Is the way you're making decisions really working for you: 3 new methods for leaders and how to implement them.

Have you ever had to make a big decision where you felt sick with uncertainty?
Deep down you knew the answer but your head was telling you the opposite?

Then you realize later that your intuition was silently pointing the way, you just didn't trust it?

I've been there—one too many times. So this week, we explore how to move from making decisions just with your head, data and other people's opinions and how to start tapping into your inner voice, your body and your heart. 

I'll share how I stopped being flaky at work and how it helped create more trust in myself as a leader and a partner.

If you're always on the fence, or always looking externally for answers- this is the episode for you!

If you're craving connection with leaders just like you, Thrive Circle's doors open again soon—join the waitlist and let's keep each other moving forward.
https://www.emilyrosedallara.com/thrive-circle

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

People who you may ask for an opinion. They have different prerogatives. They have different goals and dreams and intentions, so what might be a yes for them may not be a yes for you and you might go down the wrong path. The more we can move towards trusting our own intuition, the happier and more fulfilled our life will be, the easier it will be to make decisions. You'll know exactly what is a yes and exactly what is a no. Welcome to Bubbling Out, where we're popping the norms of leadership and creating new, sustainable, powerful ways to lead. This podcast is your sanctuary for discovering how to lead with resilience, manage change your depletion and handle stress effectively. Join me for a series of breakthrough conversations, practical tools and mindset tips and a peek into my weird and wonderful life as a leader and entrepreneur, all aimed at helping you lead without compromising your time, energy, values or lifestyle. Hey, hey, hey. Welcome back to Bubbling Out.

Speaker 1: 1:14

I'm here at the booth so if you can see the video, I'm putting a few of these videos up as a reels. You can see that we've made it a bit darker, moody in here Now. I'm constantly evolving the booth and if you've been with me a while, you will have seen at the very start of this podcast before, when it was called Web through and Thrive we built a booth because we live in this great, big old apartment in France and it's echoing. There's just too much sound going on and all I could hear is my voice echoing around the room, and so it took Alex, my podcast editor, a ton of time to edit everything and now it sounds bloody amazing, and that's all because of this booth and so unfortunately, you don't get to see my beautiful background like you do in some of my other videos, but it sounds good in your ears and that is what is important. So now in the booth I have a chair that's the upgrade I was recording for a long time stood up and I think it came across. Like you can tell, I'm fidgety, I move around a lot, I get too hot, and it actually was putting me off recording the podcast because I was like, oh, it's a lot of effort and I'm tired afterwards and I'm hot and war. So now I'm sat down and chilling and I've just recorded an extended voice message podcast with Regan, my BFF, my work BFF and also my BFF IRL, and we decided that because we chat so much all the time and we send each other these huge voice messages. We thought, well, why not bring it to the podcast so that episode's coming soon Now, recently I have been working hard in the background and working on something really cool for all of those people who really struggle with stress having it come into their lives, having it show up in ways that they don't really want in their work lives just a real great resource, like a few great resources, actually, that you'll be able to grab soon.

Speaker 1: 3:05

So I'm working on that in the background. Thrive Circle is running and it's so fun we recently had. What we do in our group coaching is they have modules that they go through. So I'm not a teacher, but I guide them through scenarios and tools that they could utilise and take with them. We go through things like goal setting, resilience training, stress management, decision making, pivots, all that kind of stuff, other things that we kind of talk about here but in way more detail. And then when they come to the group coaching sessions, we actually coach. They get access to me like they were doing one-on-one coaching and they coach for at least 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and the topics are really relevant to everyone else. So everyone goes away learning.

Speaker 1: 3:46

And the last session last week was just amazing. You know, when you just love what you're doing and I'm so happy I made this decision to bring lots of people together and support them on more of a group level. So anybody who is leading their teams, you will understand what I mean. Bringing a team together, like having your one-on-ones, is great, like we love doing that, especially when we do like monthly reviews and stuff with our team and our employees. But having that group camaraderie, like our weekly group calls our meetings, where we're like, okay, what are we doing this week? We are working on this, this and this. Okay, cool, what did we do last week?

