Ep. 5 Permission to Make Decisions

Permission to MAKE DECISIONS

Have you given yourself PERMISSION to MAKE DECISIONS?

Humans make an average of 35,000 remotely conscious decisions a day. If that statistic makes your feel more panicked than empowered, then you are in the right place. Making decisions can be confusing, overwhelming, and even paralyzing. And there are good reasons. This episode discusses six barriers that block us from making decisions and four ways to power through those barriers in order to learn to make decisions like a boss.

Six Barriers to Decision Making

How do you feel about making decisions? Determined or indecisive? Confident or hesitant? Resolute or wishy-washy?

No matter your past experience with making decisions, you have the ability, starting today, you have the ability to learn how and to practice becoming an effective decision-maker.

The first step is to increase your personal awareness about your decision-making process. Awareness is the first step to change. And don’t criticize yourself. You don’t get positive results in life by thinking negatively.

Here are six barriers that trip you up in the decision-making process:

LABELING:
Too often, we make a decision, then wait for the result to decide whether it was a good or bad decision. If the results turn out well, then we say it was the right decision, but if the results go sour, we say we made the wrong decision. It is harmful and paralyzing to measure our decision based on outcome. It is called OUTcome, because it is OUTside of our control. The truth is that we have to make the best decision we can based on the information we have at the time. We aren’t fortune tellers, so it isn’t fair to judge our present decision based on unpredictable future results.
I DON’T KNOW: Saying “I don’t know” drains our power. We have access to incredible information. It’s better to say, “I am in the process of figuring it out,” or “I am exploring my options,” or even, “I am open to possibilities.”
FEAR: Fear of the future outcome can block us from making a decision in the present. Maybe we’re afraid of failing, or maybe we’re afraid of being wildly successful. More than anything, our brains are afraid of the unknown. Our subconscious loves its comfort zone; it likes to stay right here where everything is familiar, so our subconscious often sabotages us from making a decision that would take us outside our comfort zone.
OBSTACLES: Our brain wants to avoid obstacles and challenges. In fact, sometimes if we run into a challenge, then our brain tries to tell us that we made the wrong choice. This is not true. Obstacles don’t mean that path is wrong. It means you’re going to have to summon your courage, get a running leap and get through the hurdles.
UNCHOOSING: Okay. Technically unchoosing is not a word, but it is a real barrier to decision making. This is the challenge that choosing one menu item at a restaurant means “unchoosing” all the other delicious possibilities. The reality of being burdened by options can render making a decision painful or next to impossible.
OVERTHINKING: Research shows that the prime age for overthinking is between 25 to 37. Overthinking is trying to hard to find the “RIGHT” decision. It’s a paralysis of “I can’t choose this one because maybe a different one is better.” Overthinking is more harmful than beneficial, but there are ways to stop overthinking.

How to Become an Effective Decision-Maker

You can learn to become an effective decision-maker. Here are four simple and effective TOOLS for becoming more confident, self-trusting, and speedy in making decisions.

1. PERMISSION TO GET OUT OF “I DON’T KNOW”

So you don’t know what you want to study in college or do for your career, but sitting in the “I Don’t Know” chair is NOT going to help you figure it out. You don’t discover your favorite flavor of ice cream by never tasting ice cream. An important part of decision-making is exploration and discovery. You may have to get our there and try a lot of things before you DO know what you want. Give yourself permission to get out of “I Don’t Know” and enter “I am exploring options.”

2. PERMISSION TO LET GO OF THE MYTH OF RIGHT OR WRONG DECISIONS

Life is not a quiz with right or wrong answers. The truth is that you don’t “know” your life path, rather, you “create” your life path, so there are not right or wrong decisions. Certainly there are consequences for every decision, but maybe those consequences will be what you need in order to learn, grow, and become a better person. The process of making decisions create opportunities to progress. Not making decisions makes your life stagnant and stifles growth. So practice making decisions whether it’s painting a wall or re-arranging the furniture.

3. PERMISSION FOR UNLIMITED DECISIONS

Unless you choose the poisoned drink or the tunnel with the fire-breathing dragon (which might be the final decision you ever make) few decisions are ever final. Very few decision are life or death. This is good news. Make the best decision you can today, and you can make a new decision later. Trust that you have the intelligence and ability to manage the consequences of your decisions.

4. PERMISSION to OWN YOUR DECISIONS

It’s tempting to choose your spot of grass, then stare longingly at the green grass in the other field. The truth is that every field has spots of lush green and spots of wilted, dead, sour grass. You notice your own wilted patches more because you are closer, but the other field has dead spots, too.

