Mantra with Jemma Sbeg - I Trust Myself to Make the Best Decision With What I Know Now

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

This week's mantra is I Trust Myself to Make the Best Decision With What I Know Now. Life is full of choices, and sometimes, uncertainty makes us question ourselves. In this episode of Mantra, we explore how to build self-trust, release the pressure of needing all the answers, and confidently move forward with the knowledge we have in the moment. Trusting yourself doesn’t mean you’ll always get it right—it means knowing that whatever happens, you have the resilience to handle it. This Mantra will help you embrace decision-making with self-compassion. For ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to OpenMind+ on Apple Podcasts. For more from OpenMind, follow us on Instagram @openmindstudios. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Open Mind. Welcome to a brand new week. Here is your mantra. I trust myself to make the best decision with what I know now. I'm your host Gemma Spe, and I'm here to guide you toward a more centered and fulfilling life. Each week, I'll share personal stories and insights that are focused on a specific mantra,

plus journal prompts and a weekly challenge for all of us to help put it into action. Think of mantra as your mental reset button, a way to stay centered as you juggle work, school, family and whatever else life throws at you. Each mantra is a simple powerful phrase you can repeat to refocus your thoughts and bring a bit of calm into your day. It's a small tool with a big impact, clearing your mind, lifting your mood and rooting you in the present. If you've listened to my other show the psychology of your 20s you'll know I'm all about

those little nuggets of insight that make a big impact so whether you're looking for some extra inspiration or you're just trying to ground yourself amidst the chaos you have come to the right place. At Open Mind we value your support, share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate, review and follow Mantra to help others discover the show. For more exclusive content, monthly bonus episodes, early access and ad free listening, join our Open Mind Plus community on Apple Podcasts. This week, I'll catch you up on what's been going on in my life, and then we'll dive

into today's mantra, I trust myself to make the best decision with what I know now. This mantra is all about empowering you to make confident choices, even when you're faced with a natural uncertainty. So stick around, we'll be right back after this short pause. We'll be right back after this short pause. Welcome back. We are going to get into this week's mantra in just a few seconds, but before we do, it is time for my highs, lows, and who knows. All right. I'm going to talk about a who knows.

And it is a new addition to my workout routine. Drum roll, please. I have become a bit of a Pilates princess. I have begun doing reformer Pilates. Now, I never actually thought that this was going to be something that I fell in love with. I was always like an intense workout person, like boxing, like running, like hit workouts.

At the start of this year, I was like, I want to try to do more kind of movement that I actually like. I found myself quite exhausted and tired after so many of these things. So my friend invited me to a reformer Pilates class. Why did no one tell me that it's like just playing on the playground? Like those little machines that have springs on them that you bounce up and down on. Genuinely so much fun. And I actually think that Reforma Pilates also does a lot for your brain and a lot for your cognition because you have to be so focused on like your body in space and you have to

be so focused on like different movements. Listen, you would think that the entire Reforma Pilates community had sponsored me to say this, but genuinely I'm just really, really loving it. And I'm really loving how it's like putting me in more attunement with the rhythm of my body. And for people who were like, that's not a real workout. Please try a class. I have hurt in places that I did not know there were muscles in. Like it is phenomenal. And now I'm going like three times a week.

All my previous exercise regiments out the window. So there we go. That is my who knows for this week. Okay. Reforma Palladis aside, let's get into it. It's time for this week's mantra. I trust myself to make the best decision with what I know now. A big misconception or myth that we tend to believe as humans is that there is one best decision for us to make at every single

turn. And if we are to carefully observe and analyze the environment, all the context, all the information that we have, we will be able to discern what that decision is. And it's that decision that will unlock our dream life. To take that kind of further, that means that there is this perfect path through life almost. And we can obtain that perfect path by making the correct choice at every single point where we need to make a choice. Do you kind of see the impossibility of that? Because that's really what it is.

