The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 208 Get Unstuck: Make Decisions with Confidence

Episode Date: November 15, 2024

Feeling stuck in your musical career? In this episode, we're tackling how to make clear, confident decisions that move you forward. We'll look at why we avoid making choices, how to break through the fear, and simple strategies to pick the path that's right for you. I'll share real examples musicians face every day—from auditions to career changes—to help you make decisions that bring you closer to the life you want.   Book your free consultation with Renée HERE Download the transcript from this episode HERE   Mind Over Finger Click www.mindoverfinger.com/coaching to book your free consultation with me. Visit MindOverFinger.com for my online courses as well as free resources on peak performance. Grab my free workshops and PDF downloads by going to www.mindoverfinger.com/resources. Connect: https://www.youtube.com/@MindOverFinger https://www.facebook.com/mindoverfinger/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/mindoverfinger https://www.instagram.com/mindoverfinger/     THANK YOU: Most sincere thank you to composer Jim Stephenson who graciously provided the show's musical theme:  Concerto #1 for Trumpet and Chamber Orchestra – Movement 2: Allegro con Brio, performed by Jeffrey Work, trumpet, and the Lake Forest Symphony, conducted by Jim Stephenson.

Are you feeling stuck in your musical career? Are you at a crossroad and feeling caught in indecision and confusion? If so, then this episode is for you. Today we're diving into the art of making confident decisions that will move you forward with purpose. No more staying stuck. No more second-guessing. Let's get you on the path to your bigger life. You're listening to the Mind Over Finger podcast.

This is episode 208. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger podcast, where we dive into the world of mindful music making, peak performance, and crafting a purpose-driven life and career. I'm your host, violinist, certified performance and life coach for musicians, and your guide to unlocking your full potential, Dr. René-Paul Gaultier. So today I have one of my favorite topics, one of the topics that can create so many amazing results for my clients, and it's decisions. How to make decisions and why it's important to make decisions. Everything we create in our lives

comes from a decision that we've made. And making decisions can be very scary. And that's why we stay stuck. And this is what we're going to cover today. I'm going to talk about why we don't make decisions. I'm going to tell you why making decisions is important. And I'm going to give you four strategies to help you to make decisions, to bring intentionality in your life so that you can start to create the results that you want and build the life that you want. So let's dive in why we don't make decisions. Many reasons. I'm going to give you four today. One of the most often heard of the reasons why we don't make decisions, at least inside of the Mind Over Finger community, is this fear of making the wrong choices. I think that across the board,

this is a human experience. Unless we are under immediate duress and we have to make a quick split-second decision, I think humans have a tendency to agonize for a long time over decisions because of that fear of making the wrong choice. And I'm going to show you why that's a thought error in a couple minutes. Another reason is this desire for perfect clarity. We feel that if we had the clarity of the right choice for us, we would know which one it is. So the absence of clarity makes us believe that we don't have enough information to go forward with a decision. So this lack of clarity keeps us back, keeps us in indecision. Another reason why we don't make decisions is the attachment to our comfort zone. Because when we make a decision, oftentimes we're

going to have to start taking action. It might take us in the direction that is opposite to our comfort zone. It might take us to scary places. We might have to face obstacles. So decisions often take us outside of our comfort zone. But keep in mind that indecision often keeps us in uncomfortable situations. Now, human nature will often keep us in uncomfortable known situations rather than uncomfortable unknown situation. But here's my question is, if you're going to be uncomfortable no matter what, wouldn't it be better to move forward? Right? So attachment to the comfort zone is one of the reasons why we don't make decisions. And then another one is sometimes we

indulge in this confusion. We stay in this confusion to avoid emotions. It's kind of the same as going outside of our comfort zones. Making decisions will have us take actions which will have us change our circumstances and sometimes we have to face uncomfortable emotions and that can be very undesirable for many of us. As not making a decision keeps us in place and keeps us safe from these uncomfortable emotions. But what if staying put is also uncomfortable? So this is where you're going to have to choose the type of flavor of discomfort you want to experience. So why we don't make decisions for reasons, fear of making the wrong choice. We have this desire for perfect clarity. We are attached to our comfort zone and we want

to avoid uncomfortable emotions. There are many more, but this is a good start, I think. Let's talk now about why making decisions is important. We're going to begin with indecision. And keep in mind that not making a decision is also a decision that you're making, but by default, right so indecision well indecision creates a pile of confusion it's very energy draining because when you are in indecision you're not making a decision a lot of your mental energy goes towards making a decision you're weighing you're going back and forth you're analyzing You're making lists of pros and cons. You're kind of agonizing. This is very draining mentally and emotionally. So you spend this energy spinning. You create more confusion. And unmade decisions

