Neutralize Dread & Regret: How to Make Decisions You Can Stick By

you are listening to the Beyond The High Road podcast with Shelby Milford episode number 54 St welcome to be on the high road hi guys I am just finishing up the most delicious I made this you know I get sick of my you know what I eat all the time and then I get to this place where every so often every few months or so every 6 months 9 months where I'm like just eating for fuel and it's not at all really enjoyable it's just something I have to do if you guys live alone which I love I love love love living alone but love it when it comes to cooking meals it kind of does suck because you know it's just you you know why I do love when people come over whether it's like my family or friends

and I get to cook because then the home feels homier so anyway I had been on that kick where I was just so bored of making food it was a hassle you get the drift right well the other day I was looking for recipes I was like all right let me see if I can find anything when you're in that spot where you're like nothing's out there everything sucks just like when you were a kid and you were like a summertime there's no food in this house while I was looking for recipes I was like what could I make Cuban food being from Miami so I've never really attempted to make like fried plantains and really any sort of Cuban food besides like black beans and rice right so I found this recipe it

took way longer to make than the recipe said last night because there were so many different components to it but you guys it is like I'm looking down at it like those loving eyes right now because it's like party in my mouth every bite so if any of you are sick of your meals too and you like this sort of thing so good okay so instead of black beans and rice I did black beans and quinoa and I made the quinoa with like extra stuff so it doesn't taste so earthy because I don't love the taste of quinoa normally it's earthy right but I mixed it with black beans and I also cooked it with onions and stuff like that first like a sauteed and not yet caramelized but

soften the onions and red pepper and then quinoa black beans and then I marinated the I cut the chicken up into little bite-sized pieces and marinated it in a homemade moho so with like orange juice and garlic and you can look up homemade moo and then in cilantro and so I stuck that in the fridge just for like an hour and a half or so and then I made fried plantains which if you make it in like I use coconut oil people have differing opinions on how healthy that is but I did a very thin layer on the bottom of the thing so fried plantains and then my neighbor as far as neighbors go he's he's like a buddy of mine he had a bunch of ripe beautiful fresh papayas so he

brought over a papaya on Sunday and so I used a whole half a papaya and made like kind of like how you would make a mango salad but I made it with Papaya so I had a mango here and it's not ripe yet and I was like oh I had the papaya so it's you know cut up cubed papaya and then with lime and lime juice and cilantro and uh a red chili pepper and I dice that up it's not too spicy the one that I got anyway and then I after all that stuff was prepared that's why it took me so long because you have different pots or different pans were going all at the same time it is kind of a pain in the butt the first time you make it but now I think I could get into like a Groove

like a rhythm with it but then anyway and so you cut up the chicken into bite-sized pieces before you marinate it and then you just throw it and sauté it it is the easiest dish it just happens to be that there's so many components because I made it into like a bowl I don't know if you can see it it is you guys like I said it's amazing it's like a partyy mouth like I have revived my pleasure with food right I'm back I'm resurrected oh it was awful there for a while I was just like oh I have to eat again what am I gonna make I don't want a sandwich I didn't want any of the stuff and this just got me like it's so silly how the little simple things can remind you of what's out there you know

and that goes for pretty much anything you know and that can be for I said out there like for dating right with think oh there's never going to be another person out there for me I'll never go back in I'm sure that when I decide to which isn't now that there are plenty right and same for you if you're in that boat it's the same thing with like anything we do in fact this is not really what I was going to talk about today but I think it's what's going on with me so I think it might be helpful to share it so what we're actually talking about today is going to be decisions basically regret and Dread and then on another occasion I'll end up doing self-doubt all right so this the

first one I'm going to share with you actually has everything to do with the dread part of this conversation today okay so for my whole life you guys I'm distracted because I'm looking back at my cats not a pretty site let's see if I go like this okay that was not fun for me for sure I'm still kind of distracted by it okay so for my whole life I have wanted a specific kind of car particular make car it was really it was in high school in fact maybe even earlier than that cuz my mom had an mg when I was like a little little girl she had an mgbgt and it's like this car it's cute it looks like a little Alpha Romeo Spider anyway it's a car that I've for as long as I can remember I wanted and