It's impossible, it's improbable. Making the most perfect decision is not actually something that we can always do because we don't always have the information that hindsight kind of provides. What we tend to forget is that there really is never a perfect choice, otherwise it wouldn't be a decision, right? Like the word decision means to resolve some kind of competition between two juxtaposed and perhaps equally good outcomes or options, or equally bad outcomes and options.

I like to think about it this way. If you had to choose between two choices on a menu and one choice was your favorite meal ever and you know it's cooked deliciously and it's only $10 and the other dish is a food that you're allergic to, surrounded by other foods you don't like and it's out of your budget,

the choice is actually quite easy. So it's not really your budget, the choice is actually quite easy. So it's not really a decision, right? A decision only emerges when we feel torn by two alternative outcomes that have very similar pros and cons. And the reason we feel stuck in those moments is that we don't want to regret not choosing the right one. What we're battling is perfectionism. Of course, it is perfectionism, you probably already guessed that, but it's also our desire, maybe even our need to be in control and to have some assurance that it's all going to turn out okay, which is quite honestly something that no one can really give us. You're just going to have to see for yourself.

That's scary, but it's also really exciting when you think about it. Because if you knew the outcome of every single decision that you were ever going to make from now until the day you died, what's the point of living your life? Genuinely, what is the actual point of waking up and going forward without a little bit of excitement and a little bit of surprise? But sometimes the possibility and grappling with the what-ifs and the alternative hypotheticals,

it's a scary mental environment to be in. So we don't see it in the same way that I was just describing it. We don't see it as exciting. In our desire to make the perfect choice, we do end up sacrificing a few things. Peace being one of them, action being the other. This specific kind of inaction that I'm talking about, it has its own name, you've probably heard of it.

It's called decision paralysis or choice overload. And it explains what happens to our brain when we feel overwhelmed by all the possibilities and all of the potential what ifs. What if it turned out this way? But what if it turned out that way? Kind of see where I'm going with that. We would think naturally that having more options

would make us feel more free and more liberated. It seems that it actually does the opposite. I wanna talk about one of my favorite studies ever, of all time, and it's a study that was done on regret. Regret is really at the heart of this whole question of, how do I trust myself when I don't have full information? Because what we're really worried about is, what if I make a decision and I regret it?

So this study was published almost two decades ago, but the findings still ring so very true. Basically what this study found is that you are more likely to regret inaction than action. Time and time again across this research project these researchers found that those who they spoke to who had the most regret in life it didn't come come from one decision. It was not a singular decision or even multiple wrong decisions that heightened their regret. It was regret from times when they had stayed stagnant because they were too scared to make a choice.

They had stayed in the same place to avoid discomfort, stayed in the same job, stayed in the same relationship that they knew wasn't right for them, the same city where there were bad people, where there weren't opportunities, where they felt lonely. And eventually they came to resent their past self, not for a choice, but for a lack of choice, for a lack of decision making. This is what the misplaced desire for perfection in all decisions costs us. It ends up costing us

our happiness. So this is the first takeaway of the day. If you are stuck between doing and not doing something, always choose to do it. And with that, I want you to know that choosing to live in perfectly, choosing to make a choice, even if you're not sure if it's the right one, it's actually going to give you so many more experiences, so many more options to learn, then you would obtain from just trying really hard to make one right choice. The second thing to note when we talk about making

the best decision is that as humans, researchers shown that we are pretty bad at predicting what is going to make us happy or unhappy about the future due to something called effective forecasting, where we tend to think about our emotions as being more heightened or stronger in the future. So either we're going to be so much happier, incredibly happy if everything works out the way we want it to, or we're going to be truly devastated if they don't. So really what we are, what we are stuck between is two extremes, and that means that the stakes

feel especially heightened. What actually happens though, when we make a decision, when we get to our future, regardless of what the outcome was, we actually tend to return to a pretty stable emotional state fairly quickly after good or bad things happen. So a study from Deakin University here in Australia found that actually we overestimate the intensity and the duration of how long our happiness, but also how long our misery is going to last. What we are really good at though is being resilient and adapting to our circumstances.

