, mentally mapping it out on Google Maps, calculating drive times, and then it hit me. I was spending more time trying to optimize the decision than the actual wrong choice would have cost me. Because the wrong choice would have been maybe like 5 to 10 minutes difference, max.
Thankfully, I've been preparing for today's episode, so I caught myself and thought, this is exactly what I'm talking about today: the cost of being in indecision, the cost of trying to find the perfect answer instead of just taking action and moving forward. And this is so important because this is what we do as moms all day long. We get stuck on decisions, big and small, whether to hire that babysitter so we can work on our business ideas, even for just an hour on Saturday morning, whether to have a conversation with our boss about having a side business, whether to wake up early tomorrow or sleep in.
Even what to make for dinner becomes this whole production, which I'll talk about a little bit more in this episode as one of the examples. But if you're anything like me, my clients, and many of the amazing moms in my life, you are spending way too much time and energy on decisions. And here's what I also know is that time and energy that we're wasting in decision limbo, that's exactly the time and energy we've been desperately searching for. We've been saying, I don't have enough time and energy, but I promise that time and energy is in these micro-moments, the endless decisions.
And this is just one place that we can start changing our process and behaviors, and it will give us back the time and energy we need to really start being intentional about building a life and business we love. So my goal for today's episode is simple. I want to make you a better decision-maker. Because honestly, helping moms make decisions is what my job boils down to, and I want to give you immediate results today. So by the end of our time together, you're going to understand why the average person makes 20,000 decisions a day, but as a mom, you are making exponentially more.
You'll see exactly how your current decision-making process is bleeding you dry of time and energy. And most importantly, I'm going to show you a completely different way to approach decisions that will transform not just your daily routine, but your entire week and life trajectory. And yes, I'm not being hyperbolic. This is going to be amazing.
Your day is filled with decisions, whether you like it or not. And honestly, I don't love it. I don't love all the decisions, but I know it's a good thing because it means we get to shape our lives. We have the power of choice, and that's one of the greatest gifts that we can have.
So, let's start with a truth that might feel a little overwhelming at first, but I want you to stick with me because it's actually empowering. Your life and everything in it is ultimately the result of millions of decisions, more than 7 million decisions each year, which is absurd. Every decision, big, small, either moves you closer to where you want to be or keeps you exactly where you are. I want you to think about it.
You want to start a business but don't have the time or energy. That changes with decisions. Okay? Maybe texting the babysitter to watch the kids for 2 hours on Friday. Maybe it's talking to friends and family, making the decision to talk about it to get resources. Let's say you want to lose weight. Every meal is a decision. Every day is a decision on whether to move your body and what to put into your body. The choice between a salad or pasta might seem trivial in each moment, but these small decisions compound and shape who you become. The daily decision of what time to get up or go to bed could be the difference between having energy or feeling depleted all day.
For moms, decision-making is even more serious and intense because we're not just making decisions for ourselves, which I know you know. We're also making them for each of our littles and our family as a whole. If the average person makes 20,000 decisions a day, I would argue that you have to double that for every member of the household and every pet for us moms.
We have to decide whether to wake the kids up or let them sleep, what temperature to keep the house, what the kids wear, what goes in the lunch, what's for breakfast, whether to call the doctor or wait, whether to give another dose of Tylenol, whether it's dance class or taekwondo. It's endless.
So moms more than anyone need to be great decision-makers. A great decision-maker is somebody who makes decisions swiftly, with confidence, and really who doesn't second-guess that decision after it's made. Okay, it's someone who has a process for working through the big decisions and a faster is better mentality for all those small decisions that we make throughout the day.
I want to talk about how most moms are making decisions right now, and this also comes from a very personal place of how I used to make decisions, right? And I want you to consider if this sounds familiar. Okay, so let's think of the big decision or a big decision of starting a business. You have a decision to make about starting a business, and it starts innocently enough, right? You're driving to work and that little voice whispers, what if I started my own thing?
So then you begin to think about it and think about it and think about it some more. For weeks, maybe months, if you're like me, maybe years, you're mentally ping-ponging between yes, I should do this, and no, this is absurd. You're researching business ideas during lunch breaks, maybe you're bookmarking articles that you never finish reading, having the same circular conversation with your partner every few weeks.
You're spending mental energy on this decision every single day, but you're not getting any closer to a choice, right? You're spinning like one of those playground merry-go-rounds that go round and round but never actually take you anywhere. And then your brain starts catastrophizing. If I start a business, I'll work evenings and weekends. When will I spend time with the kids? What if I fail and we lose our savings? What if my boss finds out and thinks I'm not committed?
