So people make decisions out of pain, sometimes quickly. They make

them spontaneously because they're just in

the mood. Someone encourages them to make a decision. They hop right in.

Others can really delay and overthink. I can be all of those.

I can overthink. And I find that I make good decisions spontaneously. Sometimes

I make bad decisions spontaneously. When I overthink and I make no

decision, then there's some real negative consequences. It's actually better for me to

decide. Recently, I've had some decisions to make

and there can be small things. Just a moment ago, I was making a decision

on whether to do something after work or not. Like, specifically that involved another

person. Decide to travel, to go see daughter, my

parents, whatever. I mean. But it torments me at times

because I am cluttered. And there's things we can do to

actually get some clarity to make good decisions. That's our topic today, is how do

we make good decisions? So, strategic decision making for leaders. Three

tips. Some nuggets that you can actually apply right away,

and there's different magnitude of decisions. Some are really important,

it seems up front. Some nearly not nearly

as important, like whether I'm gonna play golf after work or not in the bad

weather and freeze or not, you know, so there's

decisions that we can make that we don't feel like are going to have a

huge consequence, but they actually do. There's a lot of pressure and. And that pressure

can put us in situations where we feel like you have to make the perfect

decision, but that's not actually the way to go.

So you're going to learn a lot about that, about that today. So welcome to

the Decide youe Legacy podcast. Three tips. Strategic decision

making for business leaders and really leaders in life.

So you're going to gain some tools to step back from

your life and say, I can do this. I can get the clarity so I

can actually make that next decision, the big thing, so you can move forward. So

I'm Adam Gragg. I'm a legacy coach and a family therapist,

founder of Decide youe Legacy. We help businesses and leaders

live courageously. And FYI,

everybody's a leader. Kelsey's a leader. Sherman's a leader. Troy's a leader.

Steve's a leader. Billy Bob's a leader. Billy Bob's not in here right now,

but he's a leader, too. Everybody is a leader because you are a neighbor, you're

a family member, you're a brother, you're a sister, you're somebody that's a part of

a community in your life, and I want you to think about it that way

as you approach life. So we have two guests today.

One of them is Kelsey Torkelson, and she's an assistant

legacy coach at Decide youe Legacy brand relations director.

She's gonna share some great insight. And we have Sherman Orr, who is a

legacy coach at Decide youe Legacy, and he's the head of our operations here as

well. And their insight's gonna be a lot better than mine, I really have a

feeling, because we have a woman's perspective that has her

own perspective. We have somebody that's been in a different profession. They've both been

in different professions in their careers. You know, we have some good insight

here. So. And I will tell you that

as you look around you, it's not all easy. You know, you can look at

people that looks like, man, they just kind of fly through life.

It's. It's easy for me to think. I mean, these people that run

businesses and run churches and organizations, like, they're just kind

of making. It's just flowing for them. But that's really not the case. I mean,

I recently remember when President Trump had to make the decision,

and did make the decision, it was his decision to bomb Iran, their nuclear and

to immobilize, at least for a period of time, their nuclear capabilities.

Only he could make that decision. I mean, he made it and had to

make it with unintended consequences. So when you make a decision, I

mean, it could go bad, right? Nobody knows how is it gonna. How it is

going to go. You just have to make your decision after you

get your little tips here. But I. Same kind of thing

happens all the time for me because now I have a house that

I'm in charge of. And so I have little things I have to think about,

like fixing up the house, how much do I want to invest in it?

And analysis paralysis has been kind of

going on because I. The carpeting that they put in is

cheap carpet. It's pretty well worn already after six months.

And so I've got some lvp. And I'm like, gosh, should I do that? Or,

gosh, do I not? Do I want to see what's under the floor or do

I not? Yeah, all these kind of things. And you can very

easily get stuck as, like, what is going to be the best decision? I don't

know. I'm scared to make a decision. And you know what?