We are highly adaptable creatures, so even if you may think that it's the wrong decision, most of the time you can still progress and find a way out. It's also not like once you've made a decision, you are locked into that decision for life. You can change your mind. You are allowed to change your mind. Also, I always pose this hypothetical to people who have found themselves regretting past actions or past choices. I get so many messages from people saying, I'm so upset at myself for doing this, I feel like I've completely ruined my life, I feel like

I can link everything back to that time five years ago. How do you know that that choice didn't save you from an even worse fate? How do you know that this actually wasn't the better outcome? You can't, and the chances are you're coping with it better than what a previous version of you would have thought you could cope with. So if we can't ever truly know what is going to make us happy or how things are going to work out, it better than what a previous version of you would have thought you could cope with. So if we can't ever truly know what is going to make us happy or how things are going to work out, how do we still make the best decisions?

Because it is important to still put some thought into it. Well what it comes down to is self-trust. I love self-trust. It is one of my favorite concepts. But basically what it means is that you trust your ability to interpret the information you have now, but you also trust your future self to handle whatever comes their way. You are not so focused on trying to make grand predictions. Instead, you go forward with the information you have currently available to you, and you

also go forward with an attitude of forgiveness and grace if it doesn't end up being what you wanted all along. You forgive yourself for not knowing and with that you have greater acceptance for whatever is going to be. Each of us I think has a very ancient and deep intuition for what we know is right. You can kind of feel it in your body. You can feel it by where your thoughts keep returning to, by your emotions, but we can become detached from that in modern society.

So to get our way back to trust and trusting our intuition, I do think it's a process of trial and error, letting yourself be led by your gut instinct and just seeing whether it's right and self-correcting, going back and learning, okay, what reactions did I listen to that I maybe shouldn't have listened to? What reactions were happening to oppose those reactions that are actually maybe my gut instinct, if that makes sense? You want to also start asking, you know, can I trust the little voice in my head? Is that voice my intuition or is it my anxiety?

When I listen to it and I follow its directive, do I end up happier or not? Self-trust is also built on resilience and trying over, even when it didn't go right the first time. You know, if we were defined by one failure, one poor choice, one bad decision, and that was where you stayed, almost all of the world would still be where they were when they were teenagers, afraid to never try again.

But we do. We face failure, we face bad decisions and we overcome them. People go on to create, to see, to do amazing things and they learn how to better judge what's right for them, and also trust that they'll be capable anyway, even if they fail. That is why I always say that the opposite of decision anxiety or anxiety in general, it's not calm, it's not peace, it's trust. Knowing that whatever happens, you are going to be okay, you'll manage, you'll find your

way through, you are going to make the most of your situation. We've already talked so much about embracing the wisdom we already hold, trusting our intuition, to letting go of the pressure to make the perfect decision. This mantra is all about showing up with confidence, accepting that we are doing our best with what we know right now and knowing that growth comes from trusting the process as well as ourselves even when the path feels uncertain. So coming up, let's get personal. I'm going to share some moments when trusting myself felt really, really difficult,

and the lessons I've learned from leaning into uncertainty and how this mantra has shaped the way I make choices today. Stay tuned after this brief pause. Now that we've looked at the meaning behind today's mantra, it's time to get personal with you guys and share some of my own insights and reflections about this phrase. I trust myself to make the best decision with what I know now. In thinking about this mantra and in bringing it forward into my week, it really put me into a bit of a reflective place,

maybe not an entirely positive reflective place, of just thinking back on decisions that I made that I regret, and why they were actually important to get me where I am today. In particular, I kept coming back to this one period where I really felt like I'd made the wrong decision and to be completely vulnerable, it was about a relationship. I really had a lot of regrets at the time about this relationship that I was in and I'm not going to go into too much detail, but it was one of those situations where my friends were all saying to me, this is a really bad decision. You should not be with this person. This person is not good for you. They don't elevate your

life. We don't like him. And I was like, no, I most certainly absolutely have to be with this person. The result of being with that person was actually a lot of bridges were burnt and I lost a lot of relationships because people, quite honestly, were like, the sky is just not great and we don't want to be around him, which means sometimes we can't be around you. For a long time when I first moved to Sydney, and I moved to Sydney almost as a reaction to the end of that relationship,

