Have you ever stood at life's crossroads, feeling your pulse quicken at the thought of venturing into the unknown? Today, we wade through the emotional complexity of significant life transitions and how they test our mental and emotional fortitude. Join us in a candid conversation that balances the thrill of new beginnings with the poignant act of letting go. We're not just talking about any change; we're talking about the game-changers, the shifts that redefine the very fabric of daily existence—career moves, lifestyle transformations, and the bittersweet farewells to the familiar.
This episode is a heartfelt exploration of the art of decision-making when the heart and mind are in conflict. We delve into why a simple pros and cons list might fall short and how assigning emotional weights to our options can illuminate the path ahead. Alongside our personal insights, we offer practical self-reflective exercises that promise to support your inner journey even as you chase those horizon-broadening goals. If you've ever grappled with a decision that could pivot the direction of your life's story, this heartfelt heart-to-heart is crafted just for you.
Have you ever stood at life's crossroads, feeling your pulse quicken at the thought of venturing into the unknown? Today, we wade through the emotional complexity of significant life transitions and how they test our mental and emotional fortitude. Join us in a candid conversation that balances the thrill of new beginnings with the poignant act of letting go. We're not just talking about any change; we're talking about the game-changers, the shifts that redefine the very fabric of daily existence—career moves, lifestyle transformations, and the bittersweet farewells to the familiar.
This episode is a heartfelt exploration of the art of decision-making when the heart and mind are in conflict. We delve into why a simple pros and cons list might fall short and how assigning emotional weights to our options can illuminate the path ahead. Alongside our personal insights, we offer practical self-reflective exercises that promise to support your inner journey even as you chase those horizon-broadening goals. If you've ever grappled with a decision that could pivot the direction of your life's story, this heartfelt heart-to-heart is crafted just for you.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Self-Care Society podcast with your hosts Celia Williamson, ashley Kuchar, louie Guardiola and Keri Shaw, a podcast devoted to those whose job it is to help others get or remain mentally, physically and emotionally healthy, but who also need to take care of themselves. And how we're going to do this? By first showing you the filtered, pretty version of success, and then the real struggles, real work and raw grit it took to get there, how they took care of themselves and also achieved their goals while doing it Together.
Speaker 2:
We will work with you to improve and maintain your internal health and growth while helping you achieve your external goals and your next professional achievement in life, and we're excited to show you how to follow your own individual and unique path and achieve the dreams you have while taking good care of yourself.
Speaker 2:
So let's get started. Hello and welcome to the self-care podcast. My name is Isabel Matosian and I will be your host for today's episode. Today, we are going to talk about the power of making lists again, not really. We're going to talk about the absolutely gutting feeling of moving on to bigger and brighter things, while also having to leave behind some really fantastic things. While also having to leave behind some really fantastic things.
Speaker 2:
Moving on can be scary and stressful, and hard and unpredictable, but perhaps even more so, it can be exhilarating and can lead you to some unexpected places. The question of the day is how do you decide that it's time to move on when the answer is not obvious? We all know that sometimes it is. Sometimes it's not worth it to continue putting up with being treated poorly or underappreciated, or that the strain of a job isn't benefiting you anymore but is actually harming you. Those are the times when you know that the risk is worth it because what you have currently is more destructive than helpful, know that the risk is worth it because what you have currently is more destructive than helpful. But then we have the times where there's no clear, objective or emotional answer. There are things you love about your current roles, lifestyle and experiences, but then other opportunities may prevent themselves which would offer incredible growth and future success, as well as that excitement of starting something new. You can take the tactic of asking others what they think you should do, and that can be helpful to a certain extent, especially depending on who you're asking. Your best friend may have a different point of view than a co-worker, or they may have a different opinion than a family member who relies on you, or they may have a different opinion than a family member who relies on you. Someone who relies on you may unconsciously consider the benefits of you staying where you are so you can continue helping them. People are objective to a certain extent, but never entirely, and that's not a poor reflection on them. It's just how humans are hardwired. We feel big emotions and let those emotions play a role in our choices, whether we mean to or not. At the end of the day, the best person to make those big, life-altering decisions for you is you.
Speaker 2:
This is where that conversation about lists comes in. I know we talk about making lists to set priorities a lot, but what kind of list do you make when you need to make a choice that could reframe your entire future. Oftentimes, people start with a pros and cons list. Now, there are pros and cons to making a pros and cons list. This can really apply to any big choice, but let's assume that we're talking about the choice to stay working in your current city and community versus taking a great opportunity in another state, away from your current community that you've built. It could also be another city, of course. This is just to give us some context while we discuss how to make these big choices. So one pro to the pros and cons is the actual activity of sitting down and listing the good things and the bad things about making a big choice.
Speaker 2:
Making the effort to think through all possible pros and cons of a given course of action and then capturing them in writing minimizes the likelihood that critical factors are going to be missed. Assigning weights to each of the pros and cons is an additional exercise that promotes deeper thinking and presumably leads to better quality decision making. It can also help you gain some distance from the emotion behind your decision-making. Important decisions are likely to evoke powerful emotions. Going through the steps of creating a pros and cons list can create what researchers Aslam Aydouk and Ethan Cross refer to as a self-distance perspective, which is where the decision is viewed as an external problem to be addressed and that eases the impact of the emotions surrounding the decision. Deferring the decision pending the pro-con analysis can also provide a gap in time where the powerful emotions can dissipate. This reduces the risk of an amygdala hijack. This is the cognitive phenomenon popularized by Daniel Goleman, in which perceived emotional threats can lead to extreme actions, often with undesirable outcomes.