Speaker 1: 4:21

And what I used to love about being in a team was that first like 10 minutes of catch-up where you feel like, oh, I'm not alone in this, like I am working with other people and they're there for me and we, even if I'm having a shit morning and it's Monday, right, I used to feel fulfilled with my team calls and felt like, you know, we're getting somewhere and these other people are so fun and they have so many cool insights and I love hearing about their weekends and that's why I was a CMO and that's why I used to love to build teams and that's what I like to bring into Thrive Circle that kind of feeling of support really. And I also love my week leads with my assistant. Yeah, I bloody love this woman. She is up for a challenge and every time I have a crazy idea I'll message her and say, hey, I was thinking about this, could you do this? This initiative like, why not, let's try.

Speaker 1: 5:09

You know, if you're just hiring people right now this is not hiring podcast episode right? If you are hiring people, one of my clients asked me the other day I've just hired four people. I have no fucking clue how to hand over my stuff to them. This is always a challenge, and so the only way that you know that you need someone is when you're maxed out, and usually when you're maxed out, everything is in your head and you have no idea how you would ever extract that information and give it to someone else and help them to do their job, so you don't have as much stuff to do. That's a big problem, and it happens the first time you ever start to hire people, especially if you are an entrepreneur or if you've been kind of solo in your team for a while and now you've got the ability to expand.

Speaker 1: 5:53

Now, something that really helped me, and this is from Natalie Ellis. If you follow Boss Babe, I love this woman, especially because she's from the north of England and she's just like smashed life. She records everything that she does, like anything in general. So she uses Loom. I use Loom too, and I started adapting the OK. I'm currently trying to get my brand colors for a real in Canva. Here's how we find the brand colors in Canva. So I just record little snippets like 10-second videos.

Speaker 1: 6:27

This is how we write emails. Some people you still might write emails I don't know in companies. I know that you do. But here's how we write the monthly email and you record yourself doing it. Here's how I put together a meeting agenda. Here's how we manage our tasks. Here's how we write out a task in our project management tool. All these kind of things are worth recording.

Speaker 1: 6:47

So this is what we discussed in group coaching the other day how can you hand over all this information that's in your head and extract it. So you've got more help then and then you can focus on the stuff that actually moves the needle. But this is an exercise I really recommend doing to help you. Just extract what's in your head, put it all into a spreadsheet and do that from now. Do it from day one, even if you're not going to have a team yet. Right, even if your team is in the far future, you're not even anywhere near that kind of position. Do it as if you are going to hire a team Also helps with you to work towards your goals and feel like when I do hire someone, I know exactly what they're going to be doing. I know their roles and responsibilities. And roles and responsibilities of someone new is so important because otherwise they will flail and they will say yes to everything and they will get nothing done. But that's a topic for another day.

Speaker 1: 7:35

Now, in this week's episode, we're going to go more into how to make decisions effectively and, most importantly, how to know what is a yes and what is a no for you, particularly Very clearly. Ok, now, before we jump in, don't forget leave us five stars, hit and subscribe, whatever you get your podcast, because that really helps us to get in front of more people like you, helps us to help more leaders, and that's all I ever want. You can also sign up to my newsletter to get exclusive content, tips, strategies to help you lead without the stress and overwhelm. Plus, you'll also get access to exclusive leadership coaching, q&as, workshops, freebies, all the fun stuff, and you'll also get bubbling out direct to your inbox so you don't have to go anywhere else. Let's get into it. So, decision making.

Speaker 1: 8:23

The reason I wanted to record this is because making decisions is really difficult and I have always found it a difficult task. I've always been described as indecisive not anymore. Always in the past I proved everybody wrong. Some people I remember people would describe me as flaky a bit, not even that long ago I would say like two or three years ago because I constantly changed my mind. I went with my energy and I, if I wanted to go to a social event, maybe I wouldn't want to go to it when it actually came to the event, and so over time I learned in that aspect that I will do what I say I will do and I will show up and I will respect that for people, and so that element changed. But when it comes to actually making decisions for my life, that was always a big, big challenge, and still it's sometimes a struggle, but I actually have tools to do it.

