Decision Protocol

Setting up systems to align thoughts, feelings, and actions can lead to desired outcomes - it’s improved my life dramatically. This takes work and time, but is well worth it!  Creating a Decision Protocol has been a critical tool in my personal toolbox. 

Main points: 

• Work to understand yourself as you truly are- it is a fundamental starting point for any efforts in self improvement. 
• Create a Decision Protocol to guide all your decision making. .
• Identify question that you can ask yourself when making decisions, such as: 
  • Is this important to me? 
  • What do I want? Why do I want it? 
  • Will it save me time, energy, money?
  • Will this help me relationally?  
  • What does aligned energy look like for me?
  • Is there anything I would like to do differently?
  • What do I want to say no to?  
• Make time to look back at previous decisions and notice what worked, what didn't work, and what you would do differently.  

Links 

• Join Kelly's Group Coaching Program
• Jenny Catron

Let's connect.

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Transcript

0:09

Welcome to the Live a Vibrant Life podcast. I'm life coach Kelly Tibbitts, and each week I'll be here to encourage and equip you with the tools you need to grow in self awareness and invest your best energy in your dreams and your purpose. I believe self awareness changes everything. Let's get started. Welcome hey friends, this week on the podcast, I want to share a little bit about what I've been learning One of the most important things I've done over the last few years of my life is to find coaches that I could learn from. It all began for me back in 2016 when I became an executive director at a nonprofit organization and the board that I worked with decided to hire a life coach for me. I had never been in that level of leadership before. And so she and I spent six months together. Her name is Jenny Catron. She is one of the guests on my podcast. And what she did for me over six months is truly helped me understand myself. I would say I had very limited self awareness before we worked together. And over those six months, I not only grew in self awareness, I grew in my desire to be somebody who is self aware. And since then, that was 2016. Over and over, I've invested in my time and my money and my energy in working with people who can help me think about life differently than the way that I think about life so that I can feel different feelings like committed and connected, energized, which then lead me to new actions. We've all heard the saying of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And so for many of us, the best way to move from where we are to where we want to go is to partner with somebody who's not in our human brain and can help us notice, wow, do you see how you're thinking that? And that thought is creating these feelings that then move you away from the result that we say is important to us. Today I was listening to one of my coaches, her name is Stacey Boehman. She has a podcast called How to Make Money as a Life Coach. And one of the very most important things all my coaches have taught me is that how we do one thing is really truly how we do everything. To notice my thoughts, decide intentionally what I want to be thinking and feeling and then, Setting up systems so that I can decide in advance what I want to do and then show up with the right energy at the right time to create those results has helped me become this version of me. There's so many things about this version of me that I love. That I wish I could just go in a time machine and go back in time and help my 10, year old self. But since we can't do that, the next best thing is for me to try to succinctly share with all of you what I've learned so that hopefully you can take a tidbit, a small bite and apply it to your life on a weekly basis using my podcast. So what we're talking about today is one of the big ideas I have in my invest in your dreams program, which is to decide and do what's important to you. In all of my coaching programs, we talk about the Eisenhower matrix, which is how President Eisenhower used to decide where resources should go, and it was on a continuum of what's important to what's not important, and then what's urgent to not urgent. And my coach today, Stacey Bayman, was saying, do you have a protocol or a practice or a way to decide how you make decisions? And so what I'm sharing with you came out of a small job that I do in addition to being a life coach, where I really discovered the importance of having a protocol for decisions when there's so many urgent things, so many things that other people are saying, this is important and everything is important. How do you decide where to start? What's first, second, third? I spent a lot of my working years in the nonprofit world as a teacher, as a nonprofit leader. working in churches, um, sometimes for pay, sometimes not for pay. And one word that was misused constantly is the word priority. And instead of deciding that one thing, which is what priority means, was going to be the focus, we would do things like go on retreats and pick seven different areas to focus on. And what happens is it's like being a squirrel and all the acorns are falling out of the trees and you're just going from tree to tree to tree instead of just getting the one and doing it well and moving on. So today we're going to say is our big idea. How do we create a protocol or a system for decisions, your decision protocol. And you might want to write this down. How are you going to decide what to do and decide what's important to you? That's the key word in the Eisenhower matrix. What's important to you. What's not important to you. Urgency often is not just about what needs to be done for us. It's the energy that comes from other people. Okay. Everything that is important to them can then get pushed into us. Like this is really important for you as well. And practices like meditation and just finding a way to have stillness and silence