Speaker 2:
The most compelling pro of all, the pros and cons list, is generally a well-understood tool. It requires no special computational or analytical expertise and is just kind of simple to administer. As for the cons, a pros and cons list can be vulnerable to cognitive biases. These are common patterns of thinking that have been demonstrated to lead to errors in judgment and poor decision making. Unfortunately, the same simplicity that makes the pros and cons list so appealing can create many opportunities for a ton of cognitive biases to emerge. So one such bias is the framing effect. Pros and cons lists generally are about evaluating two alternatives, which is kind of a thumbs up or a thumbs down scenario, and an example of narrow framing, which is a bias created by overly constraining the set of possible outcomes. Then there is the overconfidence effect, which is a well-established cognitive bias. This is the tendency of individuals to overestimate the reliability of their judgments. When creating a pros and cons list, it's likely that many people assume a level of accuracy in their assessment of pros and cons which really just isn't there. And then we have the illusion of control when faced with the task of envisioning possible outcomes. A common bias is to believe that one can control the outcomes that in reality are not controllable.
Speaker 2:
Besides these cognitive biases, there is also a reliance on analytical thinking. Using an analytical tool such as a pros and cons list emphasizes the objective. It's just the facts side of decision making. Intuition or what Goleman terms, direct knowing has captured the attention of a lot of brain science researchers, and in one study the absence of attentive deliberation or going with your gut was demonstrated to result in decisions with better outcomes than those derived from the use of analytical tools like a pros and cons list. Oftentimes in the back of our minds, we've already made a decision, so the list we make will reflect that. If we subconsciously don't want to make that choice, then there will be more cons than pros. And maybe this is fine and you just needed something to make you feel better about your decision. I don't see a huge problem with that, as long as you aren't deciding not to go or do something because of some lingering fear or apprehensiveness about making a big change.
Speaker 2:
Another con to a pros and cons list is that some of the things need to be weighed differently, which we've mentioned a little bit earlier. There may be more items on the cons list, but the things from the pros list may hold more weight. At the end of the day, is the convenience of a commute to work more important than the work itself? I would argue that it isn't. So, like we said earlier, weigh each item on your list, maybe give them an actual number. For example, for pros, you could give them a number between 0 and 20. And for cons you could do negative 0 to 20, or however you prefer to handle that. That way, when you add them everything together, at the end you'll kind of get a positive number or a negative number.
Speaker 2:
If you get a positive number, you know that the pros win. If you get a negative number, you know, that the cons win Ultimately.
Speaker 2:
For the vast majority of decisions that a person deems to be critical, a pros and cons list is useful only as a very high-level preliminary thinking aid. When the stakes are high, the potential interference of cognitive biases, wishful thinking, self-limiting beliefs and similar barriers to objectivity start to rise. High-stakes decisions therefore require approaches that address these complications. Self-awareness, reflection and actively applying a range of mindsets are examples of alternatives to the pros and cons list that shed light on these hidden, unconscious cognitive biases, ultimately leading to better insights and better decision outcomes. Basically, it's okay to use a pros and cons list as long as you're also aware of your own biases. At the end of the day, we can only make the next best decision in our lives. We can't predict the future or how things will go, even when we pick apart every single potential pro and con. Sometimes you just have to make a choice with the information that you have to the best of your ability and handle whatever results from that choice, also to the best of your ability. But let's talk a little about what I mentioned earlier in this episode. Do you remember that? The absolutely gutting feeling of leaving something that you love to take a risk and try something new. Yeah, that feeling basically sucks. My recommendation for dealing with it is to allow yourself to feel that grief, the comfort and care that you had found in that role community or home and making a choice to leave it behind can be so confusing and truly painful. But try to keep things in perspective. Remember why you're moving on, remember that there are opportunities ahead of you that will open new doors and new opportunities, and also remember that you can make whatever choices you want to in life. If it doesn't work to leave, you can come back Maybe not to the exact circumstances, but you can always come home or return to a community that you loved. But don't hold yourself back because you're comfortable, especially if you're at the start or the middle of your career. Empower yourself to take risks now rather than forcing yourself to live in the same place forever without embracing opportunities. When you do leave your community or familiarity. Make a plan for how you will stay engaged with the things that you love, your community or familiarity. Make a plan for how you will stay engaged with the things that you love. Seek out the hobbies you enjoy or the places that will feel familiar, even if they aren't exactly the same, Build a new community and broaden your horizons. It's hard at first, of course, and there still may be an ache for a while after, but try to embrace change, learn as much as you can and make the best decisions that you can without being too hard on yourself.
Speaker 2:
I don't know if any of you watched Frozen 2, but I absolutely loved the song Next Right Thing when I watched it, and that saying is a perfect example here. Do the next right thing that you can do with what you know. After that, keep doing the next right thing. At the end of the day, we're all just doing our best, and any pitfalls that may come from that can be managed. If we fell apart every time we faced a new challenge or a new unknown, we would never make it. In such an uncertain world and a reality that we're all living in currently, the best you can do is build your ability and capacity to adapt and move with the changes that happen around you. This way, you can take advantage of opportunities, knowing that you can handle whatever comes next, because you've built your resilience, community and self-care skills to be able to do it. I hope today's episode was helpful for you all. Have the great rest of your week and enjoy the nice weather we're having. That concludes this week's episode. And remember, it's not selfish, it's self-care.
