Episode 285 Transcript
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[00:00:00] You are listening to episode 285 of the Peaceful Mind Podcast.
Welcome to the Peaceful Mind Podcast, a place for creating the peace of mind. You need to be the best mom you are created by God to be. If you wanna bring more balance, more joy, and more peace to your motherhood, this is the place for you. I'm your host, certified life coach at Catholic Mom Danielle Thienel.
In the name of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Let's get started.
Hello everyone. Thank you so much for being a listener of the Peaceful Mind Podcast. I'm excited for today's episode, and before I do that, I want to just remind you all I was thinking about this. I put a lot of information about the resources that I've created, my [00:01:00] books, my courses about my coaching programs.
I also have been including something else in the show notes and just in case you are a listener and move on, which I sometimes, I listen to a lot of podcasts and it really isn't until after I've listened and there's something about it that I've been directed to the show notes that I go there.
But I'm thought I would stop and just give you that reminder for you today. Because also what I have been adding in the show notes is other relatable episodes to the topic that I've already touched on because today's episode, decision Fatigue and How to Simplify Your Choices, I have talked about.
Making decisions on other episodes. And so those you can find in the show notes as well that I know will be helpful. And so I just wanna do that little reminder to take that extra second and just click on the show, the episode and scroll down because there's also direct [00:02:00] links to where you can buy digital and paperback copies of my books and courses and just other resources that will help you your busy mom life.
Okay, so let's talk about something that a lot of us are faced with, right? And I'm gonna start with a question. How many decisions do you think you make in a single day? Take a moment. Take a guess. Pick the number. I was blown away by this. I did go to Google. I asked it, how much does the average adult, how many decisions in a day and do you know what it told me?
It said about 35,000 decisions per day. At first, I was like, what kind of went another route? Tried to ask it a different question, and it was like gave me a range, like 33 to 38,000. First of all, I'm like, okay, how do you know that? Who counted, but. Let's just say in general, it's a lot. We make a lot right From the moment we wake up, [00:03:00] do we hit snooze or do we get up?
What should I wear? Should I have coffee or tea? What's for breakfast? The decisions just keep. And if you're a mom, I want you to multiply that number that you chose by however many children you have, because suddenly you're not just making decisions for yourself. You are the family, CEO, the meal planner, the schedule coordinator, the conflict resolver, and the backup plan creator all rolled into one.
By 3:00 PM is it any wonder that if someone asks us a question like, what's for dinner? It feels like the straw that breaks the camel's back, right? We are just spread too thin at that point with all the decisions we make. So today I want to talk about decision fatigue. What it is, why it happens, and most importantly, how to simplify your choices so you can reclaim your mental energy for the things that [00:04:00] truly matter to you.
So what is decision fatigue? Decision fatigue is the deteriorating quality of decisions made after a long session of decision making. It's why you can make brilliant strategic choices at work in the morning, but then find yourself completely paralyzed by the cereal aisle at the grocery store in the evening.
Your brain. It treats every decision big or small, as work as hard as a challenge, and just like any muscle. It gets tired. The more decisions you make, the more exhausted your mental resources become until eventually you either make poor choices or avoid making choices altogether. And when I gave this muscle analogy, I was thinking about building muscle, about how when we really push it to its limit, like it's fatigue limit, it actually breaks down.
And then we need some [00:05:00] recovery time. Like we skip doing that workout on that muscle a day. So it's recovered before we like max it out. But I don't think moms I don't, we can't really take a break from the decision. So we can't have a day, I'm gonna make lots of decisions, those 35,000 according to Google, and then have a break so that we can recoup.
No, it's actually something constant, right? So let's think about it. Have you ever stood in your closet fully dressed right, staring at your clothes and feeling completely overwhelmed? Because you don't know what to choose. What about when you open the refrigerator? Maybe I this, I watch my husband do this all the time, right?
It's like he goes there and then he walks around the island and then he goes back. It's like he's hoping something will magically appear the next time he comes around to open the refrigerator, right? But that's [00:06:00] decision fatigue in action. Here's what's happening behind the scenes.
When we're overwhelmed by all of our choices. Every decision, no matter how small, it requires our mental energy. So when we are depleted, we either make impulsive decisions, maybe we let later regret them, or we procrastinate and avoid deciding altogether. And this is what I see most of from my clients in my coaching practice.
