Mindful in 5 Podcast

Decision-Making Mastery

• Spiwe Jefferson • Season 5 • Episode 147

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Imagine making decisions with unwavering clarity and confidence, even amidst the chaos of a busy professional life. Today, we unravel the secrets behind the revolutionary 4-4-4 decision matrix, designed to help you navigate career choices with the simplicity and creativity of a child. Join Spiwa Jefferson and the Mindful Ninjas, as we journey through the story of Barry Miles, a driven attorney from the Mindful in 5 book series, and see how he harnesses this technique to transform a challenging career decision into an opportunity that aligns with his personal values and long-term goals. By embracing qualities like trust, creativity, and optimism, you'll discover how to approach your own pivotal decisions with a newfound sense of clarity.

We also delve into the power of intentional decision-making, learning from past choices, and inviting divine guidance for greater wisdom and peace. By combining the 4-4-4 matrix with prayer and reflection, we can turn decision-making into a mindful practice that supports both professional and personal growth. Plus, we introduce a series of downloadable guides designed to enhance your mindful leadership skills, ensuring you can embrace each choice with inner peace and joyful clarity. Elevate your decision-making game and empower your career journey with these transformative insights and tools.


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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Mindful in 5, where busy professionals find your peaceful oasis to thrive in complex work environments. I am Spiwa Jefferson attorney, certified mindfulness practitioner and author of the Mindful in 5 book series. Here to guide you to a clearer, softer and more supported life. Join me and your fellow mindful ninjas as we explore science-backed mindfulness strategies for successful leaders that you can implement, starting with just five minutes a day. Elevate your work, empower your life, work higher, live stronger. Let's go. Do you find your mind clouded by indecision, struggling to navigate the complex choices of your professional life with peace and clarity? Poor decision-making can disrupt the joyful flow of your work, leaving you feeling unsupported and disconnected from your innate wisdom. Our topic today is decision-making mastery. We are exploring this topic, bringing a clearer, more cheerful approach to your professional choices. And if you're wondering about the cute kids in imagery this season, we are embracing the concept of the beginner's mind by channeling childlike qualities, trust, authenticity, creativity, resilience and optimism to transform your mindfulness practice and daily lives. Let our playful cover art inspire you to approach each day with fresh eyes and open heart and, hopefully, a smile. So back to our topic. Imagine approaching every decision with calm confidence, feeling peacefully aligned with your values and goals. Ah, amazing, wow. By developing strong decision-making skills, you yes, you can transform challenges into opportunities for joyful growth and clearer direction. Let's explore a soothing technique called the 4-4-4 decision matrix. Here's how it works. Four four decision matrix. Here's how it works. Number one list four potential outcomes if you make a decision, approaching each with cheerful curiosity. Number two envision four possible results if you don't decide, maintaining a peaceful perspective. Number three fast forward four months. How will you feel about each scenario? Seek clarity with gentle reflection. And number four choose the option that aligns best with your long-term goals, embracing it with cheerful commitment. Let's use this technique in an example. Meet Barry Miles, an attorney from the Mindful in 5 book series. Barry is facing a pivotal career choice. Barry is facing a pivotal career choice. Should he stay with his current law firm in Minneapolis or accept an offer for a role at Sunderland Medical as their associate general counsel for litigation in Chicago? Let's walk through Barry's decision-making process using the 4-4-4 matrix. Step one list four potential outcomes if Barry accepts the Sunderland medical offer. Number one a career shift into the in-house legal environment within the medical devices field. Number two new city experiences and professional networks that he either gets to or has to build in Chicago, depending on how he looks at it. Number three a learning curve, adapting to a new industry and corporate culture. And number four, barry. For those of you who have the book, and for those of you who don't have the book, I encourage you to pick up a copy. Barry is divorced and he has two children who live in Minneapolis, and so he's going to have to figure out how he's going to make that work if his job is in Chicago. So those are the four things, the four potential outcomes if Barry accepts the Sunderland medical offer. So that takes us to step two.