It causes great deal of anxiety. Ambiguity causes

anxiety. You'll feel better just making the decision. And I

Think you can think that if you decide to invest money in something, and what

if you buy a car and then it's a bad car? Well, you can always

return the car. There's lemon laws out there. You know,

if you make a decision to pull up the carpet and replace the carpet and

you realize that you don't have the money to pay for the carpet, well, you.

I mean, then you learn from that. Like, it's going to be

okay. It's all going to be okay. It's going to be okay. But even having

made the decision, you just have another decision on whether or not to

borrow some money or, you know, work extra or do something to get more

money. But it's still a decision that you made. Yep. Do I

do this? Do I do that? So we got three

tips for you today. And so the first tip, making decisions.

This is going to be really encouraging to you, I hope, is that

clarity beats certainty. That this perfectionism.

We're going to get to the place where we're 100% sure that we made the

right decision is not reality. In fact, life is best lived

when you are taking risks, when you're not playing it safe. And

it's crucial to remember this because it's a

clarifying process where you get to the place where you have enough

clarity that you can say, let's go for it. I'm not doing it out of

emotion. I'm actually doing it with a balance of emotion and excitement, but

real clarity in the process. You almost never have the perfect

information, but you can have clarity of purpose. The best

decisions come from knowing what problems you're

solving, what success looks like, what values guide you.

You have filters in your life that you're looking at.

And one of the best ways to. That I

can think of at times for me is if I'm going to make a big

decision. If I say to myself, how does this move me towards my goals?

How does this move us towards our vision? So if as a business,

you have a revenue goal or you have a goal for team

unity, or you have a goal towards building leaders

within your organization, hiring people, how does this decision move me

towards my goal? If it doesn't, then it's really possible. It's

a tangent. It's taking you away, it's distracting you. And

I don't find that often

when I'm making decisions, I do find that there's resistance

from other people if I'm making good decisions, believe it or not,

because even those good decisions. So you decide to

do something that's expanding and growing and you're

challenging yourself, you're taking some more risks, you're doing something fun, but you get,

you're doing something good, but you get some resistance. And if

you listen to that, it's, it's not necessarily the best

way to move forward. I mean, you can get sucked into that pretty easily. I

know I can. Pretty easily. I think everybody can because you're so

right. Clarity beats certainty. Everybody wants to,

everybody has to make decisions every day of their lives. Some big,

you know, and some are small. But what we'd love to

have is we would love to have prescience.

I want to be able to know the future, what's going to happen when I

make this decision. And it's like I learned this a long

time ago because just leading different parishes and different,

working at the university, working at different schools, I

had to make a lot of decisions. And I actually, which

helped me a lot, kind of focus. And this is another way of

saying it, I focused on, is this good enough?

Perfectionism isn't something you want to get into because

I'm never going to find the ideal risk free choice.

No one is. But this is good enough. I have

certainty here. I have this clarity. I mean, not

certainty. I have this clarity that yeah, this is right.

I don't know everything that's going to happen with the dominoes afterwards. But

this gets me started. So I was talking to a friend who was the

CEO of a company today asking about this

topic. And he's had to make some hard decisions, you know, hiring,

firing, letting people off, new business expansion and everything.

And he was saying he had to get to the point where he realized that

the decision could go wrong and that it's

in a sense that it's always, it always could go wrong.

It always could be bad. And I hate that. Like I, I don't like that.

I want it to be safe. I want it to go well. But then he

said, but you can always make changes after you've made the decision.

You can adjust things, you can change your course, but at least you started

moving ahead in the process as

a risk. Yeah. And there's usually two options or three options. And

I always like when I'm looking at my options, I like to think, okay, which

one first most matches up with my values and

who I want to be in the future. Very good. So that's like

you get clarity. Clarity beats certainty. I went and spoke

to a company on Friday and I wanted to be certain that I was going

to be ready and Just going to have all things lined out,

everything there. And I would give myself on a scale 1 to 10

for that workshop. I don't feel great about it

right now. I don't feel like even today I talked to the person that

runs the business and they, they shared with me that they were

encouraged by it and everything. But I don't feel because I took a risk and

the risk through the help of the team at Decide youe Legacy to not

over prepare. I knew that I would have put

probably I would have. I was in kind of this perfectionistic mode that I want

to be really over prepared for this presentation because I haven't been doing a lot