then a few years back I was at the mall in Austin and I saw this car from like you know I was way down the corridor right and I looked and I was like what is that car and I came closer up and it was an SUV an SUV crossover whatever and I it was an Alpha Romeo but not the spider obviously it was their crossover the Stelio and I needed to happen I so wanted this car I mean I wanted it so bad and at the time this was like four years ago I guess maybe something like that it had been a while at the time there was no way that I saw for me to have this car in fact what I was driving around was nothing close to this this was a $60,000 car I don't tell you this to be snoody you'll hear in a second and

so I I'd always wanted it and so I put it on my vision board around that time I'd i' been a coach for a little while but I was really still in the thick of it still in a depression or like on my way emerging out of it you know so and I was living up in the house in the hill and so I put this car on my vision board on on my wallpaper of my laptop was smack dab in the middle of the collage in fact it's still there but I knew that there was no way that I was going to be able to get it in my mind I was like there's no way lo and behold my lease is up on my other car which was like a GMC whatever and I saw an ad on TV and I called them and the original price that

these guys were quoting me was something astronomical that I could never afford and I was like forget this this will never work and then in dealings with them over like the next three weeks or so I ended up getting because of like the time I think it was you know this is back in 2021 when there was low inventory on stuff and used cars were actually at selling at a real high and new cars were just not as high in demand and so the deal that I got on this car y'all it was ridiculous ulous like dirt cheap and I barely put any money into it you know so I got this deal once in a lifetime deal and I ended up getting the car of my dreams the car that was on my vision board smacked da in the middle of

my vision board and I was like holy I cannot believe the way that you know things work to your benefit if you just you're willing to lean into it and so the lease was for two years that that lease was up this last April and I didn't want it to be up and so I called the leasing agency and asked for an extension they gave me the six months and guess what guys that extension is now almost up in fact it's in less than two weeks and guess what I haven't done I haven't gone car shopping at all at all and so it doesn't make sense I did I called the leasing agency just actually like a week ago finally just to see if it would make sense for me to buy it out because I love this car I mean I

drove from Texas to here and the car still only has less than 10,000 miles on it I don't drive very often I work from home right and I live in a pretty much small town you know I don't go very far like anyway so the car is very well kept but this particular brand of car or make of car does not appreciate well or depreciate well it depreciates fastly you know what I'm saying it doesn't hold its value so it just doesn't make sense to to buy it right and I can't extend the lease anymore the lease is done and I've been dreading this very moment and for six months since I extended it really for like three months because I extended it and I was like Dodge that bullet temporarily but I

was like sweet I don't have to worry about that right now and for the last 3 months I have been ignoring it dreading it not wanting to do anything about it I tell you this story because this is much like I know for me and I'm assuming for All Humans how we do when we don't want the inevitable to happen or we don't want what we think our worst fear is to come to fruition so what do we do we stick our heads in the sand right we pretend it's not happening and we just want it to go away la la la la la la right and then you know hope that between now and then doomsday that something miraculous will happen and all of a sudden poof the car will be yours in my case you know in this case but we

do this to like I did this many times in my situation of alienation when maybe a court date was coming up and I didn't want to think about it so I didn't especially early on in my custody situation and this actually will tie into the later part of this episode which is a regret but so I would pretend like it wasn't happening or it wasn't upcoming because I just didn't have time to think about it I just want to compartmentalize and make it sound like I'm doing something purposefully or like mindfully oh I just can't think about that right now right now I need to focus on this right which it I think is a great strategy if you actually are going to go and take care of that thing right

before it happens before it's it's the day right in my case with this situation with my car situation now it's to the point where I'm under the gun and so I've got you know just less than two weeks to finagle my way into another deal but when this whole time the last two months what I've been saying to myself is I don't want to deal with it I don't know what I'm going to do like these are like vague thoughts that are kind of like hanging in my head weighing me down up there they're like you're not going to have a car you're never going to get a deal like this again the deal you had was amazing you're not going to be able to afford the same level of luxury that you had so now what are you

