82: How to Slow Down and Choose Wisely With the Power of Intentional Thinking

Andrea Liebross: Welcome to the She Thinks Big! Podcast. Get ready to level up your thinking and expand your horizons. I’m your host, Andrea Liebross, your guide on this journey of big ideas and bold moves. I am the best-selling author of She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and Into the Extraordinary.

I support women like you with the insights and mindset you need to think bigger and the strategies and systems you need to turn that thinking into action and make it all a reality. Are you ready to stop thinking small and start thinking big? Let’s dive in.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the She Thinks Big! Podcast. I am doing a lot of recording today. I am in my home studio here, recording studio, i.e. closet under the stairs in the lower level or basement of our home. I see a spider on the ceiling. Oh, I could think so many things, but I'm not because I am here and I am going to record here for you a little intro to this re-release episode about intentional thinking. It is really the first step to making better choices.

As we move into 2025—we're getting there, we're thinking about it. It's on the horizon—as we move into that 2025 thinking and planning, this is really a great time to re-familiarize yourself with the idea of intentional thought creation. We have over 60,000 thoughts a day according to the research out there. I want to know how many of those 60,000 thoughts are really intentional.

I'm going to guess very few because our brains are wired to just think automatically. A lot of times our brains think automatically based on that motivational triad, which I have talked about in other episodes in which I give actually a lot of explanation to inside the book, She Thinks Big the book.

But today, I want to re-remind you that we're past the caveman era where that motivational triad originated. We don't need everything to be easy, efficient, and comfortable. We can be more intentional and then make some better choices or different choices that will lead us probably, if I had a place for that, I would say, probably more in the direction of where we want to go.

Because as we’re doing this planning for 2025, and I’ve been doing this with my clients through the Vision Into Action Intensive, if you've not done a Vision Into Action Intensive, you do need to do one, but if you haven't done one, go head over to my website and click on Coaching Options, Vision Into Action Intensive.

But anyway, I notice that what is so empowering about that Vision Into Action Intensive is that we are doing tons of intentional thought creation, which is also a little bit about why it feels like your brain hurts after we do it in a good way. This episode, I'm going to share with you the importance of intentional thinking in decision-making and problem-solving.

I'm going to share with you or remind you that you do need to slow down and create space for this because it does access your prefrontal cortex or your higher brain rather than just relying on your automatic brain. I want you to notice too that there's such value in brainstorming all of the ideas and options and then capturing which one we want without judgment but with intention.

I'm going to give you some strategies on how to do this, but let's just get to it. Let's just get to it. I want you to listen in to this re-release of an episode about intentional thought creation.

Now I am recording this on a Monday morning. I just came back from two nights with some friends in Cincinnati and we went to celebrate my birthday. Now you might think, “Andrea, why Cincinnati? Why Cincinnati?” Well, this was part of a decision-making process, to be honest.

We traveled with these two other couples quite a bit. I think we've probably been on 10 or 12 trips and usually we get on an airplane, I'll be honest. But this time, just because of the time we all had and it being a busy season of spring, we really just decided that we were going to go away for the weekend.

We then decided that it would be easiest if we hopped in a car, and then we decided, we looked at our options of which cities could we drive to within a half day's time that we hadn't been to. All of us had been to Cincinnati many times, but for purposes that were not necessarily pleasure, such as children's sporting events, soccer, tennis matches, work, we'd all been there a little bit for work, we had never really done the city as tourists.

So after brainstorming and looking at all our options, we decided to go to Cincinnati. I have to say, it didn't disappoint. We stayed in a really cool hotel, 21c. I guess in multiple cities across the US, they're like museum hotels so there was artwork everywhere. It was very cool. We ate some scrumptious meals and we had a lot of laughs.

Now we're back and it is Monday morning and I am coming to you recording this podcast about decisions and accessing all of your options. Let's dig in. I want you to really think about this in terms of all of the options you have when trying to figure something out and how often we dismiss our options even before we've had a real chance to explore them.

If you're listening to this podcast, you're choosing it as an option. You've got lots of podcasts you could listen to, but you're listening to it for a specific reason. Maybe you've even considered going deeper with some of the work—and some of you totally have. I know that for a fact because I am working with you—and some of you may not have chosen to go deeper with the work or considered working with a coach, but it is always an option. The door is never shut.