Speaker 1: 9:16

Now right, and before, I was always looking for external validation of my ideas. I was always using my head to make these decisions. So I would be like, okay, I've got this tough decision to make. I'm going to ask this person, this person, this person and see what they think, and if it is a collective yes, then I'm going to say yes, right, I would also use data, so I'd use their opinions and then I would use data in terms of talking about a marketing campaign or we're talking about a business decision, I would look at the past data and be like, okay, well, this worked and this didn't work and we should use the past data. The kind of the equation was my head, other people and data. Now, that was my criteria, but it only gets you to a certain point and it also leads to distrust in your own decision-making skills, your own inner knowledge, your own intuition.

Speaker 1: 10:05

Now, I don't believe that we should just make decisions only on our intuition. I feel like we need multiple things to make decisions, but always relying on an external validation or an external voice or dataset is quite dangerous sometimes because it veers you away from what is right for you. People who you may ask for an opinion. They have different prerogatives. They have different goals and dreams and intentions, so what might be a yes for them may not be a yes for you and you might go down the wrong path. When I started practicing different ways of understanding what could be a yes or a no in decision making, I felt a bit lighter. Actually, I was going to say it was a bit easy, but it's not easier. I felt lighter. I felt like I could trust myself a bit more.

Speaker 1: 10:51

Now, if you ve been listening for a while, you ll understand what I m talking about here. I have been on a journey and I used to be extremely data oriented and extremely focused on everybody else s opinions and facts and blah, blah, blah, until I realised that my own intuition is more powerful than what everybody else is telling me. I had a bit of a spiritual awakening we ve talked about in the past, and I realised that there is more to everything than we think and we can use that to our advantage. So now, instead of fluffing around and not making decisions and maybe making the wrong decisions, and sitting on things for ages and letting them stew and then developing cycles of negativity and not making any decisions and just being sat there instead of that, I now do three different things. So, step one I collect the data and I start using my head. So we don't discard that. It's important because sometimes we do need our knowledge. We do need past experiences.

Speaker 1: 11:51

However, the problem with using your head to make decisions all the time and solely and I actually didn't mention this before, but the problem is, we base it on past experiences, and if our past experiences have been negative and we ve experienced something that hasn't worked or we ve experienced failures, then we re less likely to go down the path that we should be going down. To give you an example, I always believed that I couldn't make money in my own business. That was my belief, and the reason I believe that was because I ve had lots of failures in the past. I used to and I talked about this in a recent episode with Regan coming up, and I will leave it for then but that happened a lot in my past because of multiple things, and that one thing didn't depend on me not being able to make money. It was external factors that meant it didn't work, and it was consistency. So if I was to just make a decision based on past events, I probably never get bloody anywhere because I'm just looking into the past and hoping that will guide me.

Speaker 1: 12:52

But what I can do is look at what is working outside of me, because success leaves clues, right. So let's have an example. So if we're looking at an external thing right, success leaves clues. We might look at making a new decision for a business, making a new pivot, or we might be looking at moving in a different direction. We would look around us and think, okay, this is one of the directions I want to move in. How has it been done before by other people? Right? So if you're leading a company at the moment and you've just been told, okay, marketing budget is being cut or product team is being cut, and you're leading that team, now we have to move in a different direction. We have to go whole, like we have to go knuckle down on what's working, right.

Speaker 1: 13:38

How do you know what works and what doesn't work? You look at data. So what is working in your company, what is working around your company, who's doing really well, who isn't doing really well? You gather that kind of data, right? That's the kind of data I want you to use to make decisions, not just past information. You can use it in some circumstances, but just using past information is going to flaw your decision making. So hopefully that made sense. Have a look around you, look into your business, look into what's happening, look into who's successful. Do what you want to do, whatever it may be. Collect that data. That data is going to help you make a logical decision.

Speaker 1: 14:13

Now then I grab my pen and paper and I sit on my meditation cushion and this is not that we-who. This is scientifically proven that it works, and I'll get the scientific studies and help support that in the show notes. But take a deep breath, sit on your meditation cushion, close your eyes, and when I do this, the goal here is to try and listen to what is really meant to happen. What decision is meant to be for me right now? What decision am I meant to make for the business, for the team right now? And the only way that you can learn what is a yes and what is a no that's what I call this exercise yes or no exercise. The only way that you can learn to listen to your own inner knowledge, to make decisions is by learning what is your yes and what is your no. Okay, now stay with me. It's not that woo-woo, I promise.