going to get blah blah blah blah blah blah right poor me poor me and so instead of actively taking control of this car situation and of my life really and coming from a place of authority I've been LA and living in all of those awful fears right and so the funny thing about doing that funny not funny funny if you catch it first not so funny if you don't catch it until it actually happens is that by listening to and believing my fears and avoiding this inevitable due date of the car needing to be turned in by listening to my fears of you're never going to find anything you're never going to find a better deal this sucks you're going to have to pay extra all

this money upfront to get something that you really want all of those kinds of thoughts I will make happen they will come to fruition because if I keep going down this road and I already have up until just I think it's 12 days before I have to turn it in I'm gonna have less and less options the closer I get to the date of Turnin right if it's the day of Turnin and I go in there guess what this guy's going to know that I don't have any other options and he's going to give me the blue book value for a new car right I'm not going to get any deal so I am literally causing my fears to come true does that make sense so I'm not going to get a good deal of course I'm

not going to get a good deal if I wait until the last minute and I have no other options besides taking an Uber home and being without a car what was the other thought fear of mine you're not going to have a car I'm making these things come true because I'm focusing on that confirmation bias our brains don't want to be wrong and so it's going to find information and evidence to support what you're thinking on I'm never gonna have a car that's right yeah we'll just keep going like this and you'll get there it doesn't our brains don't think logically like well that would be a stupid thing to do now your prefrontal does but this part of the brain your subconscious the part that's running you

does not there's no logic there so it's going to to oh no car no car this is how we do it we don't do until the day of right it's been two and a half years now in the making so dread the whole time I'm dreading this event let's just say for six months I've been dreading dreading dreading I mean it's been longer than that how much energy have I spent in dread that takes a lot of energy right to have these fears popping up inside of you like like laao and then you have to suppress them push them back down pretend like they're not there and shove them into a corner of your body of your mind be like no no no we're not thinking about that let's focus over here do you know how much energy that

takes away and we wonder why we're so tired in the afternoon sometimes you know you're like I woke up with all this energy now I'm exhausted or you wake up exhausted already right because your night sleep was awful because you were subconsciousness coming up with these fears and your dreams just don't know you know what I'm saying the energy that we spend not acting or acting in ways that we don't want to because we're trying to avoid the thing that we're dreading it's absolutely it's asinine it's ridiculous the lengths that we will go to at least for me anyway that I will go to to avoid the D and pending Doom that I think is going to happen when logically I know that I will have

another car if I get my ass in gear and start car shopping today instead of spending all this time reeling about it I will get myself another car I will be fine even if it wasn't a nice car things are going to be okay you know but this dread the way that we think about it like every time I would go to my car for the last I don't know how many months since the beginning of this year I would go to my car and my stach would go oh but I think this example is actually perfect to I don't want to say trivialize but show in a light-hearted way what our minds do for all of our situations and the heavier topics too right maybe you have a court appearance coming up or maybe there are people that

you need to call decisions that you need to make and you're avoiding them you're like I'll do it later or I'll just wait until something happens this is the dangerous one right I'll just wait until something happens and then that will make the decision for me fate will make the decision for me this is very dangerous and I do it a lot too okay I used to do this especially with my not my daughter's father the guy after that you know that that relationship and I at the time was hurting so much because of what was going on with my daughter which this guy that relationship only made the situation with my daughter that much worse it was really really complicated and progressed the situation with my

daughter and sort of agravated my situation of alienation staying with him but in my mind I was thinking that if I created a family for my daughter that everything would be okay and so I'd already invested so much time in this guy that I was determined to make it work I was determined to to pour into this relationship and somehow in my mind the back of my mind in my subconscious somewhere change him to be the person he was when we first started dating we can get him back there he's just on the wrong path right in my mind but what I was doing there was wasting a lot of energy but my point about this was when I was in that all that pain I wanted to have faith and I wanted to trust that he

was things were going to work out God wouldn't want me to be in this place in this Valley in this dark deep dark place so this relationship must be for a reason and so what I would say is I'm going to trust I'm going to be the good Christian wife who was going to trust that what happened happened for a reason but then what that gave me the permission if you will to do was to sit in Idol just waiting and not making any decisions with regard to my situation of alienation and we talk about regret this is one place that I if I look back on my li on my life and the decisions I made throughout this alienation this is one area that I will tell you without a doubt that I I do regret I regret I know