of speaking outside of podcasts. I just haven't been doing that a whole bunch, A

whole bunch. And so I wanted to, I was probably going to put in, you

know, 10 hours of time on this thing when I ended up

putting in probably three or four hours of

prep time, maybe not even that much, but a lot less than

I normally would have and let go. And that was a big risk for me

because I don't want to just let go and even thinking about it

now, go by an outline. Don't feel like you got to have it all

perfect. And that's. How does that tie to

decisions? I mean, it's that you're

clear enough, this is the right thing to do. I don't have to have it

perfect and have certainty that it's going to be a perfect outcome. Right.

Actually, and that's what I was thinking about that whole time when you're doing your

prep work is I wanted to say, I did say it a

couple times, you've got this in your back pocket. And I was thinking in my

head, really, this is going to be good enough. I know you want

perfection, you want to touch everybody perfectly, but

don't worry, it's going to be good enough. So

the second tip is that decisions are systems.

They're not actual events. They're not. They're a system,

they're a process. And it's not a one

time event. Decisions lead to other decisions and other decisions and

they're caused by other conversations and other actions

that you take. I mean, they're impacted by other actions you've taken before

you made the decision. A single decision isn't isolated, it's

isolated. You know, we live lives of being of patterns

and if we recognize those patterns, we can recognize how to make better

decisions. And the patterns could be that we start communicating

more upfront with people as we make the decision or we start to get

feedback at a better, higher level from people as we make decisions.

So recently I've been getting. Trying to at least tell

people more in advance and share. Preface it with it with. I'm just

thinking out loud. I do find out that I get that

feedback from people. They think I've made a decision and I'm just thinking about it,

but I'm expressing it in a way where it seems like I'm certain about this

decision, but I don't think I'm expressing it in a way where it seems like

I'm certain. So just communicating that up front can help people to

understand that Adam is needing help with this right

now when they don't think I need help with it at that time or even

if I'm open to help for it at that time. Yeah, talk it out so

you can evaluate it better. Right. Two different people. And that's super helpful to me

because it doesn't have to be perfect. It's a part of the process. We're engaging

a process. And where we are in that process. I mean, don't some decisions take

longer to make than others? Like, that's why we don't meet

somebody and a week later get married. Very often you shouldn't.

You shouldn't. But that's why. Because it. We

recognize in a society that it's probably not a really quick,

great decision to make that quickly. No. Right. But

then you hear these stories, like, well, my grandma and grandpa.

I'm serious. Like, you know, I even hear that's. You've heard that kind of

stuff. And they've been married 58 years, in fact, and they, you know,

whatever. But no, there are still

certain situations where you pretty much have to

go by some. There's guardrails in place that say that, like, you're going

to need to make this decision over a period of time in a process.

So it's. It's sort of. Have you ever seen somebody that's made a really big

decision right after a loss of a loved one? Yes. Yeah.

And how does that turn out? Not very good. Not

usually very good. Yeah, right. Same kind of thing

for religious experiences. People would come

all the time to me after having this great religious experience and, like,

I'm never going to drink water for the rest of my life and

water or whatever, some crazy idea that makes

sense to them in their enthusiasm of the moment. And

it's like, actually there's a kind of a rule. You got to

wait five months after a great religious experience before you make

a Vow or a decision. Because you have to.

It's not just a one time thing. You have to build up the

system. That's amazing. Yeah. I. So it's

probably right after. Right after your

mom dies. It's probably not a great time to buy

a $50,000 timeshare.

Probably. Probably not. Even though you tell yourself or whatever. I don't know what a

timeshare costs. But it's probably not great to buy a. A five

hundred thousand dollar house in. In Destin,

Florida. Yeah. I. You know. Right. Because you're making that decision

in a place where you're not. You have to recognize the process you

are in. Yeah. You don't have a system to really help you. You're just making

it event. And it's like oh, what's the system? To reduce my

biases, my emotions at that moment. All those things

kind of. And running it by other people seeking those diverse

perspectives. Absolutely necessary. Necessary.