That creates its own stress when we avoid making decisions. And for moms especially, this shows up. It shows up in some specific ways you might. Spend 20 minutes staring into the pantry trying to figure out lunch. You might let our kids watch extra screen time because we're deciding on an activity and that feels overwhelming, right?
We put off important decisions about our own lives because we've used up all our decision [00:07:00] making energy on everyone else, and the cost isn't just mental exhaustion. It's the feeling that we're not living intentionally, that we're just reacting to life instead of creating it. Always feeling like we're at the after effect.
Just reactive. Reactive, reactive. So I wanna break down for you four main categories of decision making that are probably. Part of draining your mental battery. The first type is like recurring decisions. These are the decisions you make over and over again. What's for breakfast? What's for lunch?
What's for dinner? They come every day. What clothes should the kids wear? What route should I take, to run errands? And these feel small, but they add up fast because of how frequent of decision. Is what I'm calling low stake decisions. These are choices that don't really matter in the long run, [00:08:00] right?
But we spend mental energy on them anyway. That's which brand of pasta to buy? Whether we should fold our laundry now or later. What color notebook to get for the school supplies. The third type are other. People's decisions. As moms, we often take on decision making responsibilities that could belong to someone else.
What activities should your 8-year-old do after school? What should your spouse wear to the office party? These aren't actually your decisions to make, but somehow they end up on our mental plate. We take them and own them as ours. And the fourth type is called the big life decisions. Obvious with the name, right?
These are those important ones. Career moves, relationship choices, major purchases, parenting strategies. [00:09:00] These rightfully deserve your mental energy, but when you already are depleted from the first three types, you don't actually have the quality energy left for what matters in these big life decisions.
Or what I see a lot is it's just so prolonged, right? It's I'm gonna take a long time because this is a quote, big decision. But here are five strategies that will help you simplify and reclaim your energy so that we can lessen this decision fatigue. So the first one is to just automate. Automate when I know, when I've done the organizing episodes and when we talk about what we can do it, it usually is the same as this.
We've, we have to look at what we already are doing every day and how can we figure out how to automate them. So this is creating a system [00:10:00] so you don't have to decide the same things over and over again. That might be a weekly meal rotation. It might have that whole Taco Tuesday, pizza Friday, that kind of thing.
It might be around implementing a morning routine that removes decision making. Maybe you have the same breakfast options. Maybe the clothes are laid out the night before, the same kind of order of getting ready. So when you don't have to think about it, then you preserve that mental energy for more important choices.
So what can you set up that to be more automatic? The things that are happening on the regular, those frequent decisions. Maybe that's automatic bill pay, maybe it's subscription deliveries for certain household things. All right. Strategy two. It's called the good Enough philosophy. This is gonna come in for my perfectionists here, and this might be the most important [00:11:00] mindset shift, right?
Not every decision needs to be like totally optimal. Sometimes just making a good enough decision ends up actually being perfect for you, so that pasta brand doesn't matter, right? The color of your child's backpack might not matter. Whether you vacuum today or tomorrow might not matter. Give yourself permission to make this is good enough choices.
These are like good enough for those low stakes where there's not this huge outcome that your brain thinks. We need to take a lot of time for the decisions, and I'd like to ask, will this matter in a week? That's a good one. If I vacuum today or tomorrow, will it matter in a week? Probably not.
Okay. And so the answer is no. Go with your first reasonable option and then done. Move on. All right. The third [00:12:00] strategy is decision batching. Instead of making decisions throughout the day as they come up, why don't you batch slim similar decisions like together? And do it at a time when your mental energy is fresh, right?
So this is why we want to plan our meals like maybe all at once, instead of deciding each day by day, right? Maybe we wanna make phone calls like to friends or for doctor appointments or anything, and we wanna do that at a designated time block instead of just scattering throughout the day.
So put together your like things and batch them. It's actually what I do with these podcasts. I try and batch them a month. So that means I am deciding on my four episodes for the month. Actually this month when this podcast is coming out, there's actually five that you [00:13:00] get 'cause there's five Tuesdays.
But I decide, and then I go in and give my energy to those four, and then I don't have to put any more mental energy into it for another month. All right. The fourth strategy is to give decisions back to their rightful owners, and this one's huge. This one is huge. We often take on decisions that don't actually belong to us.
This is a lot of times when I tell my clients, oh, that's something you're supposed to mind your own business about. And so I want you to start minding your own decisions so your teenager can decide what to wear to school. Your partner can figure out what to bring to, I don't know, the office party, your 7-year-old can choose between two acceptable afterschool activities.