So let's dive in. In order to make a decision, we really need to think about what our options are and what the possibilities are. What are our choices? In order to choose, and to commit, we need to make a decision. This is the same line of thinking as when we try to find solutions to problems because we've got multiple options as to how to solve a problem.

So, making a decision and solving a problem, the process in which we go about it is similar, and you might even argue that solving a problem is a decision. But here's what I find, I find that with my clients, they often don't even “see” all the options they have, because they haven't asked themselves important or powerful questions.

Our options come from thoughts that are really answers to these questions. But in order to ask the questions, we've got to slow down. This is one of the amazing things about taking a class, attending a workshop, or getting coached is that when you slow things down, which the class, the workshop, or the coach is providing space for, when you slow things down and we answer a question really intentionally, when we are intentional, what we are doing is accessing our prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain that is unique to humans, not dogs.

When we are not intentional, we do not slow down, or we do not provide ourselves the space in which to think, we are back to using our lower brain. The lower brain, remember, it's just more survival-based. It's less logical, and a lot of the times, the answers that we get or that come from our lower brain would not even be the answers that would agree with our higher brain answers, but that's all right. That's just the way we operate.

Our lower brain is driving us 99% of the time. That's just the way it is. But if we pause and really take notice and be intentional, then we can have our prefrontal cortex or our higher brain do the driving. If we don't pause and we don't take notice and we don't hold space for intentional thought, then our lower brain is the one at the steering wheel of our lives.

So when we have questions like “Where should we go for the weekend?” that need to be answered, again, it's just another way of saying we need to make a decision, in 2022, we often go to Google, Pinterest, YouTube, or our friends to seek these answers. I am just as guilty as you about going to the Googles.

But when we do that, we are really looking at someone else's options or ideas, their options or ideas that they came up with, we're really not accessing our own higher brain. We're accessing someone else's higher brain. But this type of research, which again, I am all in on, can be part of our brainstorming process. It's not all bad.

Let's think about the ideas that we gather using these sources, and I would like to think that the ideas that we gather from using these sources were part of someone else's brainstorming process, but it could ignite our own brainstorming process. Let's just talk about brainstorming, first of all.

Brainstorming comes before making the decision. It comes before committing to the solution. Here's an example that recently happened with a client. I was recently coaching a client who was a real estate agent, and she said, “I would really love to find ways to make more money aside from representing a buyer or a seller, aside from buy-sell actions.”

When I asked her, I said, "All right, totally fair, I'm in on this. Let's figure it out. What have you already come up with?" she had only come up with one new idea or one idea total, which was to coach new agents. But I asked her, "Are you open to doing some brainstorming to see what we could come up with?" She said, Sure, and we went ahead and did some brainstorming and we came up with so, so many ideas.

The rules of brainstorming in my book are that all ideas and all thoughts that come up into our brain are welcome. They're all welcome here. Her brain really had not offered her any other ideas than coaching new agents. When we brainstorm, we're really not shutting our brain down, we're not judging it, and we're not satisfied with just one answer.

Now, this is difficult for people to do, especially as we get older. By older, I mean after age 25, the older we get, well, I should say the older we get as adults, the less great we come at brainstorming. Kids are so much better than us at this. So in our brainstorming, me and my client, we came up with serving as a general contractor or helping new homeowners to do all the things they want to do after moving in, being a manager of all of these home renovation projects.

These are all things that she loves to do and all things that she has the audience for. She's in front of these people that need these services already, but her brain had not offered her these ideas until she paused. Our coaching session gave her the space and the platform and the pause to be intentional from which to brainstorm. Her brain on automatic couldn't pause long enough to see these options.

Brainstorm was really just creating a space where all ideas are welcome because you know what it does when we create the space? It opens us up to be able to receive the ideas. If we don't create that space, then our brains tend to go operate on default and not allow ideas in.

Our brains tend to have a wall or a door that's closed and I love this image of the door being closed because when ideas come to the door, when we are just operating on automatic in our lower brain, the ideas get turned away because the door is closed.

I witnessed this happen over and over again, especially when I'm coaching. But being open to receiving the solutions or the ideas or the answers in order to make a decision, sometimes we're just not ready to receive them. We can't “see” it, or see these options. But when we create space to brainstorm, then the doors start to open, and we are available to receive the ideas.

Now, before my client and I started brainstorming, she told me the things that she had tried to do in order to make money other than representing a buyer and a seller. She told me all the reasons why those things didn't work. She didn't have enough knowledge, people didn't want it, it was too close to COVID. When I started giving her ideas, she started off battling them right away.

