0:00

The other day my husband turned to me and said, doesn't

0:02

it seem like we're making this big decision

0:05

fast, maybe too fast? Feels a little

0:07

bit like a whirlwind. I didn't blame

0:09

him for asking. I had the same thought sometimes.

0:11

Because when I am making big decisions, I often

0:13

sort of feel like I'm half waiting for a

0:15

grown up to come around and tell me if

0:18

I'm allowed to do it or if it's a

0:20

bad idea. But the reason I've

0:22

created so many incredible outcomes in my life

0:24

is that I know how to be decisive

0:26

and make decisions fast. And that

0:28

is the opposite of what women are socialized to do.

0:31

So in this episode, I'm going to share the

0:33

thoughts that allow me to move fast and move

0:35

big and the returns that that has created in

0:38

my life. And I'm going to tell

0:40

you about that big decision that we recently made

0:42

and how I used my set of decision thoughts

0:44

to make it easy. So let's get into it.

0:48

Welcome to Unfuck Your Brain. I'm

0:50

your host, Cara Lowenthal, master certified

0:52

coach and founder of the School of

0:55

New Feminist Thought. I'm here to

0:57

help you turn down your anxiety, turn

0:59

up your confidence, and create

1:01

a life on your own terms, one

1:03

that you're truly excited to live. Let's

1:05

go. Okay,

1:09

so let's talk about how most women think

1:12

about decisions first, because I want you to

1:14

really listen and see where this resonates with

1:16

you. Women are socialized to

1:18

be very wary about making decisions or

1:20

taking risks. First, we're

1:22

socialized to believe that our job is to

1:24

be a good girl, which means following instructions,

1:27

behaving nicely, doing what we are

1:29

told. We are conditioned

1:31

to seek and rely on external

1:33

authority and approval to know

1:35

that we're doing it right or that we're safe.

1:38

And historically, this was literally the case.

1:40

A woman who didn't follow what the male authorities

1:43

in her family or in her community said could

1:46

be subjected to violence, exclusion, public

1:48

humiliation, or even death. So

1:50

for millennia, we have learned that we are

1:53

not the ones who make decisions. We are

1:55

the ones who execute decisions that other people,

1:57

i.e. men, have made. have

2:00

been the authorities and the leaders and women the followers.

2:03

So to start with, we often are

2:05

uncomfortable being our own authorities, and we

2:08

want someone who we have decided is

2:10

more knowledgeable or responsible or

2:12

wise or something, more something than

2:14

us, to validate our choice.

2:17

And the social messaging is that women

2:19

are frivolous, that we're emotional, especially with

2:22

money, that we're bad with money, that

2:24

we don't understand economics, that we don't

2:26

think strategically, right, we're relational and not

2:29

strategic or principled, and that

2:31

we don't have good long-term thinking. And

2:33

then on top of that, women are socialized

2:35

to fear risk because we are taught that

2:37

our value comes from pleasing everyone and doing

2:39

what we're expected to do, and

2:41

that safety comes from following the rules. And

2:44

when you think about taking a risk, it

2:46

usually involves not following the rules and maybe

2:48

even breaking the rules. And it

2:50

involves doing something that's not the norm and not what

2:52

everyone expects you to do. And

2:54

it means doing something that could go wrong,

2:57

right? So a risk feels dangerous to

2:59

us already, and then you layer

3:01

on that possibility of it going wrong.

3:04

Because one way that society keeps women following

3:06

the rules is to blame them for anything

3:08

that goes wrong in their lives, or

3:11

even in the lives of anyone they're connected to.

3:14

In a patriarchy, men are given all the power,

3:16

but they're never held to be responsible for

3:18

bad outcomes, right? Whereas

3:21

women are given no power but are held

3:23

responsible for everything. Like think

3:25

about what we say if a woman gets

3:27

assaulted, especially sexually assaulted. What

3:29

did she do to cause it? What was she wearing? Did she

3:31

lead a mon? Why was she in a relationship with

3:33

him then? What happens with intimate

3:35

partner violence, right? Something terrible happens

3:38

to a woman, and then the culture asks, what

3:40

did she do to cause it? Or, well, why

3:42

didn't she leave then? She could have left, right? It's

3:44

she's responsible. Think about what we

3:46

say if there's something wrong with a kid. What did their

3:49

mom do? Did she work too much? Did she not work

3:51

enough? Did she feed them the wrong things? What

3:53

did she do during her pregnancy? Right?