Ep. 4 Permission to Make Life Easier

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Permission to Make Life Easier

Today’s episode discusses 4 Principles to Make Life Easier.

Last episode was about The Power of Permission and the different sources we look to gain permission.

Today’s episodes addresses 4 specific permissions that can make life easier. We hear that life is supposed to be hard. I used to believe that if my life wasn’t hard, then I must not be working hard enough, but that is a false belief. Life does not have to be hard. We make life hard through our thoughts and feelings.

1. Give Yourself Permission to De-Complicate

Are you making your life harder than it needs to be?

Do you actually make your life more complicated?

In her book, “If Life Were Easy It Wouldn’t Be Hard” author Sheri Dew tells her story of a midnight hotel evacuation. She carried two large suitcases down flights before realizing that none of the other guests were bringing their luggage. Hauling all that extra weight resulted in double knee surgery. Sometimes we make our lives harder than they need to be by the extra baggage we carry.

2. Give Yourself Permission to Do Less

You are the CEO of your life and it’s your responsibility to fire, lay-off, cut-back any employees, divisions, or tasks that do not serve your company mission.

You have a book of Pink Slips. Use them!

3. Let Go the 4.0

This isn’t high school and trying to achieve a 4.0 in EVERY aspect of life is unrealistic and will lead to exhaustion and illness. Give yourself permission to do some tasks at 70% so you have more time, resources, and energy to devote to the things that matter most.

4. Solve Problems Without Making a Fuss.

Have you noticed that some people seem to never have problems while other people seem to constantly have problems? Then you realize the first group just doesn’t make a big deal. Rather, they solve problems without fuss. Some chill friends taught me how to give myself permission to solve problems the best way I could without over-thinking and over-complicating the issue.

chronic illness Depression epstein barre hard life permission Postpartum depression

Ep. 3 The Power of Permission Part 1

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The Power of Giving Yourself Permission

Have you given yourself permission to do what you love? Often we think we need outside permission before we can pursue a goal or passion. Sometimes we think that other people know better what we can do. That’s not true! No one knows your passions and desires better than you, and no one needs to give you permission to go for your dreams.

Other Places We Get Permission

Going for our dreams without external endorsement can be scary, so sometimes we wait for life to let us know it’s okay to move ahead. We get default permission from three sources:

Seeing or Hearing Someone Else Do It: I always felt guilty for taking a nap during the day until I read that Stephen Covey, the author of 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, loved to take power naps any time, any place, including on the floor of trains. I also felt embarrassed for my mismatched collection of partially-filled notebook diaries until I saw J.K. Rowling’s haphazard collection of papers and notebooks. Sometimes knowing that we’re not crazy and not alone gives us permission to be true to ourself.
Accident, Illness, or Near-Death Experience: This is the “Live Like You’re Dying” paradigm. It’s not the ideal way to get permission, but it can be very effective. I’m betting that you know someone who really started to live and pursue long-buried dream as a result of an accident, illness, or near-death experience. Before Postpartum Depression and Chronic Illness, I lived in full-out martyr mode. I could not give myself permission to slow down, take a nap, or take care of myself. Getting sick definitely gave me permission to safe-guard my own health, but wouldn’t it have been better if I’d just given myself permission to be healthy in the first place? I think so.
Being Asked to Do It: You might also know aspiring actors, singers, authors, etc, who want someone else to discover their talent and take care of all the career building. Having someone else tell us that we are good enough and ask us to share our talent feels much safer than going it alone. But the truth is that most successful people are self-made. Their permission came from inside.

I Give Myself Permission To . . .

Part of my journey of healing through depression and chronic illness has been learning to give myself permission to:

Take my time
Take a Nap
Make mistakes
Leave thing undone
Try
Figure things out
Play
Be an amateur
ASK FOR HELP
and much more

Next Week: The Power of Permission Part 2

In Episode 4 we will explore the Power of Permission in Specifics areas such as happiness, money, health, decision-making, and doing less. See you next week. mw

Christian Podcast Christian Podcasters Elevate Life LDS Podcasters Make Decisions Maleah Warner Mom Podcasts Mormon Podcasters Motivation perinatal mood disorder Postpartum depression Power podcast Power Principles Power Principles the Podcast Power to Change Self Help Self Improvement The Power Principles Podcast

Ep. 2 What Do I Want? The Power of Desire

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Do you KNOW what you WANT? Your DESIRES give you POWER.

