Episode Summary
Have you ever made a decision—only to unravel it later by replaying it, questioning it, or beating yourself up about it?
If you’re someone who’s competent, experienced, and capable of deciding—but still feel a lingering drag after you choose—this episode speaks directly to the hidden forces driving post-decision self-punishment, how it impacts momentum and power, and what to do about it.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
Why second-guessing isn’t actually a decision problem
The hidden way that high achievers leak power without realizing it
How staying with yourself post-decision changes the speed and ease of everything you build
Press play to learn how to stop leaking power after decisions and move forward with greater speed, ease, and authority.
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The Uncommon Way is your go-to resource for mindset mastery, strategy, and power moves tailored to ambitious women entrepreneurs and leaders ready to break the mold and lead with confidence. This top female business coaches podcast covers leadership coaching for women, business growth strategies, and the female entrepreneur mindset to help you craft magnetic messaging, attract your ideal clients, clarify irresistible offers, and leverage your secret sauce to stand out authentically.
Each episode from top-ranked women’s business coach Jenna Harrison addresses common pain points like overwhelm, decision fatigue, entrepreneur burnout solutions, and the guilt of stepping back from hustle culture. Jenna shares tools to streamline your business systems, cultivate powerful habits, and delegate with intention—all designed to help you reclaim work-life balance and boost your freedom.
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Full Episode Transcript:
In this episode, you'll discover the reason you second-guess decisions, even when you're good at what you do. Welcome to The Uncommon Way, where high-achieving women entrepreneurs and leaders pitch the rulebook and design success on their own terms. I'm your host, Jenna Harrison, a top-ranked business coach sharing business growth strategies, mindset mastery, and power moves to help you attract ideal clients, leverage your unique genius, and scale with freedom. Let's dive in.
Welcome, welcome back to The Uncommon Way.
Oh my gosh, I'm so excited about how many of you signed up for Decisions on Demand. It went above expectations. I was so, so excited about it because I believe in it so passionately. So one thing I am going to tell you is that I have a future episode coming up about my 2025 in review, and I'll include this in it because even though it actually happened in early January 2026, I've been working on it for so long and everything's been leading up to this. And so I think of it as the time frame of 2025. And what happened was the launch didn't start out that well, but when I shifted my messaging and really allowed myself to bring to talk about why I believe it's so important, that's when it really made all the difference.
Unfortunately, if you only listened to the podcast, you didn't get any of that because it happened over, you know, day by day in the newsletter. So definitely sign up in the newsletter because I do put out different content there. But I'll be talking about all of this and why it's important is because I know that this is the cornerstone of power. This is how you become powerful, right? And when you can rely on yourself to make clean, clear decisions and trust yourself to do so reliably, this is when everything accelerates. And that's really when you shift into that CEO identity, because you're able to learn quickly, evolve quickly, grow quickly, and then of course lead influence impact. So you're going to get a taste in this episode of what it really means if you are second-guessing. It's nothing about your character, nothing about your courage, your confidence. But bottom line, I want to make this available to everyone. I think every woman should have it. I want to teach you to do it for yourself rather than me doing it with clients, because this is how the world changes. So if you did not buy last week, the discount has ended, but you do still have time to purchase the course and then become part of the live coaching call that happens so that you can implement it. It's a very short, bingeable course. You can watch it like you'd watch something on Netflix. So this is not a huge time investment for you, but it is a capability that you need to have. So if you have not purchased, follow the link in the show notes, get over there and purchase this course.
Okay, let's talk about this episode, which is about something that I see so often, which is not that the people don't make the decision. It's that then they talk themselves out of the decision or then they beat themselves up about the decision, right? And there's this whole like post decision drag on their business and life that actually seeps into the next decision they're going to make because they remember everything they went through the last time.
So in this episode, you'll learn why second guessing isn't actually a decision problem. The hidden way that high achievers leak power without realizing it and how staying with yourself post decision changes the speed and ease of everything you build. If you're someone who is good at what you do and you've made plenty of smart decisions in your life and yet you still find yourself second guessing or kind of mentally rehashing or revisiting decisions you made long ago, this episode is for you. Because like I said, it isn't about confidence. It's not about intelligence and it's not because you just suddenly forgot how to decide. I felt that way before like what where what is going on with me? This is all about what is happening after the decision.
Those thought patterns right in those micro moments. So many high achieving women, they don't doubt their competence, right? But they do doubt their right to decide without self-punishment. That is a big one. A small part of us feels like we should be able to do this. We should be able to get this right.