3:55

Think about what happens if an older person has

3:57

an accident or declines. We're more likely to blame

3:59

a dog. who wasn't around and caring for them,

4:01

right, than a son. We would expect

4:03

the son to be off having his own life,

4:05

but a daughter should always be available to

4:08

take care of her family, even if she's already taking care of

4:10

her own other family. There's even a

4:12

phenomenon in the corporate world called the glass

4:14

cliff, which is where big businesses get their

4:16

first female leader, only at the

4:18

moment that they're going through a crisis that's going to

4:21

be almost impossible to fix. So

4:23

like a woman is brought in at that moment

4:25

when like things are going off the rails, and

4:27

then that woman is held responsible for what happens,

4:29

even though the thing was already going

4:31

off the rails when she came on board. So

4:33

all of this creates a situation where women

4:35

are socially incentivized to play it safe and

4:38

not take risks or make big decisions. And

4:41

women are socialized to believe that

4:43

any desires they have that conflict

4:45

with the normative life pattern for

4:47

women are confused or misguided or

4:49

unrealistic or irresponsible. So we

4:51

end up thinking maybe we don't really know what we want. And

4:54

that's why so many women spend years and years

4:56

in jobs they don't like, in relationships that aren't

4:58

working, in cities they don't want to live

5:00

in, because on top of the normal

5:03

human resistance to change, they've been socialized out

5:05

of believing that they know what they want

5:07

or what's best for them. This

5:09

is a problem I used to have a

5:11

lot so I am not casting shade like

5:13

I have had this brain. I

5:15

would be unhappy with various aspects of my

5:17

life, but I did not change them because

5:20

I did not trust myself to make decisions.

