BW 145
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Hey, and welcome to episode number 145 of the Brave Widow Show.
Today I've got a special treat for you. I'm gonna be teaching you something a little bit different. But
before and in to today's episode, I wanted to give you guys a little update of what's going on in my personal life. So some of you have been on the journey with me. For some of you, this might be your very first episode. If so, welcome I. I have been doing podcasts for two and a half years now, which is crazy, and sometimes I just assume that everyone knows everything that's going on and what's happening, and that's not always the case.
I have to remember sometimes that new people are joining us as well. Today, Robert and I are actually closing on the house that we have been trying to sell for the last few months. [00:01:00] So for those of you that may know, we decided to move into town, our plan is to build a house. Out in the country on the other side of town.
Yes. I know it sounds like we're a little bit crazy, but trust me, there is a plan and a whole story that I will not go into today, but essentially. A couple of years ago I had the dream and desire to build a house, and I purchased 40 acres of land on the other side of town, which puts me in a much more convenient location.
It's set up for livestock, so I'm gonna have donkeys and little cows and all of the things. I am so excited to build a house out there, but one of the things that I needed to do first was to sell the house that we've been living in for the past oh four and a half [00:02:00] years. It's been almost five years since we moved out there, which is absolutely crazy.
And this is really a. Of course selling a house for anyone selling a house, that's like a big chapter, that's a big milestone, right? You don't buy or sell a house super often, so it feels like a really big milestone, and I. In a lot of ways it's really bittersweet. So Nathan and I, Nathan being my late husband, and I moved into this house that, that I'm closing on in September of 2020 when there was this little thing going on called Covid in a pandemic.
And we moved into this house. It was like his dream house and it's about 15 minutes outside of town on 37 [00:03:00] acres with lots of rolling hills and woods and trails that we rode the side by side on. And it had a big shop and a pool and. Just a very secluded, beautiful view. I've shared pictures of it with you guys over the past couple of years, and it has been a wonderful place to have our kids and have people over, and it was perfect for entertaining and hosting people and all of the things, and I struggled for a long time with whether or not I wanted to keep that property.
One of my biggest challenges was having to mow it, and we mow about six or seven acres I would say, on the property. And it's not nice and flat and even like my new property will be, it's very rocky and hilly. And let's just say I go a little crazy [00:04:00] with the mower, like the tree roots. And the mower might have resulted in some bent blades, some thrown belts, and many times of me sobbing in the driveway because I didn't know how to use the choke when I was first using this riding mower.
And I could tell you so many stories about me and this mower and the hours I've spent outside and. Needless to say, it just became something that took so much time and effort and energy in maintaining, and it was a drive, and here in the wintertime, whenever it would ice and snow and we're going up lots of hills and curves and it's just.
Not fun place to get to when you're going into town so many times a day. And so ultimately I've shared the story where on, it was actually Nathan's birthday [00:05:00] one year in 2020. Three. Yes. January of 2023. It was on Nathan's birthday. I had planned to go out to the cemetery and watch the sunrise and play his favorite music I had done that year, the year before.
So that was my tradition. And I woke up that morning and we were completely snowed in. There was no way I was getting to the cemetery. I was mad the kids couldn't go to school. I couldn't go what I, where I wanted to go. I was just frustrated in general and felt like this whole day was ruined. Now because I didn't get to do what I wanted to do.
Not that you have ever felt that way. So ultimately, as I sat on the couch with my laptop and had some TV on in the background for noise, I was just really inspired to build a house. [00:06:00] Now. As I shared, I had been wrestling with whether or not to sell this house and whether or not I would want to move somewhere else and I wanted to wait till I found something that I would enjoy more or even better than what I had currently, which was hard to imagine.
'cause we loved that place and I just couldn't find any houses online. And so that day, while I was mad stuck in the house, I was just looking on Zillow. And found this land that I would end up buying two months later. And so what started out as a frustrating day almost felt like a gift from Nathan, a gift from God into some inspiration and hope for the future.
It's a beautiful place. With a big pond and the perfect setup for livestock and even better blessing. On top of that was the man that I bought the land from had owned it for [00:07:00] 20 years. He had carefully curated these pastures and made them so beautiful and he had a great setup with some of the neighbors where they run cattle and essentially.
We created a win-win situation where I didn't have to go work the land. He could continue to run cattle on the land, bail it for hay, and I bought a couple of cows that he keeps as part of the herd. And I'm in the cow business and have been for the last couple of years, which is amazing. And it has been an interesting and challenging journey to get to a place where ultimately I felt I was in a good position and I was ready to build a new house on this land where we are going.