Making this decision feels like choosing between your family's security and your fulfillment, and that weight is crushing. So you decide you need more information. You're going to research until you find the right business idea, the one with guaranteed success and minimal risk, right? You tell yourself, once I figure out exactly what to do and how to do it perfectly, then I'll decide. But that day never comes because perfect doesn't exist, which I hope we all know.
And so you stay stuck in research mode indefinitely, in brainstorming mode indefinitely. Meanwhile, months are passing, you're exhausted from carrying this unmade decision, frustrated with yourself for not moving forward, and no closer to the life you've been envisioning, where you're able to pick up your kids from school at 3:00 PM, travel more with them in the summer, and even be the chaperone for all the trips.
And yes, all of that is exhausting. It takes up a lot of time and energy. But it's not just about the big decisions like starting a business. This also happens in little decisions or everyday decisions, right? So let's bring this down to something that happens every single day: deciding what to make for dinner. Imagine it's 3:00 PM and you're already thinking about dinner. You mentally scan what's in the fridge, what the kids will actually eat, what you have time to make, what's healthy enough that you don't feel like a terrible mom for making.
Maybe you text your partner, what do you want for dinner, even though you know they'll say, I don't care, whatever. But you wait 10 minutes for their text response, and then are maybe a bit frustrated when it takes longer than you expected for them to respond. You're scrolling through Pinterest for those 30-minute family meals, feeling guilty that you don't have a meal plan like all those organized moms. And by 5:00 PM, you've considered and rejected eight different options but still haven't started cooking anything.
And now the pressure hips, it's 5:30. Everyone's hungry, everyone's hangry and whining, especially if you're in my house. And you still don't know what you're making. And your brain starts racing. If I make pasta again, there are too many carbs. If I make chicken, I need to thaw the chicken and we don't have time for that. I can't do takeout again. You never know what's in those foods and we did it last night. You want something healthy, delicious, quick, budget-friendly, and something everyone will enjoy. You're trying to solve for six different variables with one meal, and since that perfect solution doesn't exist, you end up paralyzed, staring into the open fridge like the answer will magically appear. Finally, you throw together maybe whatever you can find, but you're feeling frustrated that something so simple became so complicated day after day.
And I want you to be honest, do you see yourself in some of these stories? I know that I see myself in these stories to some degree with little and big decisions, like my Starbucks example, and even this dinner example comes from a very real place.
So I want to talk about what's really happening in those scenarios. Both scenarios, there are three things happening that are absolutely draining your time and energy on a moment-to-moment basis in decisions. First, massive overthinking. You're considering every little detail going back and forth endlessly, and this isn't productive, careful consideration. It's mental spinning that gets you nowhere.
The second thing is stress and overwhelm while in decision limbo. Okay, when you're stressed, your brain literally cannot make optimal decisions. The amygdala kicks in, which is not the part of your brain that moves you toward who you want to become. Third, perfectionism. You're thinking there's a right answer, and you're going to try to figure it out. And there's a part of you that's worried about failure, right? No matter how big or small the decision is, whether that's the idea of the business failing and what that means about you or fixing a meal that everyone hates and it and is clearly a failure, right? All of this, those three errors require massive amounts of time and energy. Every conversation with your partner, all the time spent researching and daydreaming, the mental spinning, this all costs precious bandwidth.
Now, I'd like to take a minute to illustrate, to talk through a different way, a completely different way to handle those exact same decisions that I mentioned earlier, right, the starting the business and the dinner. Okay, so let's imagine that you notice the business idea keeps coming up. So you schedule focus time to give it attention rather than letting it consume random mental space throughout your days, space when you're mostly multitasking or distracted, right? You set aside two intentional sessions, an hour on Saturday morning with your coffee and an hour the following weekend to really think this through. And you're not casually pondering it during your commute or letting it ping pong around in your brain while you're making dinner.
You acknowledge that this is a big decision with real implications, but you don't catastrophize. Okay? You ask practical questions. What would starting small look like? What's the actual worst-case scenario if I try this and it doesn't work? What's the best-case scenario if I exceed expectations? What's the worst-case scenario if I don't try and stay exactly where I am? Where do I see myself and my family 5 years from now? Does this align with that vision?
You realize you can start a business without quitting your job, at least not immediately. And that would allow you to start a business without risking your family's security, without it being an all-or-nothing decision. You accept that you can't predict the future or eliminate all the risks, and you ask yourself, do I have enough information to make a good decision right now? What would I need to feel confident moving forward?
Maybe you decide to talk to three people who've started businesses. You know, you research the legal steps and figure out what you could do with 3 hours per week because you look at your current schedule and see there are a few pockets you could create for the business. And once you have that information, you set a deadline: 2 weeks from today. You decide.