5:22

And I assumed deep down subconsciously that

5:24

my unhappiness was mostly because of things

5:27

that were wrong with me anyway. So

5:30

I was also subconsciously afraid to change

5:32

anything because what if I

5:34

was still unhappy? Then that would

5:36

prove the problem was me. Now

5:39

at this point in my life, post coaching, I mean

5:41

I'm not post coaching in the sense that I still

5:43

coach myself, but post having learned to coach myself, I

5:45

fucking love when the problem is me, because that means

5:47

it's my thoughts that are the problem and I can

5:49

change them. But back then I thought

5:51

if the problem was me, it meant that the

5:53

problem was like inherent and essential to me. There

5:56

was something wrong with me and that's when I meant

5:58

by being the problem. So I was terrified. have that

6:00

fear confirmed. So I was able to

6:02

keep living this way when I was working as a

6:04

lawyer and a legal academic because there was a clear

6:06

path laid out, law is a very

6:09

risk averse profession so my brain fit right

6:11

in. But then I decided to

6:13

become an entrepreneur and that made it

6:15

impossible to avoid making decisions and taking

6:17

risks if you want to succeed. The

6:20

human brain's delusional powers are strong but even I

6:22

could not quit my job as a legal academic

6:24

to become a life coach on the internet and

6:26

convince myself that this was a no risk

6:29

decision. And at the time I

6:31

had a perfectionist brain. I was always trying to

6:33

make the right decision but as

6:35

an entrepreneur there's no right

6:37

decision because it's all made up

6:39

and you're making up as you go along and there

6:41

are a million ways to fail and there's a million

6:43

ways to succeed. So I had

6:45

to come up with a different way of thinking

6:47

about decisions in order to actually get my business

6:49

off the ground because the perfectionist paralysis of trying

6:52

to make the right decision when there was no

6:54

one to tell me it was right and nothing

6:56

could validate that it was right or wrong was

6:58

blocking my growth. So I'm

7:01

going to share what that was with you right after

7:03

the break using the big decision my husband and I

7:05

recently made as an example. Does

7:08

it feel like if you pause,

7:10

get sick, or take an afternoon

7:13

off you're never ever going to be able to

7:15

catch up? That if you let

7:17

one ball drop or one plate stop spinning your

7:19

life is going to fall apart and not just

7:22

your life, your family's lives, your colleague's

7:24

lives, your friend's lives, you're going to disappoint people,

7:26

you're going to let people down, your

7:28

work projects are going to suffer, your house is going

7:30

to get messy, your kids are going to eat, microwave

7:33

chicken nuggets again, and you're going

7:35

to feel so bad about yourself. It

7:38

feels like you're responsible for so much in

7:40

life and for making sure that everyone stays

7:43

happy, safe, and fed. I

7:45

understand why it feels that way. Society has

7:47

taught you from the day you were born

7:49

that all of that is your responsibility,

7:52

but it's not true. It's

7:55

actually something called

7:57

over responsibility. It

7:59

is a way of thinking and feeling

8:01

and being in the world that

8:03

society programs into women's brains and

8:05

it's making you spin out. The

8:08

good news is that I have a way to turn it

8:10

off and I have a

8:12

way to show you how your

8:14

life can change when you stop

8:17

taking over responsibility for everyone and

8:19

everything and instead you take appropriate

8:21

self-responsibility. That doesn't mean that you

8:23

don't care about other people, that you don't help other

8:26

people, that you don't support your friends, your family, your

8:28

colleagues, your loved ones. It means

8:30

you also support yourself and

8:33

when you do that you actually have a

8:35

fuller cup, you have more to give where

8:37

it matters and you can stop

8:39

pouring out into the abyss where

8:41

it doesn't. So if

8:43

you experience the mental spin of feeling

8:45

like everything is overwhelming, you're

8:48

doing it all wrong, you're always behind

8:50

or you're just barely keeping

8:52

your head above water but if you

8:54

drop anything you're going to drown then

8:56

I want you to join me for

8:58

my brand new totally free Stop the

9:00

Spin workshop. It's at 12 p.m eastern

9:02

on September 25th and I

9:04

will tell you I have been teaching and

9:07

coaching on women's brains for almost a decade.

9:09

I brought feminist intersectional perspectives to

9:11

the coaching world and my free

9:13

workshops will change your life more

9:15

than a lot of people's paid

9:17

six months programs. So

9:19

come join us. You can

9:22

go to unfuckyourbrain.com/spin or

9:24

you can text your email to plus one

9:26

three four seven nine nine

9:28

seven one seven eight

9:30

four and when you're prompted the

9:32

code word is spin. Come

9:35

let me teach you how to stop spinning,

9:38

get your bearings and be able to actually

9:40

move forward. So

9:43

the decision that my husband and I made

9:46

that I talked about in the beginning of

9:48

the show was actually not something super non-normative

9:50

which is just goes to show you that

9:52

women can suffer from this kind of decision

9:54

paralysis or have anxiety around making

9:57

decisions people can even when

9:59

the decision is pretty socially validated. So in

10:01

this case, we were looking to buy a

10:03

house upstate, technically in upstate Pennsylvania. And

10:06

we started looking about a month ago. And I once

10:09

owned a very small house in New Orleans

10:11

many years ago, which was not a huge

10:13

financial investment. My husband owned an apartment with

10:16

his ex. So it's not that we've never

10:18

done this before. But I had never

10:20

really bought a house

10:22

house before. We've always rented. We're New

10:24

Yorkers. Most New Yorkers rent. So

10:27

this was like the first time I was going to make a kind

10:29

of significant house

10:31

purchase. And we saw four

10:33

houses and we seriously considered two of them and

10:36

we made an offer on one of them. And

10:38

I think from the first time we went to see a

10:40

house to when we negotiated and accepted offer on a house,

10:42

it was less than a month. So

10:45

completely understandable that my husband said,

10:47

doesn't this feel like it's happening

10:49

too fast? But here's why

10:51

it did not feel that way to me. And

10:53

more importantly, why I felt completely grounded and confident

10:55

in the decision. So how do I

10:57

think about decisions that may be different from how most

10:59

people think about decisions? The biggest

11:01

difference is that I do not think about

11:03

each decision on its own as a decision I

11:06

have to get right or wrong. And

11:08

I don't really consider the stakes of each

11:10

decision completely on their

11:12

own in a silo. I

11:14

think about how I want to make

11:16

decisions in my life in general. I

11:19

think about the approach and the philosophy

11:21

that I want to bring to decision-making.