And so there's so much self-punishment on the back end of anything we could decide. And that's the piece most people miss. People in this place, you're not stuck because you can't decide. You're stuck because part of you doesn't feel safe staying with the decision once it's made.
So this is really the way that you need to think about it. Decision making, it's not a moment. It's not a moment. It's a process. And one of the most important and least developed parts of that process is your relationship with yourself after you choose. Most advice focuses on gathering more information. Making pros and cons lists. You know finding the right answer.
Waiting for a sign. But for high achievers, that's not always where things break down. What breaks down is the aftermath. Second guessing, it's usually not necessarily even about the decision itself. It's about thoughts like, what if this turns out to be a mistake? What does that mean about me? What if I should have known better?
What if this cost me something I can't get back?
What if I waste so much time? What if I beat myself up over that or people that I know are going to judge me in some way? In other words, you're not afraid of uncertainty.
You're afraid of the feeling. You're afraid of a feeling of what it'll feel like to live with yourself if the outcome is hard. And that is just a skill gap in this post-decision place, right? It's just a skill gap. I saw this really clearly when we decided to move to Spain. About how people think. So people around me were way more nervous about this decision than I was. And they asked me things like, well, what if your son gets bullied over there? You know being so different.
What if he misses out in life because he's not, you know, having little league and American football and things that little boys do?
What if the schools aren't as good? You know, what if you're harming his education and his prospects in life?
What if your parents get sick back home and you need to move back, but now you've sold all your stuff?
What if Ben and Dylan hate it and now you've wasted all that money and energy and you've sold all your stuff?
And more than one person said to me, how are you so calm about this?
Here's the thing. I never once thought I had perfect information. I wasn't pretending I could predict how it's all going to go. What I did trust was that I was making the best decision I could with the information I had at the time. And then I trusted myself to handle whatever would come up. And plenty did come up, let me tell you. The bureaucracy here is time consuming and expensive. Dylan doesn't play baseball or American football. Of course he doesn't.
And yeah, sometimes I do feel this like little pang of nostalgia when I see him tossing a ball with his dad on the beach and I think, oh my god, that kid's got an amazing arm. So, Something utilized here, and in the year we've been here, we unfortunately have had two cancer diagnoses for parents. So no, this was not a perfect frictionless ride into the sunset decision. But here is the part that matters. Just because something is hard doesn't mean it was the wrong decision. So let's look at this through the power lens that I introduced in episode 179. Power doesn't disappear, it gets diffused.
Every time a decision is followed by, you know, you attacking yourself, the mental rehashing, emotional punishment, or outsourcing authority in some way to relieve your own discomfort, power fragments. Not because you chose wrong, but because you abandoned yourself after choosing. When I decided to move to Spain, my power stayed intact, not because the decision was perfect, but because I didn't leak energy questioning my own authority once it was made. So strong decision makers aren't the ones who always get it right. They're the ones who don't abandon themselves once the decision is made. And because they're safe that way, they're free to make more decisions and more powerful decisions, higher risk decisions. They learn faster, their expertise compounds, and over time, so does their influence. That's the part so many people miss. They don't understand the cost of where they are when they're not in this space. Post-decision skill, it doesn't just protect your nervous system or, you know, how you feel that day. It expands your capacity to lead and to build and to move, you know, at the speed, at the pace that your vision actually requires. A lot of women come to me with big vision, but they're missing these pieces in the skill set that's going to get them there. So here is a very simple filter you can start using right away for this. When you notice yourself second-guessing, ask, am I gathering new information or am I punishing myself for having chosen? If it's new information, great. And you just update cleanly. You didn't know what you didn't know and now you do and you move on.
But if it's punishment, that's a power leakage. And the move is not to re-decide. It's to reclaim authority where you already stand, where you already are. So let's summarize all of this. Second-guessing isn't a sign that you're bad at decisions. It's a sign that part of you doesn't feel safe after decisions are made. Many high-achieving women don't doubt their competence, but they do doubt their right to decide without self-punishment. Decision-making is not a single moment. It is a process, including the post-decision space. And the post-decision skill is what determines whether power consolidates or diffuses. When you stay with yourself, even when outcomes are imperfect, you make more decisions, better decisions, and braver decisions over time. You do your reps and you build those skills. And that's how expertise and influence actually grow. So the work isn't to drive yourself harder, to become better, smarter, or more disciplined. The work is to learn to wield your power in your own uncommon way, of course. All right, my friend, that's what I have for you this week. I can't wait to talk again on Tuesday.