And part of that was that I needed to sell the house. I lived in before, and so here we are. Tonight will be the last night that I'll be going out [00:08:00] there before we close on it and hand over the keys. It will be bittersweet. We are closing on Tuesday. I am happy for the people that are moving in. I do feel completely at peace with this being the right decision for me and my family and I.
Yeah, it's just a lot of mixed emotions. So that is what's going on in my personal life, and that is a milestone that if you're listening to this on Tuesday, April the eighth, that you are here with me as part of a milestone in my journey. So there you go. Alright. One more thing that I wanted to share with you is that I've been speaking with several people who find me on YouTube, who find me via the podcast and tell me that they've been listening for months and months before they decide to actually schedule a consult call. With me and ultimately [00:09:00] end up working with me as their one-on-one coach.
And of course it takes some time, right? Like you find me stranger danger on the internet, you don't know anything about me, my background, my story how I am as a coach. So it completely makes sense that you need a little exposure and a little time to get a feel for whether or not a consult call is right for you.
So I totally get that. However. There are people on the fence because they're intimidated or because I'm on YouTube, like maybe, whoa, she's way up here. She's on YouTube guys, anyone can start a YouTube account. Anyone can start a YouTube account. It's perfectly fine. So I just wanna encourage you, if you have been on the fence, if you have been thinking maybe I need to do this.
If you feel compelled and you feel that urge inside of you to [00:10:00] schedule a call with me to see what it would be like, just do it. You can go to brave widow.com. There's a one-on-one coaching tab, and you can find a way on there to schedule a consult with me and listen, I make it super easy. Just comment on this video.
Comment, wherever you're watching this, seeing this, shoot me a dm. I'm super accessible and I will be happy to set up a one-on-one consult call with you during a consult call. You are gonna walk away with all sorts of value. I'm not a high pressure sales person. My goal as a life coach is to help you come to a decision of peace. I don't want you making a decision out of fear. I don't want you to make a decision from a place of feeling pressured. I want you to make a decision that comes from a place of peace. So even if it is ultimately I'm not the coach for you, or this isn't the right [00:11:00] time for you, or whatever your decision is.
I'm fine with that. I'm here to support you. I just want you to feel really good and love your reasons for why you made that decision and not to make a decision, because everything new that you experience in life is different, and our brains don't like things that are different. Think about anything. You have tried for the first time in your life.
Maybe it's the first time you started taking piano lessons. Maybe it's the first time you went to the gym. Maybe it's the first time that you decided to wear high heels, like whatever it is, your brain automatically started feeding you all the reasons why you shouldn't. What if this happens? What if I'm bad?
What if people laugh at me? What if I fall on my face? What if this, what if that? All of that is normal? It's normal. So my job [00:12:00] as a coach is to help equip you to be able to make decisions without getting caught up in this very negative like thought cycle or swirl of negative thoughts. The thought spiral.
Is what we sometimes call it. So on the consult call, go to brave widow.com. Schedule a consult call. There's no pressure, there's no obligation. Only potential and possibilities, and I will actually be taking some detailed notes about specifically what you could and should focus on as your next steps to help you heal your heart and move forward.
And guess what? You get a copy of all of those notes, very detailed, very laid out, structured of what I would do to help you move forward and what you can go and do to move yourself forward. You get an hour of my time. You [00:13:00] get some very honest feedback about where you are and what you could do to take the next steps forward.
Just schedule the call. You're thinking about it. Just do it. Stop thinking about it. Yes, I'm calling you out. Just do it. Okay.
Emily: Welcome to the Brave Widow Show, where we help widows find hope, heal their heart, and dream again for the future. I'm your host, Emily Tanner. After losing my husband of 20 years, I didn't know how I could ever experience true joy and excitement again for the future. I eventually learned how to create a life I love, and I've made it my mission to help other widows do the same.
Join me and the Brave Widow membership community and get started today. Learn more at BraveWidow. com
For today's episode, and thank you for hanging in there with me through that.
So what I wanna teach you today actually comes out [00:14:00] of what I call the self-trust system. And the self-trust system is what I teach widows in how to rebuild confidence. Now, within this system, we talk about rebuilding confidence in different ways. So one module is how to make decisions confidently, how to rebuild your self-confidence.
How to build confidence in safety mentally, physically, and emotionally, and how to rebuild confidence in boundaries that you have. One of the top areas that widows struggle with confidence is actually in making decisions. On today's podcast episode, I wanna share a little sneak peek of what I teach widows with making decisions and how you can build confidence in making decisions as well.