When did you last ask yourself, “What do I want?” and really listened for your deep-down answer.

Are you ready for something more in your life, but don’t know where to start?

Does your life seem to be full of problems? Are you surrounded by drama? Do you want to resolve these problems and break free of the drama but don’t know how? Then, my friend, this episode is perfect you!

The Universe Gives us More of What We Think About, so DON'T Think about Problems!

Last episode we talked about The Power of I Decide. As humans we are great at knowing what we don’t want, but we’re not so good at knowing what we do want. And guess what? The Universe gives us what we think about most. So if we are constantly thinking about problems, the Universe gives us more problems. Therefore, the solution is to think more about things we want. And before we can think about what we want, we have to know what we want.

Five Barriers Block us from Knowing and Getting What we WANT:

KNOWLEDGE: Often, the biggest problem is that we don’t know what we want. We don’t take the time to ask, “What do I really want?“
PERMISSION: We think someone else knows better than we do, so we wait for outside permission. This is living outside of ourselves.
FEELING UNWORTHY: I call this “False Martyr Syndrome” or the belief that we have to sacrifice the things we want most in order to be worthy.
FEAR: Dreaming can be scary. And getting what we want can be as terrifying as the possibility of not getting what we want.
HOW: We don’t go for what we want because we don’t know HOW. Knowing the how is not your job. You job is to figure out the WHAT. Once you know the WHAT, the Universe will manifest the HOW.

Your natural wants and desires are what make you Unique. Deepak Chopra explains that desires must be clear in order to be fulfilled. Start today to get clear on what you really want. Explore your deep-down desires. They are your gifts to share with the world. The more you can discover and achieve your heartfelt desires, the better you are able to serve others and find authentic joy.

Authentic Joy Depression Desire Maleah Warner Postpartum depression Power podcast Power Principles Problems Self Help Want Writing

Ep. 1 The Power of I Decide

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

You Have the Power to Choose Your Life

What if you had a Superpower? What if you could leap over tall buildings? What if you could fly over any obstacle or break through any barrier?

The truth is, we all have a Superpower. We have the Power of I Decide. We have the power to DECIDE our own lives.

God is Your Most Valuable Player

“The all-powerful Universe is on your team. God is your Most Valuable Player, but often we leave God sitting on the bench. Why? Because we have the false believe that life happens to us. God is in your court, but God can’t play for you until you have a game plan.”

Your Superpower is that YOU get to DECIDE. You get to DESIGN your life. And you have one hundred percent, full-time, around the clock access to the All-Powerful Universe. God can leap over any building and He can get you over it, too.

Your Brain Will Resist

When your brain resists this belief, when you think: I’m not supposed to be rich, I’m supposed to have trials, I’m supposed to have struggles, life is meant to be hard, remember that GOD gifted you the agency to choose.

We are creators and our human experience is ours to create.

You can create any life that you want for yourself.

You have the power and the right to DECIDE exactly what you want your life to be.

This podcast will help you gain the Knowledge and Power to create your BEST life.

Choose Your Life create life Decision Making God Law of attraction Maleah Warner Postpartum depression Power podcast Power Principles

Ep. 0 Intro: Is This Podcast Right for You?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Why I Created the Power Principles Podcast

At age 31 I was diagnosed with Postpartum Depression, an autoimmune disease (Hashimoto’s Thyroid), and a chronic illness (Epstein Barr). This podcast is a collection of the principles I’ve learned about healing my heart, mind, and body.

With those diagnoses, I was afraid that I would forever be a burden to my husband and an unfit mother to my children. I had no energy. I couldn’t drive. My daily tasks like changing a diaper, making a sandwich, or sorting the mail required Herculean effort. I began to study everything I could about health, and I am excited to share what I’ve learned with you.

How Do You Know if Your in the Right Place

You feel stuck in a rut
You need clarity about how to move forward in life.
You seek healing from depression, anxiety, autoimmune disease, or any chronic illness.
You are navigating a life transition: marriage, divorce, death, birth, children starting school, children leaving home, starting a career, retiring.
You struggle with confusion and making decisions.
Your life is disrupted by emotional outbursts, fights, overwhelming anger, fear, or discontent.
You desire to experience greater passion, purpose, and fulfillment in your life.