In 3 weeks total, you've made a thoughtful decision instead of carrying this mental load for months or like me for years. And whether you decide yes or no, you move forward with clarity. This sounds like a win-win. You're able to make a decision faster and also a more informed decision by staying out of stress and overwhelm and not spending too much time or energy overthinking.
But again, starting a business is a big decision. Those aren't everyday decisions. So let's talk about a different way to handle the small decisions daily. Right, the dinner example. It's 3:00 PM and you're thinking about dinner. And so you check what you have on hand, you consider what you're in the mood to cook, and you pick something. Maybe it's pasta with marinara and a side salad. It's not fancy, but it's dinner.
You don't scroll Pinterest or text your partner for input. You just decide. And by 3:05, you know exactly what you're making. And you can put it on your mental schedule and move on to other things. When dinner time comes, you execute the plan instead of standing in the kitchen trying to figure out what to make, especially when you're doing that while everyone is asking when food will be ready, right?
Do you see the difference there? Here's what I want you to understand. Decisions happen in an instant. Even with the business example, I talked through a more robust consideration process, but the actual decision itself happens in an instant. You just decide. When you decide to make decisions quickly, it frees up your time and energy to focus on other things, to be present with your family, to start taking action, to get more done, and maybe even to get more sleep. And that's huge, right, for anyone who loses sleep over decisions.
Once you make a decision, you're able to move forward, which feels energizing. What you've decided matters far less than you think, because there is no right or wrong answer. The wrong answer is spinning in indecision and wasting time and energy in the land of I don't know.
That's all well and good, but then I'm sure you're asking, how then do I become a better decision-maker? Okay, and I want to provide practical tools that you can use starting today. So for small decisions, just decide and learn. It's not complicated. This is advice I'm taking and putting in my own back pocket. If you make pasta with marinara and it's a disaster, make a mental note. Don't spend excessive time on low-stakes choices. Just pick one. I promise that it's in these micro-moments, it's in these decisions that we get back time and energy. I promise. So practice getting better at just deciding.
For big decisions, I want to share some more tools, some different tools because I know we can't just easily just decide. First, I want you to ditch the pros and cons list. Okay? We like them because our logical brain feels like we're doing due diligence, but we're usually just creating subjective evidence to support whichever option we're leaning based on whether we're feeling excited or fearful. Okay, if you must make a list, have a system for moving forward afterward. Okay, don't get caught up in just continuing to weigh the pros and cons.
The second thing, I want you to ask yourself powerful questions during the process. If you knew you'd succeed at both options, which would you choose? If failure didn't matter, what would you do? What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail? What would your future self tell you to do who is the future you 10 years from now? What would love do in this situation?
I love that question. What would love do? Because love isn't always saying yes. Love isn't always starting the business. Love isn't always staying in the relationship, right? What moves you toward who you want to be? I encourage you to check out the transcript of this episode in the show notes, jenna.coach/63, and keep this list of questions accessible. So whenever you catch yourself overthinking, you can ask yourself some of these questions to really guide that thinking in an effective way instead of spinning and indulging in indecision.
Another tool is I want you to force yourself to consider best-case scenarios. And yes, I said force yourself. Our brains automatically give us the worst-case scenarios. I want you to deliberately imagine the best-case scenario too. The worst-case scenario of starting a business, we may think is failing, but spend time imagining what the best case of starting a business is, right? Making money, building something of your own, creating your own schedule, loving your work. Oftentimes, I think the worst-case scenario is not failing. The worst-case scenario is missing out on the best-case scenario.
Another tool, I want you to make sure you like your reason for whatever you decide. Whatever you decide, own it completely. Don't choose something because you should. Right? This question truly is a game-changer with any decision. It's easy to make decisions out of fear. I just coached someone the other day about a decision on whether to take an international trip, right, to visit a friend. And I said, if you decide not to go, do you like your reason? And if you decide to go, would you like your reason? And it was immediately obvious that she was afraid of all the things that could go wrong when traveling. And so she was hesitating to say yes out of fear. And she didn't want to make a decision out of fear.
Another tool is to consider if there are more than two options. Okay? Often, we get stuck in either/or thinking when there might be multiple paths forward. This happens all the time when moms are thinking about starting a business, they often think, I can't do that because I need to be able to support my family. And I say to them, why not start a business and keep your bi-weekly paycheck? Sometimes the third option, the one that isn't all or nothing, doesn't occur to us. We need to force our brain to go there.
