March 17, 2025 • 13 mins
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.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey guys, it's Gemma. First, I just want to take
a moment to say how grateful I am to each
and every one of you who tune into the Psychology
of your twenties. 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
(00:23):
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 also 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
(00:45):
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 Twenties. Each week, I introt you a
new empowering phrase, one simple but powerful Martra, and then
(01:06):
I unpacket's 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,
(01:28):
I'd love to invite you to listen. I also just
started releasing monthly bonus episodes for Martra on Open Mind Plus,
where I answer some questions and dms that come through
to March 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.
(01:51):
I have so much in store for this season of Marchra,
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 Pilate's aside, let's get into it.
(02:12):
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 and every single turn, and if we are
to carefully observe and analyze the environment, all the context,
(02:36):
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
(02:57):
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,
(03:20):
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
(03:43):
it's only ten dollars, 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
(04:06):
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 guess 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,
(04:29):
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
(04:51):
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 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,
(05:14):
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
(05:36):
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
(05:57):
it's a study that was done on regret regreat 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
(06:19):
that you are more likely to regret in action 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
(06:42):
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 they
weren't opportunities, where they felt lonely, And eventually they came
to resent their past self not for a choice, but
(07:05):
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. If
you are stuck between doing and not doing something, always
choose to do it. And with that, I want you
(07:26):
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,
(07:49):
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
(08:10):
the way we wanted to, or we're going to be
truly devastated if 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,
(08:30):
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 Deacon
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
(08:53):
we are really good at, though, is being resilient and
adapting to our circumstances. We are high 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.
(09:14):
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
(09:36):
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
(09:57):
make us happy or how things are going to work out,
how do we s 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.
(10:19):
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 it all along, you forgive yourself for
not knowing, and with that you have greater acceptance for
(10:39):
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 way 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
(11:01):
think it's a process of trial and error, letting yourself
be led by your gut instinct and just seeing whether
it's right, 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
(11:22):
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
(11:43):
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 and to create, to see to do amazing things,
(12:04):
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
(12:27):
of your situation. We've already talked so much about embracing
the wisdom we already hold, trusting our intuition, to letting
go of the pressure 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
(12:49):
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
(13:14):
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,
(13:37):
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, and as always, make sure to
follow Mantra to help others discover the show. Talk soon
Hey guys, it's Gemma. First, I just want to take
a moment to say how grateful I am to each
and every one of you who tune into the Psychology
of your twenties. 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
(00:23):
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 also 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
(00:45):
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 Twenties. Each week, I introt you a
new empowering phrase, one simple but powerful Martra, and then
(01:06):
I unpacket's 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,
(01:28):
I'd love to invite you to listen. I also just
started releasing monthly bonus episodes for Martra on Open Mind Plus,
where I answer some questions and dms that come through
to March 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.
(01:51):
I have so much in store for this season of Marchra,
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 Pilate's aside, let's get into it.
(02:12):
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 and every single turn, and if we are
to carefully observe and analyze the environment, all the context,
(02:36):
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
(02:57):
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,
(03:20):
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
(03:43):
it's only ten dollars, 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
(04:06):
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 guess 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,
(04:29):
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
(04:51):
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 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,
(05:14):
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
(05:36):
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
(05:57):
it's a study that was done on regret regreat 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
(06:19):
that you are more likely to regret in action 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
(06:42):
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 they
weren't opportunities, where they felt lonely, And eventually they came
to resent their past self not for a choice, but
(07:05):
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. If
you are stuck between doing and not doing something, always
choose to do it. And with that, I want you
(07:26):
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,
(07:49):
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
(08:10):
the way we wanted to, or we're going to be
truly devastated if 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,
(08:30):
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 Deacon
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
(08:53):
we are really good at, though, is being resilient and
adapting to our circumstances. We are high 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.
(09:14):
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
(09:36):
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
(09:57):
make us happy or how things are going to work out,
how do we s 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.
(10:19):
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 it all along, you forgive yourself for
not knowing, and with that you have greater acceptance for
(10:39):
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 way 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
(11:01):
think it's a process of trial and error, letting yourself
be led by your gut instinct and just seeing whether
it's right, 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
(11:22):
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
(11:43):
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 and to create, to see to do amazing things,
(12:04):
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
(12:27):
of your situation. We've already talked so much about embracing
the wisdom we already hold, trusting our intuition, to letting
go of the pressure 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
(12:49):
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
(13:14):
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,
(13:37):
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, and as always, make sure to
follow Mantra to help others discover the show. Talk soon
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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