I have compassion for myself like I know that in that spot I was truly I was trying to I everything in me this W bring me to tears but I was trying to do what was right and what was best for my daughter and for for us for my daughter and me the situation right and so although it was a very clouded view I had then I know now that that version of me was that's all I could see and I was do what I was trying to do right but now looking back of course I have so much more clarity right so much has happened and I'm stepped away from that situation and I can look back and see where the error of my thinking was the errors many of them in my thinking were my point of

this is as far as wanting to sit back and allow things to run their course and how things fall how the chips fall is how they should be that's fate and that is me giving my will up and letting things do as they should or as they're supposed to and then I can take that and make a decision from there to now looking back I know that this was a misinformed route I think for anybody aside from alienation like oh I just won't pay the electricity and then if it's supposed to get turned off it gets turned off no right of course that's GNA happen so I don't think that that's the way to go in any part of our life with my car oh I'll just see what happens maybe a deal will this was a thought is

maybe a deal will just present itself to me and then I'll know that that was the right decision this was something I did often oh well I know that if I just keep on paying attention something will present itself to me it's something that like I didn't think this was going to be a long episode but now that I'm thinking about it there's a lot to say on this it's something that like back in those days I was really leaning hard into my faith in hopes not that you should or shouldn't and I not saying there's any good or bad or right or wrong in this area if you do not lean into to your faith faith by who and whatever you believe is God it's neither here nor there for this conversation but what I'm

getting ready to say is I was really leaning hard into my faith at that time and I was doing it in a way that was a little like misinformed I keep wanting to say that and a little bit glorified in where I was choosing to to place my attention I was looking more in the idealistic way there was a particular person Christian non-denominational guy that would come on TV on Sundays and I would watch him and based out of Houston I'm sure you can figure out who I'm talking about but the message that I got from him so much was oh well God will always provide and he wants you to be rich and he wants you to have the good in your life and all of this stuff right and so I had this like yeah all

right I'm just going to let things happen and as they present themselves to me then I'll make the decisions as if if I look back on it now as if I'm sitting in a throne somewhere and people are just going to come up and present a couple options and then I goop and then the next person are going to come up and present themselves and then I pick the next word and then it doesn't work that way you know nobody's GNA come and make life happen for me nobody is going to make my decisions for me not the ones that I know that I can make with so much more expertise than for my own self do you know what I'm saying like to deliberately make your own decisions thoughtfully mindfully

it's so it's a it's a much more empowering place to live rather than I'll just wait and see what presents itself that I'll know then that that is my path right it sounds pretty it sounds like you are living a life of faith and knowing that things will work out in the end and la la la and I don't mean to say that they won't but I also don't think that this is the approach that we take when we are trying to rebuild and take charge of Our Lives yeah this is a stance that somebody takes when things are going okay when things are going fine and if something presents itself then great and if it doesn't then I'm okay without it too that's a great stance to take but when we're making

decisions about changing the way that our lives look to our own selves changing what is unacceptable to us what we're tolerating in our lives and what we're settling for and what we don't want to settle for anymore this la la attitude does not work it doesn't work so my point of the first part of this is that making your decisions knowing what your reasons are for making each when you come to a fork in the road you've heard you say this too and I actually got this from one of my mentors but you come to a fork in the road and you are deciding which way to choose make your decision based on reasons that you like like your reasons for whatever you choose don't make your decisions based

on let your emotions take you or do it because you're running away from something sometimes we'll just make a decision because we don't want to deal with the other thing and that's an awful reason to make the decision if that's the only reason so just like I guess it's the same as The Road Less Traveled right it may be rockier and may cause a level of discomfort to make the decision the one that you believe in to make that decision more often than not causes some discomfort to think about the hurdles that you might have to clear in getting to the end result but if that's the decision that you know your gut is telling you is the is the correct one for you at this moment then take that