and solitude can really help you notice what is and what is not important to you. So here's some thoughts I have about how to decide a protocol for making decisions. Feel free to use this, maybe add to it. Take a few minutes and notice how you want to create a system for your yeses and your no's for where you want to put your resources of time, energy, money, relational energy, mental energy, physical energy. The first question is, is this important to me? I would not have been able to answer that question 20, 30 years ago, because all of my compliant energy since I was a small child pushed me to look to the other. Is this important to you? Do you think I should do this? Many times I worked on teams where I had so much responsibility, but none of the authority and each person who was giving me direction had a different opinion than the other person who was giving me direction. I'm working in non profit, places where I was a teacher. And so were the students the priority? Were the parents the priority because they were paying for the education. I worked in a private school. Were the board of directors the priority? Was the principal the priority? Where should I have been putting my energy? Because all are important. But when there are disagreements about where energy should go, the children want this, the parents want this, the board wants this, the principal wants this, how do I know where to begin if I have compliant energy? Some of you do not have compliant energy. You have withdrawn energy. You notice that. There's not unlimited energy and you hold on to it. Sometimes in a way that serves you, sometimes in a way that doesn't. And others have really assertive energy. They feel in their gut, what is the decision they want to make and can be really aggressive to assertive to con you know, connected, there's so many different ways for us to show up in life. What we want to be able to do is stay aligned. To the truth of who we are, you are a hundred percent valuable, a hundred percent important just for breathing in and breathing out a hundred percent loved when we can connect to that truth of our essence, we can make decisions based on that truth, not trying to change other people's thoughts, feelings, and actions, not trying to change the world, just starting with us and being aligned and moving from that space is what we really want to talk about today. One of my most important questions I ask people is, what do you want? What is important to you? So if you don't know the answer, I really encourage you to find some good mental energy for some people that would be going for a walk for somebody else. It might be through a conversation because you're a verbal processor for others that might be getting a journal and just noticing, what do I want? What's important to me as I'm recording this, it's just about to be the end of October of 2024. We're going to move into the holiday season. I know that that means more time with family, more times with traveling, more activity. I don't want to be sick. I don't want to be overwhelmed. I don't want to be exhausted, and I don't want to be resentful. What do I want? What does aligned energy look like for me? Rested, connected, enthusiastic. I like being in enthusiastic energy and it's not something that I want to do in a fake way. It's something that I want to be true to myself, that I've had the time to recover when I give out past my limits. I Want to have a connected season with friends and family that I love. I don't want to spend it arguing and I don't want to overgive and become resentful. What do you want and how could you make decisions that align so that you're not saying yeses and no's that you shouldn't say you're saying the ones that feel so true from a deep heart. deep place of self love for the future version of you. I often say in my coaching group, how do you want to feel on January 15th, 2025? That should be guiding the decisions we make. None of us want to be so exhausted that we end up sick. So what do you want? Here's the next step for me as you're creating a protocol for making decisions. What's important to you? While you're making this decision. One of the things that we often do is we change, we trade time and energy for money. So if I pay somebody to change the oil in my car, that's a better exchange than me trying to figure out how to change my own oil, buy it, get all the supplies. It's a very good exchange for me to go somewhere and have somebody else change my oil. However, there are some things that it's better for me to do. It's often better for me to meal prep and go to a grocery store and buy the oil. the ingredients for meals and make meals at home. That for me is a better exchange than going out to eat over and over again, not just for the price, but for how I feel. What's important to you when you're making decisions? So you might ask yourself, will it save me time? Will it save me energy? Will it save me money? Will it save me what kind of energy? Well, does it save me mental energy? Does it save me physical energy and does it save me emotional energy? Maybe those are some of the questions you want in your decision protocol. Next, is this exchange worth it? When was the last time you actually sat down and created either a budget for your money or a budget for your energy or both? What if, as we step into the holiday season, you make a decision, this is how much money I'd like to spend over the next three months. This is how much energy I would like to spend to give to my work for pay, to the volunteer opportunities I have, to shopping and cleaning and getting my home ready for people that I love. It feels uncomfortable to do things the first, second, third time, but as you begin to do them on repeat and you become comfortable with it, you often notice how valuable it is to make decisions in advance. So maybe one of the decisions you're deciding today is at what point is the money, time, energy exchange worth it to me? If you are saving time by exchanging it for money, is that time worth