Speaker 1:

Envision four possible results if Barry stays with his current firm. Number one, the most perhaps important thing to him he gets to keep his current situation with his kids stable. And the same. Number two he gets to maintain his established client relationships and local reputation. He is a known quantity locally and within his company. That's great. Locally and within his company, that's great. Number three continued growth within his current legal role. Barry is a partner. He's a junior partner at this firm. There are other opportunities up the ladder. He can become an equity partner at some point where presumably the real bucks start rolling in and so he can stay and he gets to do that and it provides stability for his personal life, his community connections in his Minneapolis home area and he also gets you know an opportunity to mentor junior attorneys and shape the firm's future if he stays. So those are the four possible results and we've kind of packed a lot into those four possible results, right? So lots of good things happen if he stays with his current firm.

Speaker 1:

Now step three we fast forward four months. How might Barry feel about each scenario? I love to say to people when it feels like you just don't know what the choice is, I always say fast forward and do the thing, you will not regret, right? So fast forward four months. If Barry takes the Sunderland medical offer, he's going to be challenged by the new legal terrain, excited about his new role and the complexities. He's also going to be on a different career path and maybe he's really excited about that. Four months from now he will have figured out what to do about his family situation and, by the way, post-covid, maybe he can negotiate a hybrid work situation that gives him the flexibility to be home with his kids more often than he could have before the pandemic, right? So let's also fast forward four months.

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How might Barry feel if he stays at the law firm?

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He's going to be comfortable in his expertise.

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He's going to be living in what in the book we call the day season of his life. Right, I know this job, I'm doing the job. Maybe I'm a little bored by the job, but maybe he's going to be wondering about his unexplored career path, which is now gone. Maybe he's going to be stalking the person who actually got the job and thinking, wow, look at them traveling, look at them living their best life. Is that dude in Rome this week? Wow, is he going to London, to the company headquarters? Oh, my goodness, that could have been me. Is he going to regret that?

Speaker 1:

And so you can see, by fast forwarding four months, how powerful that is and just thinking about what would I regret if I don't do it. Because most of us tend to regret not the things that we do, but the things that we don't do. We tend not to. We tend to regret the opportunity, the road not taken if we don't think through it well enough. And this takes us to step four choosing the option that aligns with your long-term goals. So let's suppose that, after reflection, Barry realizes that while both paths offer challenges and growth, the Sunderland medical role aligns more closely with his long-term interest in transitioning from his law firm into the in-house environment and his desire for new challenges. And let's suppose that he also works out that actually overcoming the whole you know, my kids are in Minneapolis thing is not insurmountable, and he's able to figure out a solution for that. And then maybe this is how he gets to a point where he decides to accept that Chicago offer and he embraces the change with mindful optimism and he builds for himself a credible plan of action for how he is going to be successful. So this is the example for the 4-4-4 decision matrix.

Speaker 1:

I hope it's one that you find really helpful. It's not about finding the perfect choice really helpful. It's not about finding the perfect choice, but about making decisions with mindfulness and clarity. By exploring multiple perspectives and future scenarios, we can approach decisions with confidence and inner peace. Studies show that this structured approach can significantly improve decision quality, fostering a more peaceful and supported professional journey. I like to leave you with a thought-provoking perspective each episode, so here's what I will leave you with for today.

Speaker 1:

Every decision is a fork in your career path. The key is not to make the perfect choice, but to move forward with clear intention and cheerful acceptance. Never, never, never, I say. Look back and say, ooh, but what if I had? You know why? Because you can't change that. It is now in the past. The decision was made. Keep moving forward. Learn what you can learn from that decision. Keep moving forward. Let's say Barry decides to stay put and then he later regrets having decided to stay put. Well, there are still other opportunities he can apply for right. And with the clarity that he now has, he also has a better sense for what kind of new job next step does he want to take in his career. And so that regret was useful then, because it gave him the power of reflection and the power to make a different choice, and one that he's more excited about going forward. So that is what I will leave you with today. Here is your joyful challenge for the week Use the 4-4-4 decision matrix for an important choice that you are facing. Notice how it brings a softer, more supported energy to your decision-making process.