Yeah. To a point. You can't ask a whole bunch of people because

if like for me I have to silence the noise because if I

could keep not making a decision by keep going and asking other

people for their advice and sometimes that's big.

Yeah. I mean you have to limit the amount of people and you have to

have a certain people that you value their input.

And I do. I have like three people that I'm good and I'm like. And

then I not going all. Or just knowing who the people are that you can

process certain decisions with as well. There's certain people that are great at that.

So you create processes that reduce your emotion and

your bias. And I like our coffee illustration that you can't make

a great cup of coffee. Get a great decision. That's a coffee without a good

foundation beans and a good filter which is our

values and our vision and our

purpose in life and our purpose. So you make business decisions based

on that you make. So if you look at that model and. And part of

the beans are relationships and your emotional health and so you're.

Yeah. And seek diverse perspectives. I

find that is great. Is why I am a proponent of having

friendships of all ages. Literally. Because you could go out and

ask your 6 year old daughter for advice

on making decisions and they could give you good advice. That's hard to

believe but they are going to tell you something you may not have heard before.

That would be very interesting. I mean it depends on the. What is the topic.

But yeah. Out of the mouths of babes. Yes. It might be very insightful and

very tactless. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's

true. And you review outcomes to improve your decision. So, like, if you look.

And I had some friends challenge me to do this, to say, as a leader,

make a list of the ways that you've been a good leader and had successes

and make a list of ways, because we've had a number of employees that decide

your legacy, and we were hiring somebody new and they told me, dude. And make

a list of ways you believe you've dropped the ball. And let's look at those

lists and then make a list of the things you can do differently

this next time around. And make sure you read it and make sure you bring

it to us, you know, and make sure you don't forget it, because I'm notorious

for forgetting things. But that was a way to step back as I

made decisions, to help me make decisions, because that was. Those are big decisions

that you're making right there. Consistency in how you decide

matters more than brilliance in any single decision. What does that

mean? You consistently

have follow through on the values that you hold with yourself.

Yeah, that's like. I mean, consistency. Yeah. You consistently

make decisions. Oh, boy. But some decisions are

spontaneous, are so fun. They are. You know, let's just do it.

There's room for that. That's. There's room for that. Where's the room for let's buy

a. Ticket when you're friends with me? That's what there's room for. There's, you know,

I have made some great, fun decisions when that are spontaneous,

you know, like, that I don't regret. But I would have only made them

if. I don't know, if I just was in a mood that was like,

let's do it. I mean, there's a balance. That's a balance. Well,

I'd say there's also an age difference, but I agree. The same

thing. I've done it before, just doing spontaneous.

But I think Kelsey's right. It's that whole principles,

ideals, goals, and values that help guide us. I have.

I still remember one time. This is many moons ago. I hate to say it,

but did that spontaneous thing of saying, okay, I'm going to

London, I'll see you later. And I was like,

10 of us landed in London and had. We only had. We had

a month to get somewhere, but we had no idea where we're going to stay,

how we were going to get there. That's a big one. That's cool. All right.

Was a blast. How did you get your ticket? Did you go standby? No,

actually Back then it was a hundred bucks to fly from New York to

London. Oh, man. And so I did it. I mean, we used to,

we flew all the time back then, but. Yeah, but it was for

me, an over planner. And I was like, I don't like. What a

great exercise of letting go. Yeah, it was. Well, but you couldn't do that if

you had six kids at home and a wife that, you know. No.

So you, you, you just could, you. Just might not be married

much longer. But that wouldn't align with your filter. Right. Because your

values would have been compromised. Yeah. If you made that decision, but it wasn't in

this case. So you made a decision based on your system, your process. So you

want to have a process. Yep. You want to have a process and you want.

And clarity beats certainty. So if you found this helpful, check out Shatterproof Yourself

Light. Now, this is a clarifying process, a course that you can take.