saving? Will it save it for you in a productive or nurturing way? So many women, myself included, never think about the great value of you keeping your emotional energy so you have it for other opportunities. If you constantly say yes to Every opportunity that comes your way and you give past your capacity, what happens is the people you actually love and you want to give your best energy to get the less than ideal version of you. This happened to me so many times when my girls were younger, I was volunteering and I had two part time jobs, one at the school they went to and one at the church we went to. In addition, I was constantly being invited to, um, visit people or to attend events, and I went past my limits so often that I would come back grumpy and tired and frustrated and angry. And so the people that were in my third or fourth circle of relationships were getting a better version of me than the people who were closest to me and who I cared the most about. So very often the exchanges I made were not serving any of the goals that I had. So, will this exchange of time, energy, money save you energy you need for productive use or to nurture yourself? You taking care of yourself is never selfish. It's actually one of the most important things you can do. On the other hand, will the drama of spending money create more stress than the time that it saves? And we won't know until we make some decisions and then we look back and say what worked, what didn't work, and what would I do differently? Sometimes we have to just make the decision and then evaluate. But again, if I could go back in a time machine, I would tell myself, you know what? Many years you overbought gifts. It didn't serve you in your financial budget and it didn't really serve the children. They had too many things. I didn't know about rotating toys, such a great idea. Anyway, just notice that will the drama of spending the money create more stress than the benefit of the time and energy that it saves. Interesting for us to notice. So what do you want? That's your first question. The first thing you want to sit with and notice, what are you thinking? What do you feel inside when you actually ask yourself, what do you want? Do you feel uncomfortable? It's okay to be uncomfortable. It's okay to grow. And part of growth is discomfort. Why do you want this? Why do you want this result? Until I went and met the different coaches who have helped me so much with managing my thoughts and allowing my feelings and creating different results, I didn't know that I couldn't change other people's thoughts, feelings, and actions. It looked like I did. It looked like if I was nice enough and compliant enough and flexible enough, I could help other people feel happy instead of miserable. But the reality is every human has been given the authority and the agency to think thoughts that create feelings. So, interesting to notice. Why do you want this? Do you want it for you? Do you want a different thought, feeling, action? Or are you hoping someone else will think something, feel something, or do something different? When was the last time you just checked in with yourself? What's working financially with your emotional energy? With your physical energy? With their space? One of the things I've shared with you before, if you own an automobile, do you have the time and energy to keep up with it? To make sure it's getting the maintenance that it needs, that it's getting cleaned the way it needs to? Once you take the time to thoroughly clean your car, some of us have to go and just get a detailed. It's such a good indicator of when you're getting past capacity. If you don't have the time and energy to keep up with your car, there's probably other areas of your life where you no longer have the Energy to do the things you need to do. Sometimes when we haven't noticed for a long time, we live in an apartment or a home that's a little bit bigger than a car. It can feel overwhelming to even try to get everything straightened out and neat enough that we could notice when it's getting past capacity. So what is working for you? Sometimes it's a really good exchange of energy to buy some food that's pre made, so you don't have to purchase the food and cook the food and clean up the food and store the food and decide when to eat it again. Sometimes it's a really good exchange of energy to pay somebody to do something that you could do, but it would give you back some time and energy that you really need. Especially going into the holiday season. So, what is working for you and what's not working? Is there anything that you can decide, I'm going to pause thinking about this. So maybe it's really, really important, but you're looking out and you're realizing you don't have the energy for it in this season, going into the holiday season or just in the fall of 2024 or whenever you're listening to this. If it's not working, you don't have to decide today to fix it. You could decide, I'm going to think about this next week, next month, next quarter. And when was the last time you asked yourself, is there any way to do it differently? This is why I love hosting group coaching communities. Very rarely does one person know it all. I've not met that person. But often when we're in community with other people who think and feel and do life differently, we can learn. We can notice things we wouldn't notice. I think it's the best reason to have children. My three daughters have taught me so much. So many new thoughts I would have never had on my own. So is there anything today that you're deciding, I'd like to do this differently? When I first began taking a day of rest. It did not seem possible. As I said, I had the two jobs and the three small children and a life that was just so at capacity and the thought of taking a whole day away to rest seemed irresponsible, but it turned out that when I rested and then enjoyed my life, which I'm just learning step two now, these last few years, I've made that idea of fun and joy a priority and I'm