are decisions, as I just told you. But it's you deciding not to change something to stay put. and that's also okay unless you make it out of fear so the reasons why making decision is so important is that when you make a decision you are moving towards something that is intentional rather than staying into something or a situation you're already in by default so you are creating more of what you already have which is awesome if you like it but if you're looking for something different you might have to start making some decisions and the other reason is if you don't make decisions sometimes life will make decisions for you by making decisions you become very intentional by staying in indecision

sometimes life will create situations for you and then you will be robbed of your choice you will have to follow the path that's been carved in front of you without deciding so what does making decisions do decisions move you forward and they create momentum in progress so when you make a decision to go in a specific direction that's the big decision right to move or not to move, to go with this teacher or that teacher, to take this position or not take this position, to apply for this job, not to apply for this job. So the first decision starts the wheel. And then after that will come many decisions as you take action. And all of this means that your energy is focused on action. All of your energy is focused on creating something for yourself,

as opposed to indecision, where all of your mental energy is spinning towards making that one first decision, right? So you see the difference. Indecision robs us of our energy, of our mental space as making decision moves us forward and our mental energy, our emotional energy is focused toward taking action and making the next decision and creating new results in our life. Making decisions brings us clarity. It's a really funny cycle. If you don't make decisions because you don't have clarity, you actually rob yourself of the chance to having clarity. Because what brings clarity is action. You get clarity by taking action, getting results, extracting the data from those results, and then understanding what the next thing to do is.

So you see how that works? You got to make the decision first, then the clarity comes, through the actions you take and the results that those actions create for you. Another thing that making decisions does is that it reduces the mental clutter for you. As I've just said, indecision sends all of your energy into this spinning of options. When you make a decision, you're reducing your options, you're focusing your attention into one direction, and that will reduce the mental clutter. Another thing that it does is that it will build your confidence and your self-trust. As you make a decision, you take action, you feel empowered and you are handling situations which will fuel your self-confidence. You're knowing in your

ability to handle circumstances. Another thing that making decisions does for you is that it creates, maybe that's the most important one, it creates an intentional, purposeful life. Your bigger life. I think that's what Gretchen Rubin calls it. Your bigger life. You are making the decisions along the way. And you're impacting the course of your life in an intentional way. And you do that with your decisions. So you want to decide that you love what is, which is great. And if not, you want to decide to change it through making decisions, right? So let's talk about how to make decisions now, right? This is what you want to know, I think. I'm going to start with two general concepts that I would love for you to remember. The first one, the most important

one, maybe not a very important one, is that there are no right or wrong decision. I want you to not believe this lie anymore. That's not how life works. There are no right or wrong decisions. Well, if you have the proper data, for sure. And a saying that I like is that there are no right decisions, only the decisions you make right. And what I like about this is that it's very empowering. You make a decision, you take action, and you handle the results of those actions. and all of this is within your control so there are no right decisions only the decisions you

make right that is very freeing and empowering i find good or bad that's for you to decide there are no good or bad decision it's only what you think of the results is the meaning that you attach to these results. And there's no bad decision unless you decide it's bad. I'll give you an example. So let's say you participate in an audition and it doesn't go the way that you want. It's easy for you to go back and decide that maybe it was the wrong decision to participate or to second guess all of the decisions you've made along the way to participate. If this is you approach, then for sure you might decide that you've made a lot of bad decisions along the way or the initial decision to take part in the audition was a wrong one. But this is only

because of the meaning that you attach to those results. Now, we need data in life, right? We need data to get clarity. And as I told you, to get clarity, we need to take action. We need to get results to get data. Therefore, that means that we need to make decisions to take action. We get results. And from that, we extract data. And this data helps us make the next decisions. So every time you get a result, you can decide that this was a good thing for all of the information it's providing you with. Let's go back to this example of audition taking, where the result was not what you wanted. You have so much more information to prepare for the next audition from having taken this one. You can choose to look at the entire experience

as a data-taking adventure. You've got the experience, you've done it, you know what works, you know what doesn't work, you know what you want to experiment with next time. I choose to decide that this is great, that this is a good thing. And therefore, taking this audition was a good decision. And all of the decisions you made along the way, what you decided in terms of how you practiced, how you prepared for the stage, your travel arrangements. All of this was part of your data collecting adventure. And there's no way to know what you need to know until you start experimenting. So you see how that works? It really is how you attach meaning to results that will make you decide whether a decision was bad

or good. So how impactful would it be for you to see things through this lens in the future? But also going back to decisions you've made in the past and maybe you have some negative feelings attached to. That is one thing that can also slow you from making decisions in the future is if you second-guess your past decisions. If that's the case for you, put them through this lens what is the data that you've acquired from that and how can that serve you in the future and how amazing is it that you have access to this data now thanks to the decisions you've made in the past right does that make sense so i would say that you get to decide if you made the good or bad decision based on how you decide to analyze the meaning

the meaning that you attach to these results. The second thing that I want you to remember about making decisions is the more decisions you make consciously, the better. Because the smallest decisions have a huge impact on your future, on the things that you do every day. Think of the compounding effect. So every day you want to practice your decision-making muscle because all of these small decisions accumulate in the life that you're living now. So get quick at making decisions, at taking action, because making decisions will save you time. It's going to increase the action taking, and it's going to build your confidence. And you're going to get data from all of the results that you're getting.