11:24

Decisions are incredibly powerful because

11:26

they move us forward in

11:29

one way or another. They are the engine

11:32

of creating change, growth, evolution,

11:34

and experiences in our life.

11:37

So many of us only want to make a decision

11:39

if it's the right decision. We think

11:41

the point of a decision is

11:43

to obtain the right outcome. So

11:45

we're treating the decision as kind of instrumental.

11:48

It's like the decision or the decision-making process

11:50

itself is not valuable or worthwhile to us

11:52

when we're thinking this way. It's

11:55

an empty container. Its value or worth is

11:57

determined by whether the decision turns out to

11:59

be right in the future. So

12:01

we treat it kind of like it's a vehicle

12:03

to convey us to a place and the vehicle

12:05

itself or the journey to the place has no

12:08

value if we don't end up liking the place

12:10

we are at that we get to. If

12:12

we don't like the destination, if it turns out to have

12:14

been the wrong address. When we're

12:16

thinking about a decision this way, what we

12:18

don't realize is that what we really mean

12:21

unconsciously is that we believe the value or

12:23

worth of a decision is determined

12:25

by what our unmanaged mind is going

12:27

to think about it in the future,

12:30

right? When we are believing this decision

12:33

is a decision in a silo, this

12:35

decision is only about this decision, what

12:38

will determine the value or the correctness of

12:40

my decision is if I get it right.

12:43

And the way I know that I got it right

12:45

is if in the future my

12:47

unmanaged mind has positive thoughts

12:50

about it by luck, right?

12:52

It feels like Russian roulette because we're not even telling ourselves

12:54

I'm going to choose what to think about this in the

12:57

future. We're saying I have to know

12:59

when I make this decision, I need to

13:01

feel sure that in the future my

13:04

unmanaged unconscious mind will have positive thoughts about

13:06

this. And of course you can't be

13:08

sure of that. So you end up paralyzed. So

13:11

the initial level of self coaching you can

13:13

do with this is to understand that you're

13:15

the one who decides later if

13:18

a decision was right or not. You're

13:20

the one who decides what to believe about it, right?

13:22

I can always choose to look for what I lost

13:24

or what I gained. I get to decide which of

13:26

those perspectives to use. And that's how

13:29

I coached myself a lot on decisions originally. I

13:31

have coached some of you on decisions that way.