The next tool, set deadlines and stick to them. Give yourself a reasonable timeframe to decide, and then move forward. Just decide. The decision happens in an instant. And once the decision is made, you can start taking action, which will energize you. Being in indecision will drain you 100%.
I also want you to limit outside opinions. Only consider trusted and necessary viewpoints. Too many opinions create more confusion. And I'm guilty of this. When I was deciding whether to move forward with the mastermind I mentioned, I did the terrible thing of going on Reddit and reading reviews about the mastermind. And I read comments that bashed the mastermind and even bashed the entire coaching profession. And thankfully, I still made the decision to move forward with the mastermind. And this mastermind will 100% change my life in the most powerful ways. And I know that now that I've taken action and seen for myself what the mastermind is all about, and I'm so glad I didn't succumb to the faceless opinions on the internet.
And real talk, your life will be amazing no matter what you choose. When you truly believe this, decision-making becomes so much easier. Whether you start a business or don't start a business, your life will be amazing. This takes the weight and pressure off of decision-making, and I promise it's true. Your life will be amazing no matter what you choose.
Early on in my coaching, I did contract work for a company, and I coached a woman who was stuck in indecision on whether to stay in a relationship or not. It was by all accounts a healthy relationship, but she just didn't know if that's the person she should marry, right? And she thought there was a right answer. And I asked her, if your life was going to be amazing being married to this man, and if your life was going to be amazing not being married to this man, which would you choose?
All of these tools and strategies help us become better decision-makers because aside from the fantastic information they provide for us, they also keep our brain in check. They calm our overthinking, overwhelmed, and stressed-out brain. When you're stressed and overwhelmed, your brain literally cannot make good decisions. High stress creates cortisol, which blocks your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for the executive level decision-making.
When you train yourself to make decisions from a calm, centered place, you're using the most sophisticated part of your brain. Okay? Swift decision-makers practice emotional self-management. They understand that the quality of their decisions depends on their internal state when making them. So when you become a swift decision-maker, three powerful things happen. Okay? You reclaim your time and energy. You build unshakable confidence, right? Every time you make a decision and follow through, you prove to yourself that you can trust your judgment, right? You're practicing having your own back.
And the third thing is you create momentum. Action creates clarity, and clarity creates more confident decisions. It is an upward spiral. I promise. Decisions allow you to take action, and action allows you to learn and grow. Nothing is learned about ourselves when we are in decision limbo.
Major takeaways I want you to really allow to soak in. You are the result of your decisions. More than 7 million decisions each year are shaping who you're becoming and what you're creating. Every single day, you get to choose your direction. I want you to understand that decision-making is energy management. Okay? When you make decisions quickly and confidently, you preserve your mental and emotional energy for what matters most. You stop wasting precious bandwidth cycling through the same thoughts, and you find time and space for what really matters. And it's a beautiful thing because I know so many of us feel like we don't have time or energy. This is one of those things that we can shift and really get back more time and energy in our days and weeks.
I want you to build your swift decision-making muscle starting today. Okay, practice with small decisions. Set deadlines for the bigger ones. Use some of the powerful questions that I shared to cut through confusion. And I want you to trust yourself more than you think you should. You definitely have more wisdom than your fear wants you to believe. You can handle whatever consequences come from your choices. And remember that decisions happen in an instant. All the thinking beforehand is consideration. The actual decision is instantaneous. You just decide.
So as always, one action that I want you to take on this week, I want you to think about one decision you've been putting off. Set a deadline, a real deadline, maybe this Friday, to make that decision. Use the tools we talked about today, get clear on your options, understand the best-case scenario, ask yourself those powerful questions, and then choose, not because it's perfect, but because you're ready to move forward and because being in indecision is exhausting.
I want you to notice, catch yourself when you find yourself wasting time and energy on little decisions, just like I did this morning when I was picking up breakfast for my friend. When I caught myself, it was immediate relief. I know in that instant, I saved a ton of mental energy, energy that I was then able to invest in my friend and her cute little baby Rory.
Thank you for spending this time with me today. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with another mom who needs to hear this message. And if it resonated and you know you need accountability and personalized support in becoming a better decision-maker, go to the show notes, check out my website, jenna.coach/63, schedule a strategy session with me. It's completely free.
And if you're catching this live, I have a few individual coaching spots available. And like I said before, my job boils down to helping my clients make decisions. And it's not just business decisions, it's all the decisions that are impacting our time and energy, all the decisions that are keeping us from building a life and business we love.
Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss our upcoming episodes where we'll continue building the mindset and tools to get you closer to the version of yourself that you want to become. You've got this, and I'm cheering you on every step of the way. I'll see you next week.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
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