And you're going to get to build something incredible from this data. So you can completely change your life by changing the daily decisions that affect how you live. One concept that I really love by Martha Beck is this idea of one degree turn. Sometimes we feel like our life is defined by the big decisions that we make. And that is true. But the life is also defined by the small decisions that we make every day. And one degree at a time, we can completely change our life. Hence the importance of making intentional decisions along the way every day. What time am I going to get up? How long will I practice? What intention will I bring in my

practice today. You see, with every small decision, you build your current life. So make decisions intentionally, consciously, all the time, so that you're not living a default life, but you are living a purpose-driven life. Let's talk about four tips to help you make decisions. and I want to remind you there are no right decisions only the decisions that you make right my favorite tip I start with that is called alternative futures and that's a concept that I learned about from Brooke Castillo at the Life Coach School and she talked about what if if you're facing a decision between let's say A and B the idea is what if the outcome of both is amazing what if A turns out amazing

what if B turns out amazing then which one do you choose oftentimes we're paralyzed to make a decision because we feel like one would lead to success and happiness and one will lead us to a sure doom. And that's just not how life works, right? Because they're only decisions that you make right. So if you're facing a choice and both would end up amazing, which one would you choose? If both outcome turn out amazing, which is your bigger life? Which is the one you feel pulled toward. And for this, I want you to listen to your instinct. Listen to the signals from your body. Which one makes you feel excited, lift, light? Which one feels like it's really singing to your heart or calling your soul? So if the outcome of both is amazing, which one do you

choose. Or maybe you have multiple options. If you have multiple options and all of them turn out amazing, which one do you pick? Because remember, it's how you make it right. So that hopefully makes it easier for you to make a decision. Another tip is to set a deadline. So much of our mental energy is spinning when we're trying to make a decision. So decide when you're going to decide. You gather information, you gather data. What information do you need to make an informed decision? Gather it without the intention of making a decision for now. You gather the information from a neutral place and you know that by a specific date, you will make your decision. so therefore there's not that pending cloud above your head that to have to make this decision no

i decided i'm going to decide this on friday so therefore you have the mental space to gather the information to ponder all of the option right so set a deadline gather all of the information think of your alternative futures listen to your heart, and by the deadline, make a decision. The third one is to set a temporary decision. Sometimes the only way to know if the decision sits well is to make the decision. So make a decision for 24 hours. You decide firmly between A and B? I'm going to go with A. And live with that decision for 24 hours. What actions will you take from that decision? What information do you get from having made

this decision? And you live with it fully, completely committed to this decision for 24 hours and see how it feels to live in the skin of that person who is going in the A direction. If that feels amazing, maybe the exercise stops there. If you're not quite sure, then for the next 24 hours, live with decision B. How does it feel to live in the skin of person B? What decisions subsequent decisions are you making what actions are you taking what are you thinking as person b and from having fully committed to that second one to option b how does it feel how does it sit with you what is the information that making this decision is giving you and from there you might get a completely different perspective and gain more

clary toward an option or not. And remember, there's only the decisions that you make right. So as you listen to your instinct, you look at the data that is available to you, you can go in confidence knowing that you can't mess it up. My fourth tip, if you're still struggling, is to view each decision as win or learn. not win or lose. So the question to ask yourself is the following, what am I looking to gain and what am I willing to learn? From each decision you make, there will be gains. That's why sometimes it's so difficult to make a decision. They're not all bad or all good. It's not obvious. That's why we don't have

clarity. One gives us certain things, the other gives us other things. So you look at what you're willing to gain, not what you're looking to gain. You look at what you're looking to gain and then you ask yourself, what am I willing to learn? And this will bring you more clarity. so what you want to do is then make a decision make sure you like the reasons I could do an entire episode about the idea of fear in decision making so what we're doing here are not decisions based on fear on scarcity but they're decisions that we feel great about that we love. We love the reasons why we decided to go with this. We know what we're looking to gain. We know what we're willing to learn. We know that we can make it right. And therefore,