Now many of you have experienced brain fog, where especially in those first few days, weeks, months, or for some people even years. [00:15:00] Everything feels really foggy and hazy. This is typically why most people recommend that widows don't make big decisions within their first one to two years.
So let me explain in my very layman's way why this actually happens. Losing a spouse has been ranked as the number one most stressful IE traumatic experience a human can experience. And whenever we experience trauma in the brain, here's what happens from a neurobiology standpoint.
Okay. We're gonna talk about three parts of your brain and so don't tune me out. You might be like, I'm not a science person. I can't understand the brain. Yes, you can. You can understand it. The first part of our brain that we wanna talk about is the prefrontal cortex, which is the thinking logical center.
It [00:16:00] helps us evaluate, it helps us make decisions from a very logical place. Okay, so front part of our brain, when we experience trauma, that part of our brain is weakened. The hippocampus, which helps us regulate emotions and memories is also weakened. What takes over the part of our brain that takes over is called the amygdala.
And think of this essentially as the fear center or the part of our brain that keeps us alive and helps us survive. You might have heard of fight or flight mode. You might have also heard of freeze or fawn responses. Those are all different ways that our mind and our body chooses to respond in the event of trauma, crisis, emergency, those types of things.
So what happens is the part of our brain that regulates logic, decision [00:17:00] making. Emotions and memory. Those two parts get really weakened and the amygdala gets cranked up and takes over. Now the amygdala is essentially what is. Causing us to have that fight or flight response. It's why our nervous system feels like it's on fire.
It's why we can't concentrate or see things big picture, because our brain and our body is essentially responding the same way as if a tiger was chasing you down the street. So think about the caveman days, right? Where there's a tiger or a lion and it's chasing you out in the middle of the jungle, and you just respond.
You might respond by freezing up. You might respond by fighting the tiger back. You might respond by running away. You might respond a few different ways, but essentially you're running off of instinct. [00:18:00] You are not running off of, oh, let's think this through. How could I trap this tiger? How could I get away?
Like you're just going and then thinking about it later. So that is why it's really difficult for us to make some of those tougher decisions whenever we're in those early days of grief.
Trauma can alter the structure and the functioning of your brain. So guess what? You are normal. If this has happened to you, you are normal. And I've met widows that have been in this fight or flight survival type mode, sometimes months, sometimes a few years, sometimes many years. And the best way I can describe it is it just feels like your nerves and your body are on fire.
Like you can't just let your shoulders down and relax. [00:19:00] And that's because your brain thinks that it still needs to keep you safe. It still needs to keep you on a high alert, and that if it doesn't do that, you are not gonna be safe. So there are things that we do intentionally to get us out of fight or flight and bring us down into our body and bring ourselves to a place where we're really reiterating.
I'm safe.
Okay, so I'm gonna share with you eight steps to decision making, and then I'm gonna talk about something specifically to help you with moving through some of these steps. Step number one is to acknowledge your feelings and limitations. I. So if you're operating in this survival mode, instinctive mode, it's okay to give yourself grace, to have compassion for yourself and to know that ultimately you're making the best decision you have with the information and the tools and skillset that you have.[00:20:00]
The second step is to identify your priorities and what's important to you, and I'll get to that in just a minute. The third step is to gather information. The fourth is to set a timeframe that you wanna make that decision. Within the fifth is to evaluate your options. Sixth is to trust your intuition.
Seven is to accept imperfection, and eight is to reflect on the outcome of what that decision was. So how in the world can you make a decision going through each of these steps and what will be the most valuable thing to you? Most widows feel that they've lost their thought partner, and I've even had a widow share with me that.
Hey, I used to make all the decisions, so I don't know why this is so hard, but even when my husband was alive, I still made all the decisions he wouldn't really weigh in, [00:21:00] but it's just the thought that he's not there to bounce ideas off of. So I think about it like a safety net, right? If you are a parent of small children and you are.
Afraid that something might happen to you or that you're gonna make a wrong decision. You feel when you're married that you have sort of a safety net, like someone else is there to step in. Someone else is there to help carry the load. Someone else is there to go maybe we shouldn't do that. And when that person dies, all of a sudden you realize, oh, it's all on me now.
I have no one else to catch me. If I. Make the wrong decision, or if I stumble or if I do the wrong thing. So one of the ways that we rebuild our confidence with making decisions is that we form a board of advisors. I.