one when you get to each one of those hurdles each one of those little baby decisions along the way know and trust that you will be able you have the capability to complete and leap each one of the hurdles with plenty of clearance okay so sometimes we have to break up the big decisions by like making that decision we want to do that and there's going to be a lot of little decisions along the way and that's okay too I will cross each one of those as I approach them but always like your reasons for decisions for whatever it is that you are embarking on right whichever way you turn Okay so whatever it is that you're dreading you're usually only dreading because there's other decisions to make

around it for me with the car well in order to make an educated decision I need to go and find break it up into little tasks I need to find out whether I'm going to lease with the same same car maker or if I'm going to go to a different one am I going to sell my car and then put use that as a down payment and pay off my loan do I have enough equity or do I not do I want to just turn it in or turn it back into the dealer and stay with that brand do you know what I'm saying like these little decisions will make the bigger decision much easier to make but when it's super vag and you're like I'm like I have to go turn my car in what am I going to do leaving that up in the air is the worst

thing that you can do and I trust me in my experience I know this like firsthand like clearly happening right now I know that I can actually make these little decisions I'm capable of it I am more than capable but if I don't make these decisions for myself guess what something or somebody else will and I definitely don't want that right I don't want to get to the point where it's the last day and my only choice is to turn it in back into the dealer right that is no that is unacceptable to me and when I'm honest with myself now it took me a while for me to get here but when I'm honest with myself about that like what am I fearful of and what am I going to

what's going to happen if I continue on this road of ignoring well I'm going to make that come true so how can I solve for it now okay so you want to make the little decisions that lead up to the big one if you can beforehand or make the big decision and then know that you'll be capable of making the little ones as you go if there's no way of dealing with those now so dread is done if you are in indecision and you're in a place where you're like I don't know what to do well just wait and see if something comes to me that is the worst spot keep moving instead of staying stagnant and waiting for something to happen and then that will show you the way to go this is a

very passive way to live and you'll find that this is something that you will regret later okay and maybe even cause you shame a lot of Shame later for not taking more action right we always you know we hear I screwed this up on on one of the previous episodes a while back I said it Opposite but you never hear anybody on their deathbed saying like damn I should have live less you know I should have done less I should have acted less made less decisions we never hear that people are always saying man I wish I would have done more I wish I would have decided made the decision and gone and taken the risks to better myself to be with people to connect in more better been more present and

connected on a deeper level right that is what we hear about and so when you're making decisions think about it that way will I regret the decision to do or not do this decision in five or 10 years from now always that's the way that I do also like especially if you're just learning to not drink or not over anything in your life the the day that you want to do the Habit like if you get a craving or an urge the question I always encourage my clients to ask themselves is tomorrow will you regret not doing it think of future you and what he or she she would really want for you to do that's really the simple answer for it is think of you one five 10 years down the road looking back the

more evolved version of you what would they want you to do okay that's and you if you get to a quiet spot you'll know what your answer is and you already usually do if you're in a place of indecision right now you know because it's the answer that you kind of maybe either keeps you awake at night or maybe is one of the first things that you think about when you wake up in the morning morning but yeah there's like a quiet voice inside of you that's like this is what you need to do or this is what you don't need to do that voice will not be talking out of shame that voice will not be like you need to do this you should know better it's not that tone it's the quiet confident voice

right sure voice that's like this is what you need to do you know so there's that also I think regret can be a very useful tool a very useful emotion if you're learning something if you're taking whatever it is that you are actively regretting and you're able to then make amendments and changes in the way that you behave today okay I think it's very useful what's not useful is if you shame yourself and punish yourself about the thing that you regret okay oftentimes we don't make that distinction there is a fine line there of using regret to grow you to alter your now and future footsteps you learn okay I did that and that did not help me at all and now I'm going to try a