Speaker 1: 15:05

So this took me a long time to understand because I was very disconnected from my body. And so when I started training in somatics which is basically in a very basic level it's bringing your body and mind together and treating them as a whole versus just treating our mind and so when I started studying this, I was like, hmm, I can actually go into the body and get answers and the body actually holds on to a lot of energy and a lot of trauma and a lot of dis-ease. Right, the body can also hold the answers like the mind can, because they're connected. So that is kind of what triggered me to start considering that I could trust my body to give me answers, to guide me. Now, the first time I tried this sitting down in the meditation cushion with a pen and paper, closing my eyes, asking for yes and no I was like I have no clue what's happening. I can't really hear or feel anything like. I know I may be a bit anxious right now, so I've got a bit of a knot in my chest. So how do I differentiate between a yes and no? And the answer is you've just got to practice, like everything else, and so I was doing this for a while.

Speaker 1: 16:13

So I literally just sit there, close my eyes, take a deep breath, connect to the higher self, and when I talk about higher self, all I mean is it's the best version of yourself. It's like your magical you. Whoever you would like aspire to be, it's like your guide. Okay, if you want to call it that, some people might call it the subconscious. So it always holds all the answers and it's always got your best interest at heart and it comes with love and you can trust your higher self. So once I've connected to my higher self, I always imagine a white light and that travels through my spine into the ground, grounds me and then surrounds me like a bubble. You can see where I got the bubble ideas from right. So I put a protective bubble around myself and then I take another deep breath and I breathe, and then I ask my body I don't ask my higher self this, I ask my body show me what is a yes. And over time you start to realize the small, tiny differences in your body and one day I got the answers and now I know what is a yes and no. And it's really crazy and it's such a weird thing to be able to be so connected to your body that you know when it's like it's speaking to you, and especially women. You will know this. Men, I'm not sure how much you're able to tap into this as much as women. Women are very tuned in.

Speaker 1: 17:27

Now, if I have a no, I get a very strong crunchy feeling. Or sometimes I just hear the word no, like not like someone's talking to me, but it's like if you've experienced this, you'll understand. But I get like the knowing that it's a no. If it's a yes, I tend to get like this really calm feeling that comes off of me, like really relieved, like like it's so nice and it's really warm. It's like a warm feeling. And then I just jot down the answer and sometimes I'll ask a few qualifying questions, as if I'm in a sales call around the decision and I'll ask things like okay, is this the right decision for me right now, yes or no? And then you just listen to your body. It's as simple as that. So that's one part that you can add into your logical decision making tapping into the body.

Speaker 1: 18:12

And then I take it a step further, and this is not for everyone, but this is a fun activity to do and I keep getting my friends to do this because I'm like this works. Does it work for you? Like it's crazy. It's part of my semantics training, and so basically it's muscle testing and they do this a lot in Chinese medicine. But the idea is that your subconscious is giving answers through your muscles. We call it muscle dousing, muscle testing, and it's kind of similar to how a polygraph works, like a lie detector picks up on the tiny muscle movements and the idea is that the subconscious has the answers. Now I might make a video on this. I keep saying I will and I never do, because it's different.

Speaker 1: 18:48

It's like a long process, so maybe I'll do a full one, but all you do is basically you ask your body what is it? Yes or no? You've got that fast, you've got the intuition. I would say don't do this until you feel like you're a bit tuned in. You'll take like a heavy pendulum. So I just use a necklace with a crystal on it. Obviously I've got crystals everywhere, but you can just use any kind of necklace with something heavy and you do a bit of a ritual and the ritual is a bit weird, but it's very similar to ECM.