Now a board of advisors sounds really formal, but ultimately these are [00:22:00] people around you that have your best interests at heart, who have shared values. Who are educators? These are people who explain the why about things. They're responsive to you, and ultimately their goal is to see you succeed. Now, one of the challenges in having family and friends around you, number one, is that you might have lost a lot of your social circle, might have lost a lot of the people that used to be there for you, used to weigh in on things or give you advice.
The second thing is even if you haven't lost those people, sometimes they don't really give the best advice or they don't have your best interest at heart, or they want to weigh in on things that they don't really have expertise in.
So as we think about the people who are on this board of advisors for you, we really wanna vet out who those people are. [00:23:00] Are they experienced in whatever area it is that you're seeking their advice or their opinion on, do they share the same values as you? Do they have your best interests at heart, and are they the type of person who educates you on why they're saying that their recommendation is what it is?
So who are these Board of advisors and what are they advising on? I have some categories of people that I believe will best support you and help you as you are working to rebuild your life. And what I suggest that you do as you're trying to select these people, one is that you interview and you vet out people that could fill each position.
Two, that you try to do that before you actually need them. So for example, let's say that you want to hire a financial planner, a financial coach an [00:24:00] investment advisor like someone who could help you with your finances. What I would suggest is that you talk to three or four different people that you get a good feel for whether or not their methods and their values align with yours.
Whether they can articulate what some of the best options are for you, and they're willing to explain why. You're not looking for a parental figure here to tell you what to do. You are in charge, so you want someone who's gonna explain the why behind what it is they're telling you to do. And someone who truly has your best interest at heart, so someone who can explain why a certain strategy might work for you and your family, not someone who's just focused on making the biggest commission.
You also wanna try to find these individuals before you're in a crisis or before you're in a situation where you're really hurt. Hurting because you wanna be able to look to them and already [00:25:00] know that you have vetted them out, that you are aligned, that they're going to walk you through this process together and not make a decision out of fear or out of urgency because you're in a crunch and you have no other choice.
Like you just have to pick somebody. So I recommend looking for someone who could help from an emotional support aspect, whether that's a coach, a therapist, a fellow widow, a close friend, someone who could be a good emotional support for you, someone who.
Someone who could focus on physical fitness and health. Maybe that's a walking partner. Maybe it's a personal trainer, maybe it's a nutritionist, but someone that someone in your life that can help you either with understanding ways that you can be healthy and that you can stay physically fit, or someone who will keep you accountable.
The [00:26:00] financial area we just talked about. Someone that could help with. Like home maintenance or car maintenance, someone that you could ask those questions to, like, how often am I supposed to change these air filters again? Or, Hey, do you know someone who's a good plumber? Do you know someone who is an electrician that could help me with this?
This is one reason I love my real estate investor community, and even if you have. Little interest in investing in real estate. I think it's another reason why it'd be great for you to join is for the networking because there are lots of people that goes to those meetings and they have great networks of plumbers and handyman and fence guys, and electricians and HVAC people and all of the things that many widows stress out about as far as handyman projects or to-dos around the house.
It's a really good network to be part of.
The [00:27:00] spiritual area is another area that I recommend that you have someone that you can confide in, that you can be accountable with or that you can go to for questions. Legal, so an attorney, someone that you have vetted out that again, can be there as needed. Maybe they're helping you with your estate planning.
Maybe you wanna contact an attorney in case you ever got in a criminal situation and you are wrongfully accused of something. But it's just good to have those relationships in advance. Someone who could help you with career or business. If you're someone who's working, wants to go back to work, or even wants to start up a new business, I am blown away by the number of widows that I work with that ultimately I.
Wanna start a podcast, wanna start a business, want to change careers, want to go back to work, and they haven't been working in a long time, but this is really an [00:28:00] area where you could find someone solid to help guide you in developing out what that looks like. So these are areas of people that I would look for to be part of your board of advisors, and what I recommend is.
Meet with different people. Find the person that you believe is right for you and keep that relationship warm. So maybe it's once a quarter, you have a phone call, or once a year you take them to lunch and just. Talk about things. You pick their brain or you talk about, things that are going on in your life that they might be able to assist with, but keep that relationship warm.
Because if you're ever in a crunch and at a point that you need to lean on this person, like maybe there's a leak in your home and you need someone who knows a plumber. You already have that relationship and that person that you already know and trust, that can help you be [00:29:00] resourceful in making a decision of who to hire to fix that leaky faucet or who to, or how much to invest for retirement.
You already have some of those connections there.