I really regretted it and I was like, what if I'd said no to that first date? What if I had listened to all my friends when I had the chance to listen? It's only recently that I've been like, okay, no, I didn't know how this was going to turn out. I trusted my intuition or what I thought was my intuition at the time,

and it led me astray. But actually, that wrong decision has led me to a lot of correct decisions. And it's led me into a life that I can't help but be grateful for. So it's this strange thing where I kind of have to look back and say, well, I wouldn't have this life I have right now without this bad choice. So maybe the bad choice wasn't a terrible one after all. I want to talk about another situation where I trusted my instinct and it was correct.

This was when it came to quitting my full-time job. Stepping into that abyss and stepping into that universe of being self-employed is very terrifying, very scary. But then I was also reminded of another situation where I trusted my instincts and it was right. My instinct was correct and that was when it came to choosing to quit my full-time job. So back then I think like 2022, I was working full-time in a corporate role as a management consultant and the podcast was getting big. I was working full-time in a corporate role as a management consultant, and the podcast was getting big.

I just wanted more space to do more creative projects. I wanted more time to travel. I didn't want to be bound by my annual leave requests. I remember saying to my mom, I actually think I can do this and saying to my family and my friends, this is the thing that I'm going to be doing. I really think that this is what's right. My mom in particular, God bless her, I love her so much, but I could just see that she

was very scared for me. She was very, very scared. She's an economist. She's very financially responsible. The idea of her daughter, who she had taught how to make a savings account and had taught the correct way into the corporate life and putting aside your paycheck and moving up the ladder. She was no longer doing those things. I think she was really, really scared.

There was, again, a lot of external voices saying, just wait a little bit longer. Just be a little bit more certain. Be a little bit more sure. I took the leap of faith. Anyways, I stepped into this abyss of being self-employed. And at the time, I didn't know if it was the right decision. I remember having quite a few days of being like, I wish there was someone who could just tell me that this was correct. And I was trying to find all these people online or mentors who had done

something similar, almost just to reassure me like, this is okay. Like yes, I made it, you can too. And you know what? At the end of the day, there was no one who had the same story as me. No one who was going to be able to say, yes, these are the specific steps that made it work out for me because we were on a different path. I just had to trust in my ability. And I found a lot of solace as well in knowing,

okay, I can go back. I've set myself up well, I've got my degree, I've had this work experience, it's not the end of the world, no decision is permanent. Obviously, that ended up working out really well. I speak about that example in relation

to the example with my terrible, terrible relationship because it really marked like a turning point for me and a real shifting point from not being able to trust myself, not feeling very capable, feeling like I didn't know what was right for my life to suddenly making this decision all on my own that really paid off based on my gut instinct. And this journey, and really it is, it's a journey in trusting myself to make good decisions and to be confident has been reflected in so many other smaller parts of my life.

I don't hesitate now to choose a restaurant because if I hate it, I'll just leave. I don't hesitate to start things because I'm worried they'll be bad. If they're bad, that's fine. At least I started them. I can just rewrite them. I can just try again. I'm not scared to say no to opportunities when I'm too busy or too stressed because I trust that I could make those opportunities perhaps happen again or by taking time to slow down, better things will come to me and for me.

So it's not just about specific decisions. Trusting yourself cannot just be pulled out of the draw and dusted off for the big choices. It needs to be part of your broader everyday life. This element of surrendering, like I'm going to surrender to the fact that I cannot ever be 100 percent certain, but I can be 100 percent certain in myself and in my confidence, even when I don't feel confident, and in this future version of me who is going to be just as

invested in creating a good life and just as invested in something good happening as the me right now. So I'm going to put my faith in them. Now, I would like to share our deep thought of the day. I love this deep thought. This one was the exact perfect quote that I could find for this. Here it is, do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.