such a different person because of it. But deciding to do it differently, instead of working and working and working and then getting sick and resting, I now decide to rest, and then have joy built into my life, and then do my purpose filled work. So that is so interesting for me to notice. These are the things I want to do differently. My human brain keeps saying, work, but my essence, my aligned soul says, rest. Is there anything you would like to do differently? And what would you like to do by a certain date? I love the idea of going 10 years out. Who do you want to be? I want to be strong at 75, that's 20 years from now. I want to be able to move easily and I want to be able to stay flexible. My husband and I went away this weekend to visit one of our daughters and we went to Shenandoah, the national park in Virginia. And we climbed up on this very small rock wall, like less than two feet tall. And I realized I haven't jumped in so long that I forgot how to jump. I'd hold his hand to jump back down and my knees were not super thrilled with me. So I realized one of the things I need to do is add in some jumping. I just don't want to forget how to do that. Want to stay flexible and strong. So. It's easy to say, okay, that's what I want 20 years from now, but I have to keep backing it up. What will it look like 10 years, five years, one year, three years. And so my goal is at least once or twice a week to do some mini jumps. Like I used to do box jumping at one of my gyms, but that was more of a focused on jumping up. I want to practice jumping down. So even just going to one of the steps in my front porch and just jumping off it just to renew that skill that somehow I lost. So what do you want to do? 10 years from now, five years from now, three years from now, a year from now, six months from now, three months from now. The best way to really notice all of this is to go and take some time away. If you're in your own home, you're probably going to notice all the small, urgent things that need to happen. This is important. It's just not urgent. But once you decide what is important, then we have a decision protocol to help us make the decisions. Is this going to save me time, energy? Is it going to help me relationally? Is it going to serve me in the growth area that I've decided to focus on? So that's what I just wanted to spend some time today talking about. What's important to you? And how do you decide what to do when? I'm going to close with the four steps I use, and that is to notice what's urgent, what needs to be done today, what do I need to look back on and learn from, and what do I need to do today to make tomorrow better? So I write down these four words on a piece of paper, urgent, today, yesterday, tomorrow. So say I walk into my closet and the season is changing and it's time for me to switch out what I needed for the summer to what I will need for the winter. Is there anything urgent? For instance, did I spill something on a piece of clothing and I need to wash it right away? Um, Is there anything I need for today? Okay, yesterday in Virginia, it literally was 78 degrees, and today in New Hampshire, it's 43. So if I didn't have easy access to warm clothing, I would need to go find it, wash it, so that I could use it. Now, because I live in New England, I have to keep all the seasons, because one day is going to be cold, and one day is going to be warm. So I have sweaters and t shirts most of the year. Is there anything I need from yesterday? Did I keep any kind of notes app to say, Oh, the boots ended up needing to be thrown away at the end of the year. I had a raincoat where the zipper kept sticking and finally the summer I replaced it. Is there anything you need to just look back and remember? And then how about going into the next season? Is there anything I need to know? We can use these four big ideas with every area of our life, whether it's changing up a closet or it's looking at where we want to spend our energy. Is there anything urgent, anything to do today? Anything we have to clean up from yesterday in order to make tomorrow better. And when you're thinking about tomorrow, I want you to think about yourself from a place of love for you next week, next month, next year. I know that you don't want to live a life where you're irritable and frustrated and resentful and overwhelmed. What do you want? Do you want peace? Do you want enthusiasm and abundance? Do you want to be somebody who's generous, brave, creative, full of purpose? Those are all words that have been meaningful to me. And. As I've chosen them as words of the year since 2015, they build into the values that drive my decisions. So it's so important to take the time and notice what you want. Notice what you want to say no to. Notice what you want to defer. And the guiding principle for all of those decisions is what's important to you. That's why I love to share a podcast with you each week. I hope that you're thinking some new thoughts that maybe you never thought before. And if you're noticing you'd like a community of people to come alongside you and encourage you and equip you with the tools you need to become the version of you, that's living a vibrant life. I've made my coaching program incredibly affordable. You can stop over at kellytippets. com and we can set up a one to one call, or you can send me a message on Facebook or Instagram and we can talk about it a little bit more. I'll also be sharing some of the slides from the podcast today over on Instagram. Let me know if you're able to use any of them. I'll be back next week I thank you for joining the live a vibrant life podcast. I hope our time together encourage you and we'll equip you with the tools you need to move into the vibrant life you desire. I'm here to help you live a brave creative purpose filled life. And if you'd like to learn more, you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook, Kelly Tibbetts life coach, or visit my website, kelly tibbetts. com. I look forward to connecting again soon.