The key to having confidence with making decisions is to be resourceful, is to be able to make a decision from a place of. I don't know all the answers, and I don't have to have all the answers. I can go find the answer that's right for me. And even if you have a big decision to make,
I. It also comes from a place of when you have a big decision to make, you can ask three to five different people their opinion. Your goal is to gather enough information about making that decision where you can form your own opinion, or you can make a decision that you are confident is a [00:30:00] decision
that you feel comfortable with.
All right, so let's walk through an example together and maybe simplify this whole process. Okay. Let's say that. I have a leaky faucet issue in my house and I need to hire a plumber, but I don't really know what plumber to hire. I don't wanna invite just a bunch of random strangers into my house.
I don't know who's gonna take advantage of me and charge me way more than I should pay. I don't know. Who's a reputable company. And so I feel really overwhelmed with what feels like this huge decision on fixing a leaky faucet, which should be a straightforward decision and process. So if we go through our steps of decision making, the first thing is we're gonna acknowledge our feeling and limitations.
Okay? So we know we might be dealing with brain fog. We know that we might not be thinking the most clearly and logically, and.
And we're gonna give [00:31:00] ourselves so much grace and compassion as we're trying to make this decision and navigate it. Number two, we're gonna identify our priorities. So I want, my priorities in making this decision about the leaky faucet are, I want to hire a reputable company. I want someone who's gonna charge fair prices.
Someone that has. Good reviews, good feedback. People trust and
ultimately resolve the issue of the leaky faucet. So number three, gather information. So what I might do is go online, whether it's Facebook or Google, and start looking up some companies. If I already have my board of advisors, I'm gonna reach out to the people who know. I'm gonna reach out to the people who are in that spot of home and car maintenance, right?
So asking people like, Hey, do you know a good plumber? Hey, is there a plumbing company that you would recommend? I might also go [00:32:00] on. A local city Facebook group and start asking people there, Hey, who would you recommend for a plumbing job to fix a leaky faucet and see what people say? And then click on the people they mentioned, those companies and see what their reviews and their feedback are on Facebook.
That makes it really nice and easy. I'm just gathering information, step number four is we're gonna set a timeframe. We are not gonna let this leaky faucet go on for six months. We wanna make a decision in a fairly short amount of time, within a week, two weeks, three days, whatever that timeframe is.
We wanna make a decision and realize that we're gonna make the best decision we can with the information that we have. Okay, number five, we're gonna evaluate our options. So we've gathered the information, we know we wanna make a decision fairly quickly. Maybe we narrow it down to the top two or three options, and we call to get quotes from these companies.
And we start [00:33:00] comparing them. Who has good reviews? Who has a good price? Who is someone that we trust? Who did they recommend to us? We wanna evaluate the options, but we don't wanna get stuck in. Analysis paralysis and just stay there ultimately. Number six, we're gonna trust our intuition and we're just gonna make a decision.
Number seven, we're also gonna accept imperfection, so we make the decision knowing that.
We are imperfect. We don't always have all the information. We're just gonna make the best decision that we can, and if we have to make a different decision in the future, then that's what we'll do. Number eight, we're gonna reflect on the outcome. So we make a decision. We have someone come and fix the leaky faucet, they do a good job, or they don't do a good job.
They're easy to work with, they're not easy to work with, regardless of what the outcome is. Number eight, we're gonna reflect on that. Okay? And so based on the [00:34:00] outcome, what. Part of this process helped support us in making this decision. Where did we feel that we fell a little short or that we weren't really clear about making this decision, or we chose a company that people said not to use, but they gave us the lowest price, and so ultimately we got cheap work for a cheap price, and it didn't really work out.
Like whatever it is, the reflection component is not something that you wanna use to beat yourself up with. It's something that you want to use as a way to learn whatever lesson there is to learn and to apply that for the future.
Okay, so there those are some basics on how to rebuild confidence in making decisions with following the steps to decision making and also building up a board of advisors. I hope you found this helpful. Again, if you are on the fence. About making a [00:35:00] decision with finding a faith-based life coach. I wanna help you get off the fence.
Either way, it doesn't matter. Go to brave widow.com, set up a consult call with me and I will help you with outlining your decision so that you can make it from a place of peace and not a place of fear. See you next time.
If you're newly widowed and aren't sure where to start, you need the brave new widow's starter kit inside brave new widow. You'll find a starter guide to help you through your first few months. A quick start guide. You can share with family and friends so they know how to help you. And a collection of some of the frequent topics that widows want to learn more about. To get the brave new widow series.
Just go to brave widow. Dot com slash start it's free and you'll get instant access. That's brave widow.com/start S T a R T. See you there. [00:36:00]