Start asking yourself, mamas, is this [00:14:00] my decision to make, if not lovingly handed back to whoever it belongs to? And yes, it might mean that, other people have to do step up a little bit, or it might mean that you have to find that good enough with whatever they decide. And again, not easy, but simple and helpful to give decisions back to their rightful owners.
And the last strategy is to create decision free zones. I love when we like have that end point when we're like, okay, now it's the weekend. This is my relaxing time. And we tell ourselves, okay, this is my non-work zone. Time off. We can do that. We can designate certain times for areas in our life when we're like, I'm not making any decisions.
I am decision free. Maybe everything's already planned out. Maybe it's Saturday afternoons and we're just following your energy. Just being in the moment, just enjoying what's [00:15:00] happening in your life for that day, not having to decide. It's not about being rigid about that either, right? It's just about being conscious and deliberate and creating those pockets of mental rest where you don't have to be on. Analyzing all the options that you have.
And I love to just help my mamas just become quick, strong decision makers. Don't lament between this and that. Just like what are my options? This one go And really just see the freedom that comes with that.
So sometimes what looks like decision fatigue is actually maybe a sign of something else, right? Maybe we're trying to make everyone else happy with our decisions instead of making choices that are aligning with your values, right? Maybe there's some people pleasing [00:16:00] going on in your decision making, which I just wanna point out is always leads to exhaustion, right?
Trying to optimize for everyone else's preferences instead of your own. You're definitely probably falling into make, afraid of making the wrong choice. I see this all the time. They feel like that everything, it's like a high stake kind of thing, and you just wanna make the best in the right decision.
But the truth is most decisions are reversible or at least adjustable. Definitely figureoutable, right? Very few choices will make or break your life. If you wanna be carrying a mental load that doesn't belong to you, right? If you're that default decision maker for everything, like again, no wonder you become exhausted.
So let's build that muscle back up, right? Once you decide you're gonna simplify your choices, [00:17:00] then start intentionally choosing. About things that matter to you, follow some of these strategies that I've pointed out, right? What do you want your evenings to look like? What could less decision making do to give you back what you want in your evenings?
So here's what I want you to remember from today's episode. You don't have to be the decision maker for everything in your life or everyone else's. I, again, on these episodes. I hope if nobody else is giving you permission that you can hear my words and say, you can simplify it. You can automate, you can choose good enough and just know.
Your time, which decisions take up, can take up a time, and your mental energy are so precious. It's not unlimited. It's not meant to be spent [00:18:00] on whether you buy the same name brand or generic ketchup, right? This week, I want you to try to be more open to trusting your gut. And going with it, just choosing and saying every time that your mental and emotional energy are more important than keeping yourself in this state of fatigue.
I want you to notice how it feels to have a little bit more mental space when that happens. Notice what becomes possible when you're not constantly in like decision making mode. Because, I love your precious, beautiful mind and hearts and I know that what I've offered here today can help you address this challenge in our lives, this decision fatigue.
Okay, everyone, that's what I have for you today. Thank you for spending [00:19:00] this time with me. I always appreciate it. And until next week, know that I wish Peace be with you always.
Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of the Peaceful Mind Podcast. If you found value in today's episode, I'd be so grateful if you could subscribe and leave a review. It not only supports the podcast, but ensures you don't miss out on future episodes packed with insights and tools. To create peace of mind in your busy mom life. And if you're of the Catholic faith, like me or any Christian mom seeking to feel better in any area of your life and to show up more calm, connected, and confident, I can help become an empowered mom who knows how to bring about the changes you desire, no matter the circumstances.
Whether you need one-on-one guidance to get there, prefer a group coaching program with like-minded women. Or a self-study course I've got you covered. Explore my private [00:20:00] one-on-one packages. Join my Busy to Balanced group life coaching program or delve into my signature course Divine Time to find out which path is right for you.
Let's meet and see what's the best fit. Schedule a free call with me at daniellethienel.com. Or send me a direct message on Facebook or Instagram @daniellethienelcoaching. And also don't forget to get your copy of my book, the Cyclone Mom Method, How To Call On Your God-Given Power To Remain Calm, In Control, and Confident as a Busy Mom.
Dive into the digital and bonus audio version when you go to book.daniellethienel.com/new-book. You'll find all the details in the show notes too. Until next time, peace be with you always.