different way just like I was talking about with my situation with my daughter and with the guy I was with where you know I have compassion for that me today it would be and it was easy for me years ago to really shame myself and God how come you didn't see like what is wrong with you and to take on almost the voice that I heard in court when I was being cross-examined when I was being looked at with like you know contempt and so that is definitely not the answer for me and so I've even learned from that right and I know now that I can I can put myself back in that thought and I I felt I can feel today the desperation that I felt back then and wanting to create an

environment for my daughter that was supportive and loving and this family that I was trying to create for her I know what I was doing and so my heart was in the right place it's just that my mind was so clouded with trauma really you know and so I know that now and so I don't have to shame myself like I once did a lot for a long period of time I really did but so yeah so I mean so I can learn from the mistakes that I made back then and now I know too that making decisions from an a very active authoritative for my own life you know Place provides me with the most satisfaction I feel accomplished you know that I am intentioned confident in my own knowledge and expertise on my own

life and what I know is right for me today and being able to take charge in most cases other than my car here it's so funny I was laughing at myself because I'm like you know I coach people all day long about making decisions and about being honest about what's in front of them and taking responsibility for their lives and here I am with this car situation doing the same thing that I coach my clients to not do so anyway I thought it was funny or maybe I don't coach them to not do it but to coach them through it so that they're making decisions with all of their decisions from a place of empowerment and I was doing the exact OPP opposite of that right and I wasn't making a decision and

I was hoping it would just go away disappear poof into I don't know and all of a sudden you know cars would what drive up to my driveway and present themselves to me I don't know what I was thinking but it wasn't going to work I was literally on the pathway to making all of those spars come true so anyway I hope that this helps somebody decisions make them is really what I've got for you make them make them and anytime that you are in dread it's just because you're telling yourself that either you can't handle it that the result is going to be awful that you really it's just boils down to you can't handle it and you're not going to be able to O overcome it but I just want to just

encourage you to break that down what can't you handle ask yourself what can't you overcome what is it you think is going to happen and is it possible that by sticking your head in the s you will make that thing that you fear come true this is amazing to look at because many many many many times in fact I I venture to say almost all of the times by avoiding it you will make that fear come true okay so make the decisions even if that means that you make little ones to get to the big one okay don't avoid them and don't expect well I mean you can I guess if you want to but I would like to offer that you don't expect things to options to just come and present

themselves to you as you go because that just is an excuse for you and I do it too so I don't mean to point fingers but that's just an excuse for you to stay passive and and active and your life will pass you by and you won't make any of those decisions okay and if decisions are made they won't be made by you they will have been made by the alienating party or somebody else that you don't want making your decisions this is it who do you want to be making the decisions in your life I know that you you don't want the alienator or possibly even your children to be making these decisions for you okay and so please start making those decisions please I beg you you don't want them making your

decisions for you okay you are the expert in your life you can make the most amazing things happen for you if you just apply yourself I promise so we're going to be talking about very soon I think maybe next week we'll be talking about self-doubt to back this episode up okay all right you loveely Le that's for my dad's and for my moms out there I love you guys and I hope you have a wonderful wonderful week and don't forget to write and review please please please hey for those of you who have been looking can't find where to actually submit the review if you're on Apple podcasts you have to scroll down you're in the main the show page like beyond the high road and you have to

scroll like past where you see all of the episodes listed you know scroll down like maybe I think they show you like five of the most recent episodes and then once you get down to the to the bottom of that page there will be this tiny little purple with a underline saying write a review it's tiny like you could miss it for sure people miss it all the time but yeah it's it's there just says submit a review or write a review or something like that just scroll down there okay guys have a wonderful and you guys also you know what in just two weeks actually I think on the date that my car needs to be turned in two weeks will be our year anniversary one whole year it's

the day that I turn my car in and have a new shining beautiful new car hopefully anyway all right talk to you soon thanks so much for listening today guys I'm honored that you chose to share your time with me if you like what you've been hearing and you want more come join me in the new monthly membership where we take the concept that you hear about here and using a logical framework you learn to apply them to your specific situations upgrading your thoughts and your life even while experiencing the grief of alienation for more information go to beyond the high road.com see you

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