we go with the bigger life. We choose the bigger life. So you make a decision. You make sure you like the reasons, then you commit to action. And this is how you create an intentional, purposeful life. I've brought some decision examples here. And these are examples from clients, from people I've worked with, and I think that they will resonate for you. So here are some decisions that you might face, taking or not taking a specific audition. so many things to consider right taking or declining a job offer with an orchestra when you win this is a very difficult decision for a lot of people understandably balancing performance with teaching commitments how does one gauge the proper dial right moving versus staying put

so for example what if you are in a situation where you're well established but you absolutely hate where you live and there's a place where you really want to live but that would require to have to establish yourself again right these are decisions that clients have to face prioritizing your solo career versus ensemble work how about recording that album you've always dreamed of what is stopping you from making the decision to go forward and then if you decide to record that album are you going to go independently or are you going to try to get a label what is stopping you from making decisions about this another good one that i hear so much agony about is setting the rates and the policies for your

studio how much agony is there in your mind about that and what is stopping you from making decisions what are the fears another one is to send that email or not when you're trying to self-promote or choosing between two major concert invitation so many decisions or choosing to perform a risky unfamiliar piece on a major stage right those are some of the questions that my clients were asking themselves those are some of the decisions they had to make And these processes help with these decisions, making the decisions in the way that is empowered, in the way that is intentional and not rooted in fear, but rather rooted in desire and confidence, right? So much to check.

We want to weigh the impact that's going to have on our career, our values, the goals that we have for the future. So I'm hoping that all of the tips that I shared with you today can help with that. These are to help you make confident, intentional decisions. So let's recap. Remember that there are no right decisions, only the decisions you make right. Ask yourself, what if I couldn't lose? what if the outcome is going to be amazing no matter what and then what am i looking to gain and what am i looking to learn what am i willing to learn

so the power of decisions making decisions creates an intentional purposeful driven life it's going to build confidence and self-trust as you make them more and more and you see all of the results that you're getting, and you are analyzing all of the data that this is bringing you and will bring you so much clarity. That's going to reduce your mental clutter as well. And this will create momentum and progress in your life. And I want to reinforce this concept that you want to choose with confidence because there is no right or wrong decision. You're going to have a chance to learn or a chance to grow. And you're going to have the ability to really align your life with your values. This is what making decisions does for you. So again, the four tips to make decisions.

consider alternative futures if all of the outcomes are amazing regardless of the decision you make which one do you choose right because it's up to you to make it right set a deadline decide when you're going to decide set a temporary decision and live with that decision for 24 hours. And then view each decision as a win or learn situation, right? What am I looking to gain and what am I willing to learn? So now I'm going to have a challenge for you. The actionable step for this week. I want you to choose one decision you've been putting up. I want you to set a deadline to decide when you're going to make your decision. You're going to gather all of the data you need to make the decision.

You're going to imagine positive outcomes for all of the options. Then I want you to commit to it. Commit to assuming the responsibility of this decision. Commit to taking action. and remember you're going to win or learn and in my case in my opinion that's a win-win so this is going to be your actionable step and if you're on my mailing list this will be in your inbox when this episode comes out so you choose one decision you've been putting off set a deadline to decide. Imagine positive outcomes for all of the options. Decide which one will take you to

the bigger life and then commit to it. So you want to make a decision. Make sure you like the reasons then commit to action. And if you're struggling with one of those big decisions right now and you feel a lot of confusion and a lack of clarity, it's like a big threat looming over your head and you would like some support and guidance on how to navigate these waters, well, let's talk. Go to mindoverfinger.com slash coaching and book your free conversation with me. On the call, I'm going to ask you some questions. I want to hear everything about the situation that you're facing and then together we'll explore if working together is something that could get you where you want to be with confidence. So go to mindoverfinger.com slash coaching, book your

free conversation, and let's get you some clarity. I hope that you walk away from this with the toolkit that's going to allow you to make decisions more easily and more confidently. And there you have it. Thank you so much for joining me today. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends and fellow musicians. Grab a screenshot, share it on social media, and tag me. I'm Mind Over Finger on all platforms, and I would love to hear what your favorite takeaways were. Don't forget to follow the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and if you're enjoying and learning from the show, leaving a five-star review is a wonderful way to support us. You can also watch the Mind Over Finger podcast on YouTube. And if you have questions, comments

about the podcast, or ideas for guests and topics, drop them in the comment section there on YouTube. I do read all of them. For more tools, tips, and inspiration, click the link in the show notes to subscribe to my newsletter, and get everything delivered straight to your inbox. Finally, if you're looking for more resources or personal support to enhance your playing, advance your career, or create a more fulfilling and purposeful life, head over to mindoverfinger.com. You're going to find a substantial library of free downloads, links to my online courses, and information on how to work with me, whether in a group setting

inside my amazing Music Mastery Experience program or through private one-on-one coaching. I'm here for you. Until next time, much love going your way and à bientôt!