The Psychology of your 20s - I Trust Myself to Make the Best Decision With What I Know Now

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

I am thrilled to present one of my favorite episodes from my new podcast Mantra! Each week, we unpack an empowering mantra—a simple, powerful phrase to help navigate challenges, find clarity, and unlock potential in daily life. In this special presentation "I Trust Myself to Make the Best Decision With What I Know Now," 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. This Mantra will help you embrace decision-making with self-compassion. Please don’t forget to follow Mantra with Jemma Sbeg wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday. For ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to OpenMind+ on Apple Podcasts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. And on my podcast, 2%. I break down the signs of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world.

Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO. percent on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Look Back at it podcast. From 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84 was big to me.

I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. With our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. 84 was a wild year. It was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people.

Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hard Way with your favorite therapist and host Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to. Listen and learn the hard way on the AHA radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg, a lesbian. My mind was blown.

I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's Gemma. First, I just want to take a moment to say how grateful I am to eat. each and every one of you who tune into the psychology of your 20s.

This show is honestly such a special space and knowing that so many of you are listening and reflecting and growing alongside me, it really does truly mean the world. I have so many instances of people DMing me and reaching out saying, you dropped that episode right when I needed to hear it. And I think it's because we're all so tuned into each other and so aligned in so many life experiences, which is just incredible and such a deep pride of my life that I've created a space for all of us can come together. A couple of months ago, a few of you already know this, I launched a brand new show called Mantra and I honestly feel like it is the perfect

companion to the psychology of your 20s. Each week I introduce a new empowering phrase, one simple but powerful mantra. And then I unpack its meaning, both what it means to me personally, how I've maybe struggled with it, how I've tried to implement it, and also what it means on a collective conscious level. This show is really deeply personal to me. It's where all the vulnerable conversations are taking place. And if you haven't had a chance to check it out yet, I'd love to invite you to listen. I also just started releasing monthly bonus episodes for Matra on Open Mind Plus.

where I answer some questions and DMs that come through to mantra open mind on Instagram. So if there's something you've been dying to ask me that I haven't done an episode on, I may just answer your question over there. I have so much in store for this season of mantra, and I hope you'll join me over there if you haven't already. I also wanted to share a clip from one of my favorite episodes so far. I trust myself to make the best decisions with what I know now. check it out. Okay, reformer Pilates 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'd like to think about it this way. If you had to choose between two choices on a menu, and one choice is 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 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. And 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, you know, mental environment to be in. And so we don't see it in the same way that I was just describing it. We don't see it as exciting. And 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 an action 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 want to 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 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. 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 than 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, research has 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 wanted to, or we're going to be truly devastated if we're 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, 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 want 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 try 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. And 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 preference,

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 learnt 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. Thank you so much for listening to catch the rest of this episode and honestly so much more. Search for mantra wherever you get your podcasts. We'll also drop a link in the show notes of course. course and as always make sure to follow mantra to help others discover the show. Talk soon. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. I'm on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness,

fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO% on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Look Back at it podcast. From 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84 was big to me. I'm Sam J.

And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. With our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. 84 was a wild year. It was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important. important year for black people.

Listen to look back at it on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hardway with your favorite therapist and host Care Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor it? It signals to the world that you're not to be played with.

And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to. Listen and learn the hard way on the AHA radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through.

the same thing. Greg Gillespie and Michael Mancini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.