It's 25 minutes long. It has, we talk about seven small

steps to a giant leap in your self confidence in your leadership.

You just fill in the blank. It's a giant leap in your life. And things

that help me, that help our clients, that you can identify and find

clarity by going through and filling out the worksheet that goes with the course. And

it's going to challenge you to take action. I mean, decisions lead to

actions. A decision is a commitment. A decision is eliminating other

options. Yes. A decision is a big deal. Take

it seriously. Take yourself seriously. If you make a decision, well, then at some

point, even when you're second guessing yourself, even when you feel like you made the

wrong decision, well, you got to go back and say, well, how was I when

I made that decision? You know, I got married. I did

decide at some point that it was worth it. So, you know, I'm.

You just don't have to make that decision again. I mean, I, I'm not speaking

for myself. I'm just speaking in general. I mean, you can go back to when

you made it. It's a powerful thing. So check out the course. You can hit

the link below and go through the course. Shatterproof Yourself. So the third tip

when it comes to making decisions, this strategic planning decision making process for leaders

is emotion drives logic. Even the most rational

leaders are influenced by emotion at times. Even the

best leaders are influenced by emotions at times. That's just how our brain works. I

mean, we are emotional beings and we often don't want

to even. I mean, I find that it just. I don't want to deal

with that, it overwhelms me to feel some of the emotions that I can feel.

So I want to hide from it, not listen to it, not journal about it,

but numb myself from it. Awareness of that state is.

And the state in your team and picking up on that, that's emotional

intelligence. We're aware of our emotional state and the state of others

as well is critical. And it's power.

Your fear is going to narrow your thinking. It's not going to

give you real healthy logic when you're emotional. It's going to give you

frantic spontaneity. That I

wouldn't suggest is healthy spontaneity. There's a real healthy spontaneity like going to London in

that situation. I'm assuming it was probably a really healthy thing. It was probably

challenging your rigidity in a point. Yeah, excellent.

Go out there and you do some. Find a place to live. So

emotion can be your friend. Let's just not let it be our master.

And learning to regulate your emotional state and see it as part of the

filter as one aspect. Because I've seen wisdom is being

defined as logic and emotion

where they converge and you have some level of a

balance. But emotional states can be misleading because it

can be showing you what you should do rather than what you should not do.

Sometimes my anxiety is telling me exactly what I need to be doing. The

thing I'm most uncomfortable with is exactly where I'm going to grow the most.

It's the art, it's the challenge. It's leaning in and saying,

if I push in through this thing, I know the fear is coming, but the

best stuff in my life is going to be on the other side. Yeah. That's

the reality of so much and growing. And professionals

versus amateurs handle this stuff in their decision making

process. You know, professionals show up even if they don't

feel like it. That's why we say the show must go on. You know, a

comedian who has a show

is not the person who can say, I don't feel good or feel like it.

Right. Or say, I wish I didn't have this right now. No. They say, I

have paying clients. I'm going to do my job 100%.

That's what professionals do. And there's a, there's a place where

somebody goes from being an amateur and I, I love this. It's been on my

mind. The book Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield, everything Steven Pressfield

I find that I read and I have for probably 15 plus years.

I love it. It started with the War of Art. But all of his books

tend to really inspire me because he addresses the

emotional aspect of being a professional in such a healthy

way. And the resistance that we feel and face that he would

say is, you know, is. He calls it the

resistance. He just calls it, like, evil,

you know, like an evil force that wants to tear you down and destroy your

life. Doesn't care about you. Doesn't care about anything with your. Doesn't care about your

success. But if I look at my decisions and the bad ones I've made, I

definitely haven't been a pro. I've been an amateur. An amateur getting

stuck. Everybody has their days. I would say, for

sure, everybody has their days. But I think on that third one, emotion drives

logic. One of the most important things, and I think it's one of the

things that people don't do enough of, is

self reflection. What is my emotional state right now?

I'm gonna come in and bite my husband's

head off because he burnt my toast again for the second day in a row.