She had the door closed on ideas. She said, "Well, have you tried this or could you do that?" the way she battled them sounded like, "Yeah, I tried that, but it didn't work." Or, "That won't work for my clients or customers because they're thinking this." Or, “That's not possible, I don't think in my business because,” or the famous, “That sounds really hard.”

Really what was happening is that her head wasn't open to receiving ideas, any ideas. She'd close the door and she was shutting them out. She wasn't in brainstorming mode. But when we went inside that coaching session, when she had the space to brainstorm and a partner to do it with—usually when we think of brainstorming sessions, don't we think of doing it with another person?—when she had a partner to do it with, me, when I suggested we do it, all of a sudden she had a flip.

She flipped a switch, she opened the door. Ask yourself, is your idea, solution, possibilities, option, choices, door open? If it's not, then your brain is going to do exactly what it's trained to do, to shut out anything that we haven't done before, any possibility that isn't a reality, anything that seems like it might be out of the norm.

Because your brain's doing what it's supposed to do, it's keeping us safe. That, my friends, is why decision-making can be so hard if we are talking about making a different choice than what our current choice is. Your brain is just doing its job in trying to be right about what it believes.

Think about this. Why is it hard to make decisions, decisions about things that are different than our current choice? It's because our brain is just doing its job trying to be right about what it believes. Remember, our lower brain is driving the train 99% of the time. The lower brain just says, "Whatever you want to believe that makes things easy and comfortable, I'm in."

It makes us feel safe in the world. We understand the way the world works. As ideas come, the brain will shut them down. It's so fascinating how we do this. Again, I am just as guilty of this as the next person.

How do we give ourselves options so that we truly can make the best decision or find the perfect solution? We need to be in brainstorming mode as much as possible. We are not, my friends, in that brainstorming place enough, because we tend to think of brainstorming as sitting around a table as a group, and we all agree that, "Okay, now we're going to start to brainstorm."

Otherwise, when we come up with ideas on our own, we judge the ideas as wrong, and we judge ideas as not working or not possible, and therefore, we close the door and the ideas are not let in, because we are not in what we would consider an official brainstorming mode.

So how do we keep the door open for possible solutions, ideas, and options? You might think about the strategy as it pertains to decisions that you want to make for your business or your personal life. This might be the solution to a problem you're having, something going on in your family, something going on financially.

This can apply in all different ways to your life because ideas or solutions, things that you might try, resources that you might tap into, and strategies that you might implement in your life or your business with your health, they can come to you at all times if you're in brainstorming mode.

Okay, how do we do it? One way is to choose to believe that we're wrong about whatever we're currently thinking. Now, this is not as easy as it sounds. It's not. It is really hard for some people to think that perhaps maybe we're wrong. It's actually something that comes to me a lot easier today because I have tested it out enough times.

I challenged myself to be wrong about what I was sure I was right about and I saw how much better my life became. I learned this thought, I might be wrong, from Jody Moore, a fellow coach.

When I do this for myself, I saw how much more successful I became as a mother, as a business owner, as a coach, as a person, and as a wife. I saw how much kinder I was. I saw how much more generous and successful in every other way that I was when I just decided to be wrong about what I was thinking and to adapt a new belief and just decide.

Even though I had no proof, I just decided to believe it anyway. So for my real estate agent client, she was in a place where there were no other ways to make more income. She just couldn't see it, but she thought, and I offered her the thought, "You might be wrong about that," and it opened up to brainstorming.

Here's another way to find options with the thought, “I'm right on track. That's the way it goes when you're building a business. That's the way it goes when you reach this place in your business. You find other ways to create income.”

You had several amazing years of buying and selling, and now you're ready to add something else in. This is just the next phase and things happen in phases. You're just on to phase two. You're right on track. These options of how to create more income are on their way.

Here's another way when I'm searching for more options. I look at the options. I have and I say, “Do I want this to be my story?” When I say it like that, the answer is usually no. I don't want the thought that there are no other options, for example, to come true.

If I do, it's going to shut out ideas that are otherwise trying to come to me. What do I want my story to be? I want it to be that I do create income in several ways in the case of my real estate agent client. Once we get rid of stories that we don't like, then ideas are welcome to come in. Solutions can come, and resources can get through the doorway of our brains once we decide we don't necessarily love the story that we're in right now.

