Kay:
Hey there, everyone! Welcome to Episode 90 of The Mentorship Quest! We can’t believe it..We are 90 episodes in!…SO much fun! Today’s quote comes to you from one of our favorite, favorite mentors, the one and only Michelle Obama.
Shi:
And, although she’s not a personal mentor, we feel like we’ve been personally mentored by her from her amazing works and her incredible book. And, in this quote, she says, “Don’t ever make decisions based on fear. Make decisions based on hope and possibility. Make decisions based on what should happen, not what shouldn’t.”
Kay:
Oooh, there’s so much to unpack here. So, let’s just take this first sentence. You know…first things first!…“Don’t ever make decisions based on fear.” I mean, this is an incredible piece of advice in and of itself. She’s basically saying, (if you are a Mentorship Quest listener you heard us talk about this earlier this week) when you get down to it, there are two emotions. There’s fear and there is love. So, basically, there’s love and there’s a fear of an absence of love. And so, when we make decisions based out of that fear place, it ends up being an action we THINK is in our best interest, but sometimes the results can get distorted along the way.
Shi:
Well we can often find a limited solution for ourselves, or we can end up shooting ourselves in the foot, or coming from a place of scarcity that doesn’t allow us to see the full creativity available to us – which might have allowed us to make a choice that could empower us or really turn out to be one of those win, win, WIN situations. And so, I like that, in this first sentence, it doesn’t say fear must be ABSENT from decision-making or that fear can’t certainly push you along the path towards a decision you need to make. In other words, it doesn’t mean that if you had fear around it, then deciding about it was wrong. That’s certainly not the message here. It’s just that when we make a decision, it can’t be BASED on fear…which is where the second part of this quote comes in, “Make decisions based on hope and possibility.”
Kay:
Possibility doesn’t mean when you’re standing at the edge of a cliff though, right? And you’ve got your toes on the edge, but most of your feet are on the ground and you’re looking out into that void…There is so much fear present to you at that time. And it doesn’t matter if you are bundled up and 100% safe on some ride that you paid $300 for in the Grand Canyon, and you logically know that everything’s okay. When you’re standing over that cliff looking at that void – it’s like…SHOOT, this looks hard...I’m afraid.
Shi:
And the fear and danger can come together or they can be separate. I mean, you can be afraid of a lot of things that aren’t necessarily dangerous to you. So it’s kind of this two part equation. It says don’t make decisions based on fear. So we know that we absolutely cannot do that, but instead we want to make them based on hope, in addition to possibility. Because, there’s all kinds of possibilities that come from the fearful place, and that end up being negative…and really fear mast in disguise as realism. So hope PLUS possibility is where we want to be making decisions from.
Kay:
Now look, I can hope and hope and HOPE and wish and wish and WISH every single year on my birthday that it will snow. But, my birthday is on July 16th, in the middle of summer, and we live in Reno, Nevada. And, (for those of you who have never been to Reno, Nevada) it is a desert and it does not often snow here in July….And so I can have the hope, but if there’s no possibility (or if it’s really not that probable), then the hope might be misfounded. So I’m SO glad that you brought up hope plus possibility Shi, because we can hope and hope and hope for the snow in the middle of July (and it might happen once in a blue moon…because it actually did happen one year when I was like eight ;), but it certainly doesn’t happen very often.
Shi:
Well it’s not unhealthy to have hope. But when we’re coming to decision making, the possibility is a very important ingredient for making decisions. It’s hope plus possibility. And then we layer in this third sentence here, “Make decisions based on what should happen. Not what shouldn’t.” I mean, this is just another way of saying that well-known principle of: the glass half FULL, versus half empty. It’s really about focusing on what you DO want, not on what you don’t. And, I think this is a great way to remind yourself that you don’t want to run from something. You want to run towards something.
Kay:
I love the difference in the sentence that she makes here with that word “should”. Because, some of us may say, “well, wouldn’t she want to say, ‘make decisions based on what COULD happen’?” Because we’re talking about possibility…”And so, wouldn’t we want to make decisions based on everything and anything that could possibly happen?” BUT, the reality of the matter is: you are a human being with values and these intersectional layers of how you grew up, your patterns, your structures, and so much more. And so, you have to make decisions that aren’t based on fear, but that are based off of your own, unique best intention…and what you think SHOULD happen. Not what could happen, because that’s the possibility of anything and everything! But what should...so you’re using your best judgment to find hope and possibility to make decisions based out of love! So – just to put that back into how Michelle Obama said it, “Don’t ever make decisions based on fear. Make decisions based on hope and possibility. Make decisions based on what should happen, not what shouldn’t.”
Shi:
So your quest for this Friday, (and to take with you into the weekend) is to: flip the script on a decision that you have to make, or that you need to make. If you’ve got a decision in your life that you’ve got some fear-based thinking about, flip the script on yourself. And see the hope PLUS possibility, and look at what SHOULD happen and make your decision from that place. We hope that this empowers you and we hope that you have a great weekend.
Kay:
Happy questing!