The Power Principles

When you feel stuck (like I did) then you need two things in order to move forward. First, you need knowledge of what to do and second, you need the power to make it happen. When you want to drive somewhere in your car, you need 1) knowledge of how to operate a car and 2) fuel to power the vehicle.

Each episode of this podcast teaches a power principle to educate and energize your life. By listening, you will gain the knowledge and power to elevate your life to the next level.

Welcome! You are in the right place. This podcast is for YOU! mw

Maleah Warner Postpartum depression Power podcast Power Principles

Let me introduce myself

Maleah: An Introduction to My Writing, In My Own Words

Trapping Life with a Word Net

I was tracing over-sized tropical flowers onto long strips of colored butcher paper, the kind you find on giant rolls in the faculty lounge, when Mrs. Wirthlin shouted to my best friend, “Lara, cry like you mean it.”

We were almost twelve, and Lara was starring as Dorothy in the annual sixth grade play. Mrs. Wirthlin explained to the preteen cast that Dorothy is a difficult role to play because she is a real, human girl.

“Sometimes it’s easier,” said Mrs. Wirthlin, her magnificent classroom voice always flowed with vibrato as though she were on the verge of singing about fractions in an opera, “to cackle like a witch, roar like a lion, or squeak like a munchkin than to cry, believably, like a real girl.”

My name is Maleah, and I write contemporary women’s fiction – the kind that chronicles real life and doesn’t have any heart-throbbing vampires or bare-chested Fabio’s.

If fiction gives readers a momentary escape from their reality, then why would anyone want to read fiction so real that it borders on being creative nonfiction?

Good question. Maybe nobody does. But I will write anyway, because

life is rich, messy, interesting, monotonous, beautiful, hideous, exhilarating, and devastating.

Life is so easy to complicate.

I must attempt to capture real life with words, like a child who chases a butterfly with a net, hoping to trap the graceful creature – not to cage, but to slow for a brief moment of closer examination, admiring its magnificent, yet delicate form. When the child releases the creature to again fly free, he barely feels the ripples in the air that softly kiss his cheeks, and then crescendo to form tsunamis on the opposite side of the earth.

This is my goal – to momentarily entrap and ponder the metamorphosis of the monarch life.

I will see you here on Smashing Stories every 10th, 20th, and 30th of each month.

maleah

post script–the child in the picture is mine, the butterfly is courtesy of photoshop.

FEARLESS

Did you know?

That I have a fear of being blown into the Grand Canyon.

And did you know?

That in a dust-covered cardboard box labeled “Maleah’s college stuff” is a rumpled newspaper article from the Salt Lake Tribune, April 27, 1994. The last sentence quotes me, a nineteen-year-old college freshman, and reportedly I said, “I have anxiety about writing and having people read what I write.”

So what, in good glory, am I doing on a writers’ blog?

For years, my fear of writing for the public overpowered my love for writing. (Yes, I am also in possession of an ancient cassette tape–press play and hear me as a squeaky-voiced, ten-year-old fourth grader declare, “I love to write; I want to grow up and write stories for people to read.”)

Now, I approach writing with a (somewhat) fearless disregard for public opinion–because, what the heck, I have:

* pushed a human the size of a seven pound bowling ball through a one centimeter bodily crevice without pain meds (not by choice…the first time) while naked from the waist down in a room full of strangers,

*slid to the cliff of mental reason and did not fall off the edge,

*watched every last penny of life savings slurp into a bottomless, black business hole,

*and returned each time, still breathing, still alive, and still mostly happy.

So,

I. Can. Write.

Michael Jordan said,
I’ve missed more than 90,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games, 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

If I need to invest 10,000 hours of practice in order to excel at writing, (thank you Malcolm Gladwell and Dr. Livingston, I presume) then, by golly, I’d better get crackin’!

Up, up, and away…

sincerely yours,

maleah

post script: here is the Vogue-worthy (so not!) photo of me that appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune next to the article, “Gang Presence Unnerves Residents” – not the article for which I was interviewed. Okay, Loraine, this is my bulbous-head-mini-feet mug. Let’s see yours!

By the way, this photo was the model for the new Maleah Bobblehead, available at Wal-mart this Fall (also, so not! phew).

Choose Your Cyber Words Carefully

Remember my fear of being blown into the Grand Canyon?

This is me last Saturday.

Notice the wind mightily huffing and puffing to blow me down.

Which just goes to show –
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SEND INTO CYBER UNIVERSE.