Speaker 1: 19:17

So emotional clearing. You have to do a few different and EMDR as well. You have to do a few different rituals, that kind of get your body aligned and grounded. So you do this ritual first drink a lot of water and you hold out your arm with this pendulum and you ask it what is a yes and what is a no? And it'll show you. It'll swing in one direction and then no, will swing in a different direction, and then you ask it to intensify and intensify until you can see it like swinging like crazy, yes or no. And then you clarify that you are who, you are in the here and now, like I'm Emily in the here and now yes or no. And you ask like a few again qualifying questions, like this is me talking through my subconscious, and then you can ask questions.

Speaker 1: 19:59

So I did it for Thrive Circle. Actually I asked it should I launch Thrive Circle Again? Like before, I actually did it yes or no. And it gave me a yes and you can get like for some people it really doesn't, there's no response and usually that's because the subconscious is trying to keep them safe, especially if they've had a ton of trauma. So you won't get any response, but a lot of my spiritual friends. I remember at Christmas I went to my friend's yoga studio and we did this together and hers was like me. She just got an instant response. It's really cool. Tried to do it with Antoine. He was just like well, the fuck's this, like not entrusted because he's the least spiritual person on earth. However, once you do it, it's really cool.

Speaker 1: 20:41

The hardest thing is trusting it. That is the biggest, the biggest and this is the biggest thing when it comes to decision making, and it's why we always seek for external validation, because other people must be, they must know better than us, right? That's usually the belief. They must know better than us. Why? Maybe because they've done something similar? Maybe because they're older, more experienced, like I don't know. But we rarely trust our own decisions and our own intuition and there's tons of reasons why that is. It's lots of conditioning. But the more we can move towards trusting our own intuition and our own intuitive decision making, the happier and more fulfilled our life will be.

Speaker 1: 21:22

I really believe that the happier and more fulfilled your team will be, the easier it will be to make decisions. You'll know exactly what is a yes and exactly what is a no. You'll be able to pull it into your boundaries. Like, imagine, I did a workshop on boundaries and this is also in Thrive Circle that's coming up soon, guys, if you're listening and we set our non-negotiables in this training it's not training, but in our workshop and we have to tap into what is our yes and no, what is okay for us, what isn't. So this kind of decision making process is great to set boundaries. We can use it for everything.

Speaker 1: 21:57

And we should also question why don't I trust my own decision making skills? Like, what is it about me that I don't trust? Okay, so you have to. This will really unblock a few things for you. So I really urge you to maybe try out this decision. There's many ways to do it. I mean you might not get into the muscle dancing, but I will try and make a video for you guys. But really do try the yes and no, because that was a huge deal for me the wait. I can trust myself to make decisions. Trust myself to do the right thing and I don't need anybody else. That's the best thing.

Speaker 1: 22:31

Like, I remember I was hiring for an assistant a while ago and I like went through the whole process and I didn't trust myself. I just like asked around. And then one day I just realized it wasn't like not that anything wrong had happened, nothing bad had happened. But I sat down and asked was this the right decision? And it wasn't the right decision and I felt fully that this was a no. And then I had to have a difficult conversation, and maybe maybe that's why we don't want to have these kind of conversations, right? Maybe we feel like, if we do have these tough conversations, what's that going to say about us? What are people going to think about us? And maybe that's why we don't trust ourselves.

Speaker 1: 23:13

Many elements to this, and I won't go into a rabbit hole, but I just want you to remember you don't need other people to make the best decisions for you. You've got access to your own intuition anytime you want it. It literally just takes practice. Decision making isn't something that we just do with our heads. So put that pros and cons list aside and try out what we discussed today, and I would really love to hear how it went for you. If you want to learn more of these tools that help me and my clients make decisions, make more money and lead in a way that's aligned with our values, then you'll love Thrive Circle.

Speaker 1: 23:48

Head over to emilyrollsdellaracom. Forward slash Thrive Circle to join the wait list. I'll see you next time, guys. That's all for today on Bubbling Out. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a five-star review. Your reviews and subscriptions help more people, more leaders, more entrepreneurs like you access the Bubbling Out podcast. Also, if you're on Instagram or TikTok, go and follow me, emily Rose Dallara. Coach for behind the scenes, dog vids, somatic exercises and me DJing sometimes. See you next time in the bubble. You.