And you got to stop and say, is that really worth my

marriage? Or whatever it happens to be is like stopping

and mastering your

emotions as you're making those decisions. It's so

vital, because, I mean, if we look on our culture and our TV

today and all the shows, it's all about emotive decision

making. I'm gonna. I'm hurt, so I'm gonna lash out. Wow.

That's not gonna lead you to any kind of good outcome. So

whether you're a CEO or a husband

or a housewife, it's. You have to make those

decisions. You have to recognize, where am I right

now? Oh, I'm not in a good state. I need to calm down.

I can make a better decision and do better things. So mastering

and stepping back from your emotions is a big part

and of making great decisions.

Stepping back, absolutely. Yeah. Big deal.

Yeah. I couldn't do what I did for 30 years without that. Because

from right in the beginning, you're tossed into highly emotional

places. Whether it's counseling, someone's dying

or somebody's dead. A friend of yours, you. You

have to. Yeah. Keep everything in check and say,

okay, I'm gonna let it go out later. Because

you. Yeah, that is a really good point. Because you. And

as a priest, you can be in the most

difficult situations people are facing where it's highly emotional and you're able to stay

distant from it. Why just can't we do that in our own heads and

get distant? So the thing that is very helpful for me

personally is when I'm in a highly emotional state to focus on

what is going on that I'm focusing on. Like, where is the fear and what

is this? And is it based on reality? And what. Because

if I say. And I can get negative and I can say it's going to

go bad, it's going to go wrong. They don't want to

work with us, they don't like me. And if I can

realize that that emotional state is driven by that thought process

that I have and shift it into like, it could go, well, what's the most

likely outcome? Look at the value we're providing. Look at all the good

opportunity. This is amazing, you know, And I mean, realize that

a professional, from an emotional point of view, doesn't take

success or failure personally. A success is a success.

A failure is a failure. It's not personal. It's a part of the process.

They have the ability to step back from their life. And as Steven Pressfield

would say, when you're a screenwriter and a screenplayer, they off a

screenwriter. And he's a. He's an author. He wrote the Legend

of Bagger Vance. They will actually publish their book. And it's.

It's presented from a business that is not them.

It's not Steven Pressfield. It's their llc and

they're able to. It's a state of distance from that that they can sell the

hell out of it. He would describe it, he says in his. In his book,

you can pimp the hell out of yourself because you're distant from it. So the

rejection is not you. It's actually this product you're selling

which you can tie to you, but there's some emotional distance from it.

Kind of a little tricky thing there. I haven't totally grasped that myself, but I

know when I heard him, hear him talk about it, I get encouraged. That's all.

I mean, because he doesn't. Because he, you know, encouraging thing about Steven Pressfield, he

didn't have success as an author. I think he was in his late. It was

in his late 50s, so he's in his 80s right now. And then he

ended up writing some books and he ended up having some really great successes. But

his first, like his career, he would discipline himself to write every

day, and he still writes every day. And he does it come rain

or hell or high water, he will say. And he gets up and again,

he's in his 80s. He gets up early every day and works out except Sundays.

He loves golf, does all the but has these disciplines in his life

which are crucial to step back and actually deal with the emotional aspect

of the decision making process. So let's go ahead and review. Clarity beats

certainty. Decisions are systems, not events. Emotions drive logic.

If you found this helpful, give it a rating and review on Apple or Spotify.

Share it with a friend and you're mostly going to make my day. If you

take one aspect of this podcast, you got good content and you

take an action based on it. Even if it's just something that was referenced today.

I'm going to go look into that more do something

80% of positive change is taking an action to make

applications. 20% of it is insight. To

decide means that you're eliminating other options. Your legacy is the impact

your life will have on others. There's no positive change until you

decide to change. So decide today

because your legacy depends on you making

decisions and follow this process. This type of thing. These

tips are going to help you make better decisions. Today. I want to close the

way I always do. Live the life today. You want to be remembered for 10

years after you're gone. You decide your legacy. Nobody else.

I appreciate you greatly and I'll see you next time.