Last post I confessed my lifelong fear of being blown by a sudden gust of wind into the depths of the Grand Canyon (thus the reason I have lived north and south of the big GC and never stopped to visit). Nine days later I’m fighting to keep my footing at eleven thousand feet on the saddle of Mt. Timpanogos. The wind reached its blustery hand into my jacket pocket and stole my stash of Kleenex, releasing the fragile tissue to be teased, whipped and torn to confetti along the streams of gusting current. I thought of every person I knew in the Utah Valley, and wondered if they would catch me should I become blustery tissue paper.

Last post I also typed out my online confessional, my fear of public writing.
I surrendered my safe hideout as a closet writer.
I hit “publish” and voila, people, real people, read my writing. Aaaahhhh.
(Thank you for reading. Thanks for taking the time. I am terrified and grateful.)

I see a pattern here.Let me try this…

Did you know that?

I have a fear of money, lots and lots of money.

Let’s get a visual on that – the power of one thousand words.

There you go cyber world. Take that and run with it.

Perfection (Re)Defined

As a scrawny, buck-toothed twelve year old, I slowly filled my piggy bank with wages earned babysitting. One of my regular gigs took me to a home where five sticky kids ate on paper plates, and the living room furniture remained in perfectly new condition, covered in plastic.

I tell you this because the other night I dreamed that the mother of my babysitting family died suddenly. I woke up panicked, Did she ever use her living room furniture?

I thought about aspects of my life that I keep perfectly new, safely shrink-wrapped.
Safe from dirty hands.
Safe from rips and tears.
Safe from jumping feet.
Safe from needing care, cleaning, repairing, and rearranging.
Safe, Perfect, and Unused.

The following excerpt comes from one of my best teachers of creativity:

“I loved the artificial flowers my mother-in-law had given me. They didn’t need water, had no aphids, would never wilt. Hating the bother of caring for real flowers, I was therefore annoyed when my husband planted rose bushes in our garden.
But finally the day came when he brought me the first bloom. Reluctantly I took the artificial roses from the vase on the television set and replaced them with the one single flower.
For three day I casually watched the red velvet rose unfold. Once, passing nearby, its delightful fragrance stopped me.
I paused–and in that moment a poignant truth overwhelmed me; something alive, something growing, evens something dying is wondrous and beautiful indeed. Instinctively, we love that which we must care for and protect; a child, an animal…a red rose that drinks from a crystal vase.”

The quest for perfection is a road of exhaustion, misery, irritability and a constant awareness of not having, doing, or being enough.

Finding perfection would be like finding the fountain of youth, once attained, you’d want to give it right back; because, after all, the appeal of youth is riddled with inexperience. And after achieving perfection, what then? I think of perfection as something frozen and unchanging, like a botoxed face. “Perfect” implies a final destination – done, complete, finito. No improvement, no growth, no change. Think of being stuck with one “perfect” hair style forever. Aaaaahhhhh. That is scary.

Let’s try on this definition of perfection from the World English Dictionary: “Perfect – having all essential elements.”

Hmmm, I like that idea. Perfect is having what is essential. So…

A perfect family might include sticky hand prints, chaotic mealtimes, and dishes left undone while dad launches sofa cushion missiles at popsicle-licking children.

A perfect gift might be the one thing you needed most – nothing at all.

The face of beauty would be carved with deep lines of experience, courage, indecision, sorrow, laughter, perseverance, emptiness, loneliness, happiness, and love – for these are essential elements for a perfect life.

One thing I know for sure, the perfection label cannot be applied to anything that does not exist, even if the model looks perfect on the magazine cover. Even if my novel reads perfectly in my head.

Something perfect must live. Perfection is a state of being.

For me the living, growing, learning, and changing processes are the essential elements. The process of perfection is more desirable than the end result.

A perfect manuscript might need all the raw, choppy, emotional words barfed up in puddles of chunky, broken sentences, faulty grammar, and horific speling.

The process of perfection connotes creation, bringing into existence something of beauty and worth that did not exist before – something that grows, changes, and needs my attention.

The perfect appearance of silk flowers pales without the scent of life. A plastic protected couch is denied its place as the family cushioner, its chance to feel a weary body slump into its pillowy softness, to prop up tired, dusty feet for a twenty minute power nap. Pinochio, tg.he perfect puppet, longed to be a real boy.

The stillness of perfection is not what we seek, but the process of gathering all the essential elements. Living. Growing. Changing. Needing.

Postscript: The rose pictured is not a random google image, but a real valentine rose given to me and captured in perfect still life photography by my J.