That quote is from Maya Angelou. The reason I love this quote is because it kind of shows mistakes, missteps, whatever you want to call them, as learning opportunities. Every single piece of information, every single piece of effort that you put towards something, you're still doing, even if it's not what is best in the long run, it's what is best right now. These small imperfect moments,

they create the next platform almost for you to then push yourself up from. It's okay to say, yeah, I know better than I knew back then. And in that way, you accept accountability. You accept accountability for the times you didn't know as well as you know now, and you show appreciation for the path that has gotten you to where you are. And I think about that in that example.

It's kind of difficult, right? If you're happy with where you are today, you kind of have a lot to be grateful for in terms of past mistakes that you may have regretted. Now I'd like to take a few moments to pause and really sit with this mantra. In just a moment, you'll hear a custom music track created to give you space to absorb today's insights and consider how you might bring this mantra into your week and maybe even beyond. If this practice isn't your style, if it doesn't resonate with you, you can just feel free to skip ahead around a minute. But as you settle in, keep our mantra

in mind. I trust myself to make the best decisions with what I know now. Let it guide your thoughts as the music plays and give yourself a moment to reflect and connect with this mantra and what it means to you. Up next, we're going to talk about how to put these insights into real action and bring this mantra to life. I'll share some journal prompts in our weekly challenge. Stick around for more after this quick break. Hi, I'm Jessica Porter and I'm a hypnotherapist as well as a total relaxation nerd. If you're struggling to sleep at night, I'm here to help. Sleep Magic is my new podcast of relaxing hypnosis created to help you doze off tonight. With my episodes every Wednesday, I'm going to make suggestions that help

you relax really, really deeply. And hypnosis is not what you've seen on TV. There's no swinging pocket watch or clucking like a chicken. I promise, I'm just here to help you make friends with sleep again so you can get the rest you deserve. So search sleep magic on your favorite podcast app and I'll see you there. Welcome back. Let's explore how to apply this week's mantra in a meaningful way in your everyday life, starting with our journal practice.

Now if you don't have your journal with you, don't worry. You can always take this time to just kind of think through your answers, maybe even pause this episode between questions. But here are our three prompts to help you reflect and gain a little bit more clarity with this mantra. First, when faced with a decision, do you tend to rely more on logic, intuition or external advice? Reflect on how this impacts your confidence in your choices. Next, are there any decisions from your past that you regret? How can you reframe them as moments where you did your best

with the information that you had at the time? And finally, write about a time when trusting yourself led to a positive outcome. What can you learn from that experience to apply to future decisions? Okay, I've given you a lot to think about, but there's obviously more in store. Every week, I also like to give you a challenge

that features our mantra. It's really about taking this whole thing to another level so that you can put what we talk about into tangible, actionable steps for yourself. I also love to do some check-ins so that we can hold ourselves accountable. So you can reach out to me at Manta Open Mind to let me know how the challenge is going. And next week, we obviously do a recap on how things went.

And I might even share some personal stories with your permission, of course, to help encourage others to participate in the challenge in the future. This is of course also a two-way street, so I'll make sure to let you know how things are going on my end as well. So let's talk about last week's challenge. As a reminder, our mantra from last week was, I nurture relationships that enrich my life. I took this to the next level, not going to lie. I hadn't seen one of my really, really dear, amazing friends from college for almost a year.

And so for the long weekend, I booked a flight down to Tasmania where she lives. And we just had the most beautiful, remarkable, wonderful time. We saw an albino stag, we picked blackberries, we watched hairspray, and we did leave with a couple of tears in our eyes. But I feel better for it and I'm so happy that I stopped making excuses for not seeing my friend. You know what I mean? I feel like there are so many excuses. Perhaps even a bit of doubts like, I haven't seen them for a while, is it going to be different?

Is it going to be weird? Is it going to take up too much mental energy? Not at all. This is your reminder if you want to nurture relationships that enrich your life, please give your friend a call, maybe even book a visit, book a trip with them. I want to share some DMs from listeners that we got from last week's episode.