13:34

It's a really valuable first practice to become

13:36

more decisive is to take control of what

13:38

you're going to think about a decision before

13:40

you make the decision. But

13:42

now I think I'm actually operating at a

13:44

different level with decisions. I've come to a

13:47

different place about them, which is like the

13:49

next step because now I really think about

13:51

being decisive as a character

13:53

trait that I effortlessly embody, at least

13:55

the vast majority of the time. So

13:58

now at this point. It's less about

14:00

coaching myself on each decision, and

14:03

it's more about having a philosophy of

14:05

decisiveness. So this is

14:07

my philosophy of decisiveness. The

14:09

more decisions you make, the more

14:11

chances you have to change your life,

14:13

grow your capacity, and experience the things

14:15

you want. This philosophy

14:18

does not require that all the

14:20

decisions be correct, or

14:22

even that most of them be correct. Because

14:24

the alternative philosophy that

14:26

you should only make a decision if you can make the right decision, I

14:29

think it masquerades a safety and

14:31

responsibility, but it's actually just

14:33

producing stagnation and inertia. It

14:36

always feels safer and more responsible to just not

14:38

take a risk. Just stay where you

14:40

are, keep doing what you're doing. But

14:42

one of my core life values is growth

14:44

and evolution. When I make a

14:46

decision, I give myself an opportunity to

14:48

experience something new outside of myself or

14:50

within myself or both. And

14:52

over the course of my life, those are

14:55

opportunities that I want to prioritize and maybe

14:57

even maximize. So I would rather

14:59

make 100 decisions and have 25

15:01

of them turn out to be quote unquote wrong, than

15:04

make three decisions and have them all be

15:06

quote unquote right. I'm using quotes

15:08

because again, I get to decide if they're right or

15:10

wrong. But I'm talking about being committed

15:13

to a level of decisiveness where I'm not

15:15

even necessarily gonna stop and coach myself about

15:17

whether or not I think the decision is

15:19

right or wrong, because that's no longer really

15:21

my question. I think this is

15:23

the core of being a successful entrepreneur as well. You

15:25

have to be willing to try so many things and

15:28

you always end up investing money in people or ideas

15:30

that don't work out. And you have

15:32

to be willing to have most things fail for a

15:34

few to succeed. And people who I

15:36

see get kind of stuck in entrepreneurship, stuck

15:38

in building a business or in a creative

15:41

career, anything that's like not just a laid

15:43

out path to follow are people

15:45

who think that like, okay, yeah, you can fail

15:47

a little bit, but you're supposed to succeed most

15:49

of the time. Incorrect, in

15:52

my belief. You are gonna fail the

15:54

vast majority of the time. You are

15:56

betting on a few things succeeding.

15:59

But I think... mandate

20:00

to be decisive, to make

20:02

decisions and move ahead. I

20:05

trust myself to figure it out and I would much

20:07

rather try a lot of things, even

20:09

if most of them don't work, than not

20:11

try it all just in case it doesn't. So

20:13

I encourage you to think about what your

20:15

unconscious acceptable error rate is. Okay?

20:18

Yes, absolutely. You can coach yourself on every decision

20:20

and when you're first starting out in thought work,

20:23

I recommend you do. It's important

20:25

to retrain your brain to realize that the

20:28

payoff of a decision just lies in how you think

20:30

about it and what you decide. What you decide to

20:32

think about it if you decide it was worth it,

20:34

that that's a power you have. But

20:36

if you've been doing that and you

20:38

feel like you've got an okay handle on that, I think the

20:40

next level is deciding that you

20:43

want to just be a decisive person, that

20:45

you have a philosophy of decisiveness in your

20:47

life and you don't even have to coach

20:49

yourself in every single decision because you are

20:52

just willing to accept an error rate, you're

20:54

willing to accept a fail and just move on. It's

20:57

not that one of these techniques is better or worse

21:00

and I do think that it's usually a good idea to

21:02

at least learn to coach yourself on you

21:05

get to decide how to think about your decisions

21:07

after they've happened. I think that's kind of required

21:09

in order to get to this next level of

21:11

a kind of what's my acceptable error rate, let's

21:13

just go. But I think it's

21:15

worth thinking about even if you're still in that first stage

21:17

of like I'm going to coach myself on each decision, just

21:20

starting to let your mind play with like what

21:22

would it mean to be a decisive person? How did

21:24

a decisive person think about each of these decisions? How

21:27

did a decisive person think about all

21:29

decisions? What kind of error rate

21:31

am I willing to accept? Right? Because

21:34

for a lot of you, your unconscious acceptable

21:36

error rate right now is zero. You

21:39

think zero errors is the acceptable rate. You

21:42

might never say that like you might pay lip

21:44

service to it being okay to make mistakes, but

21:47

how do you actually talk to yourself when you do

21:49

make mistakes? The proof is in

21:51

the pudding my friends like so often I will coach someone

21:53

and they will say like, oh, of course I know you

21:55

a person can't be perfect. I know it's okay to make

21:57

mistakes, but just like this specific mistake.

26:00

997-1784 and the code word is spin. I

26:05

can't wait to see you there and teach you

26:07

how to stop the spin.