Speaker 1:

God lovers, I invite you to sit down with God and have him help you and guide you. Ask him for direction, ask him for illumination, ask him for clarification and see what comes to you. I find that you know God talks to us all the time. We just sometimes are so busy in our minds that we're not really listening, and some people get ideas and they call it intuition. Sure, sometimes it's that still small voice. Yes, sometimes it sounds like your inner wisdom, because you came up with clarity that you would have never normally come up with. And all of those things I say are ways that God talks to you.

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Or maybe you ask God the question and in the very next 24 hours, some coworker shows up and gives you the answer, without even realizing that this is a question that you had asked the Lord. I have that happen to me sometimes, and that's how I know God is talking to me, because he sends me an answer, and sometimes it's a tangible answer through somebody else who doesn't even know that that was a question. And yet we just happen on this topic and they're like, oh, by the way, and it's like a throwaway thing for them, and I'm like, oh my gosh, thank you, lord, that was great. So that is how you can sit down with God. Take your five minutes in the morning and sit there with your triple four decision matrix for this thing that you need to decide and see what comes, or do it at night. Sometimes it is best to go to sleep with a question. So, before you go to bed at night, just ask God, you know what about this thing, what say you? And see what comes to you, because you might wake up in the morning with like crisp, crystal clear clarity about what to do. So are you ready to become a master of clear, peaceful decision making?

Speaker 1:

I have created a series of downloadables, and so I invite you to keep checking back, because the downloadables are going to be a growing library over the season and they're going to track some of the concepts that we are talking about this season.

Speaker 1:

They might not be exactly this particular topic, but it's going to be something that is closely related, that is going to allow you to take a 20 or 30 day journey to really dive deeply into this particular topic, because there are some studies that demonstrate it takes about 30 days to form a habit, and the 20 day ones.

Speaker 1:

There are fewer of those, but they're 20 days because they're presuming that you're using them within the work week and then you're taking a break over the weekends, and so the idea is you dive into this particular topic and you allow it to guide you over the course of about a month Sometimes they're bonus days, so it's maybe more than a month and at the end of that time what hopefully you start to see is that you now get to exercise these additional decision-making frameworks.

Speaker 1:

In the paid blueprints that are available for you to download, you're able to exercise and identify and gently overcome things like decision-making biases, and you're able to leverage techniques for tapping into your intuition, tapping into a higher, elevated level of leadership and insight for your mindful leadership journey.

Speaker 1:

And these are guides that you can implement and you can improve your decision-making processes, both for yourself and with your teams. So you can click on the link in the show notes to get to the downloadables page on spewayjeffersoncom and if you're just sort of wandering around the website, it is a subsection of the shop section of the website. So where the bookstore is and you can go shopping, you can find it there. You can also subscribe to the Mindful Ninjas and you can have these resources delivered directly to your mailbox every time there's a new one that is available for you. So finally, remember that decision making is a skill that improves with peaceful practice. The more you engage in this process, the more natural and joyful it will become, supporting a clearer and more mindful professional and fulfilling life. May your choices be guided by inner peace and joyful clarity. Until next week, this is Vyiwe saying be mindful and be well.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for listening to Mindful in 5. If you enjoyed it, share it with a friend, follow and rate it on your favorite podcast platform. Pick up your signed copy of the book and journal from spewayjeffersoncom, or unsigned copies from Amazon, barnes, noble or wherever you get your books. Visit spewayjeffersoncom to download sample chapters of the book, watch videos and become a mindful ninja. Join us on the LinkedIn Mindful in 5 group and share your thoughts. Until next time, be mindful and be well. Join us on the LinkedIn Mindful in 5 group and share your thoughts. Until next time, be mindful and be well.