This one's from Turek. What are some tips for maintaining long distance friendships when in-person time isn't an option? I'm so glad you asked this question because I think the majority of my really close friends now live overseas or like in another state in Australia, and Australia is a mighty big place, so they may as well live in another country. My biggest tips is that I want you to make weekly communication a priority. So the same way that you would schedule a weekly dinner, you might see them once a week in person when you were living nearby. I want you to make sure that you continue

to create rituals so that they are still in your life. So this doesn't need to be like a big in-depth phone call. Sometimes we find it hard to schedule those. One ritual that I have with my friends is that on a Sunday, we all send five photos from our week and we explain like what's happened during the week. Having a close friend story on Instagram as well, one of my friends who just moved to London, she has that but she only has like her nearest dearest friends and she posts on it like it's a diary. I feel like we don't use social media enough to really connect.

Like of course we message each other and we send memes and we send DMs, but there are so many little functions like that that are incredible. Some other tips slash things that I've seen people doing, very like Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants esque. I have some friends who she shares like a journal that she sends back and forth between her three sisters. One of them lives in the U S one of them lives in Poland randomly. And one of them lives in Australia. And so they each write journal entries about what they've been doing for the week, and then they send it to the next person.

So there are so many little genius ways, but my biggest tip is to make sure you bring ritual into how you maintain those friendships. This next message was from Hannah. The most recent episode of mantra helped me realize that I've been holding on to one particular friendship out of obligation rather than genuine connection. Hearing you talk about this really helped me let go of the guilt. That makes me really, really happy. Every time I get messages like that, I feel incredibly purposeful.

Like, maybe I'm not just talking in to avoid. So Hannah, I'm really proud of you. I also know that's very, very difficult. And I'm very proud of you for not just letting it fizzle either. It's very easy to just say, I'm going to ice this person out, but I'm very, very, very proud of you for taking direct action on that. I always love hearing from you all. So thank you so much for those DMs.

I wish I could answer all of them on the air, but I think the episode would be a little bit too long for you to be interested. But now it's time for this week's challenge. This week, I want you to identify one decision big or small that you have been overthinking or avoiding. Set aside five minutes to reflect on the facts that you know about this decision.

Maybe even make a very logical pro cons list. Maybe this is something you've been afraid to say out loud. Maybe something that you've been afraid to admit to yourself that's been influencing your decision-making. Maybe it's something that you know you really want to do, but you feel like not having all the information is holding you back. So spend time with all the information that you currently have and then try and make the decision.

Trust your instincts. Maybe even take a few minutes to meditate on it in silence, but make the decision. I want you to really remember that study we referenced all the way at the top of the episode. You are more likely to regret inaction over action. As a reminder, reach out to me at mantraopenmind to share how this challenge is working for you. I know this is going to be a bit of a tough one because there are probably a lot of mental blocks in the way,

but please tell me what ends up happening, whether it does end up pushing some of those mental blockades aside for you. It definitely will for me. I already know what situation I need to have a good think about this week and I'm going to hold myself accountable. We'll talk about it on next week's episode, but I promise to trust my instincts. I hope you trust yours as well. All right, as we wrap up this week's episode, I wanna share a few final thoughts about this mantra.

I trust myself to make the best decision with what I know. Now, let's just talk about one point in particular, and that point is you cannot ever make the perfect decision. The fact that it's a decision shows that actually, there are lots of different alternatives that might make you happy. The most important thing is that you just choose to make one, big or small. And I think that the more you see that the world doesn't crumble at one poor choice, the more trusting yourself doesn't just become reserved for the big moments, but it's something that you can imbue into your everyday life.

As you move through this week, please remember, trusting yourself is a practice, not a destination, and each decision that you make with that confidence, even when the outcome is uncertain, it does genuinely strengthen your ability to navigate your life with grace, but also resilience. Trust that you're doing your best with what you know and that's always been enough. Mantra is hosted by me, Gemma Spagg, and is an Open Mind Original powered by Pave Studios.

This episode was brought to life by the Mantra team, Max Cutler, Kristen Acevedo, Ron Shapiro, Stacey Warren Kerr, Sarah Carroll and Paul Lieberskind. Thank you for listening.