Listen, I want you to allow yourself to brainstorm whenever you're trying to solve a problem or generate ideas, just tell yourself, “This is a brainstorm” even if it's just you around the table, even if you're not going into a group discussion like the dictionary defines it.

I brainstorm with myself all the time and I like to do it on paper. I like to open up a notebook and just dump out ideas. Here's an example in my world. When I started my business, I had a program I called Books and Beyond. The first book we read in there ever was Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert.

She has a concept that ideas come and they knock at your door and they might knock several times. But if you don't answer the door, you don't do something with them, then they just go away and they try to find someone else to give that idea to.

I picture it as like guests coming to your door and if you don't answer the door, they're just going to go on to the next house. This Books and Beyond idea didn't really work out too well. But that's okay. It was just an idea.

Remember, I mentioned at the beginning that ideas can come to us from Google, YouTube, or Pinterest. Well, those original ideas did start somewhere. Those original solutions or ideas can start with you too. I think that an idea or an option or a choice or a solution that you get from someone else and modify as your own, which is where I get a lot of my ideas, by the way. Most of my ideas, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

But the piece that is yours is the most powerful part of the idea. Do not shut down ideas. Do not shut out solutions. Be willing to believe and think crazy things that other people will tell you that aren't possible or that are unrealistic. They will tell you that maybe you should put that idea away for another day, but don't.

I mean, truly, that's what people will tell you if you don't continue to share. But when you create a space that's safe for ideas and solutions to come, you don't shut out those ideas. You don't put them away. You bring them forth.

That is when your life will become extraordinary. Your problems will get easier. The solutions and ideas will be more fun than you ever imagine they can be. I totally promise this is true if you can create a space for yourself.

That can be done by finding a partner, becoming part of a group, or having a coach to question you. Whatever that is, I promise by creating that space, carving it out for yourself, and realizing that that is what you need, your life will become extraordinary.

Now I want to share with you what my client Jill had to say about making decisions and focusing on what she wants to focus on, finding the next steps, brainstorming, and how she found space to solve issues. Here is Jill.

Jill: I was launching two kids into adulthood. My husband and I were working on some rental business. I was working on my own business, just trying to get our finances in order. I was really just trying to grow my business. I also worked with nonprofits. I had a lot of things going on in that room.

It just seemed really busy and I just was having trouble focusing. Through my coaching with Andrea, I have been able to really realize that the vision that I've had for actually a couple of years can be a reality. We've made a great plan. I have learned to let go of things that I'm not good at, the technical things, some of those things.

I’ve learned to let this go and it’s been so freeing. I’ve been able to think about next steps. All the things I had in brain are now on paper, thanks to Andrea. I am able to just work on those as my schedule allows and it’s going great. I knew I had done as much as I could do on my own through podcasts, book reading, and YouTube videos, and I just felt like I needed some individual attention that could apply directly to my specific situation so I took the leap. All of a sudden it just clicked and I think it was really the right decision for me.

Andrea Liebross: So what did you think about Jill? What came to you as you were listening to her? I will tell you that we did go through the process of asking and I helped her ask, “What if I was wrong about this?” I helped ask, “What if I am right on track and this is exactly the way this is all supposed to go?”

I helped her ask herself, "What would happen if I tried it?" I helped her ask, "What would be different if it did work?" All those questions so, so powerful. How much intentional thought creation have you been doing? Have you noticed that maybe you're not doing enough?

I want to highlight here the importance of creating space for this thinking to occur. As you consider what space you're going to create in 2025, what are you going to surround yourself with that's going to give you this space? What support are you going to get that's going to give you this space?

I just want to remind you that I'm here for you. If you have not explored all of the coaching options available currently through Andrea Liebross Coaching—and they may be different than you thought before—I want you to go to the coaching tab on the website and look at all coaching options.

There's something in there for everyone. There's truly every price point, every need, there's something in there for everyone, and I want you to consider creating that space for yourself in 2025. Okay, my friends, I will see you next week, keep thinking big.

Thanks for tuning into the She Thinks Big! Podcast. If you're ready to learn the secret to unleashing your full potential, don't forget to grab a copy of my book, She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and Into the Extraordinary. It's available on Amazon and at your favorite bookstore.

And while you're there, grab a copy for a friend. Inside, you'll both find actionable strategies and empowering insights to help you navigate the complexities of entrepreneurship and life, and step confidently into your extraordinary future.

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