How To Update A Decision Without Losing Self-Trust Leave a comment

As perfectionists, we tend to do one of two things when it comes to business decisions. We either (1) tie our own hands behind our back and refuse to change the decision for fear of being flaky or (2) we change our mind constantly and never follow through long enough to see results. 

To grow your business you need to be able to update your decisions. In this episode, I’m walking you through my exact process for updating decisions without losing self-trust or being flaky – as well as three decisions I’ve recently made in my own business.

If you’re a perfectionist building a business, you want to listen to this episode today.

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Introduction
This is the Perfectionism Project, the only podcast created specifically for perfectionists who are building businesses. I’m your host, Sam Laura Brown, perfectionism expert and entrepreneur. I teach perfectionists how to plan properly, consistently follow through and rest without guilt so they can build profitable and fulfilling businesses without burning out.

I’ve helped over a thousand perfectionist entrepreneurs do exactly that inside my program, Perfectionist Getting Shit Done. If you’re tired of procrastinating, overthinking and half finishing your ideas, you’re in the right place. Now, let’s dive in.

Sam Laura Brown
I have recently changed three business decisions that I have made, and I want to walk you through exactly how I decide when to update a decision and also the framework that I use to do a decision update. So that’s what this episode is going to be. And this is so important for perfectionists because we either make a decision and just hold ourselves to it to a fault, and it then becomes detrimental to the business to just, I call it, having your hands tied behind your back.

I did a whole episode on it. When you make a decision and you think, I have to do it this way. And also we perfectionists can be in the place of just changing our mind really impulsively, quickly, making a decision, changing it, making a decision, second guessing it, making a decision, updating it constantly to the point where you can’t follow through on anything sufficiently enough to be able to tell whether that has worked.

And we often do that to both of those options to escape discomfort as a way avoid being wrong or getting it wrong. So there is a clean way to update a business decision. And that’s what I want to walk you through in this episode by sharing how I do that and then the exact specific decisions that I made in this case, also by way of an update as well to fill you in and keep you in the loop.

And also just to be an example of what it can look like to update your decisions from a really clean place. So I’m going to walk you through the five step framework that I use to do a decision update. So step number one, what was the original decision? Step two, why did I make that decision at the time? Step three, what is the new decision? Step four, why am I changing it? Really important question.

Step five, do I like my reasons? And really with this framework, we want to be looking at particularly at step four, which is why am I changing the decision? We want there to be a clean reason that you are changing a decision rather than trying to escape discomfort. So a clean reason doesn’t come from avoidance. It’s not trying to escape boredom, fear, overwhelm, doubt.

A lot of times too, when we update decisions, we are trying to escape uncertainty and being in the messy middle, being in the implementation period where you haven’t yet gotten results. And that is going to happen for pretty much any decision you make. When you make a decision, it can be very exciting, especially if you feel inspired when making it.

But then as you implement on that decision, you start taking action, there is going to be a lag between you taking action and you getting the results that you want from making that decision. And so oftentimes what we could do is we just try to change the decision to try and change our feelings, to try and get out of the feelings of discomfort that come from showing up and taking action consistently and putting ourselves out there and putting effort in without yet getting the affirmation or approval or motivation from the result. And this is a really important skill.

This is something we teach you in PGSD is how to take action consistently while the results are not there yet. And if you’re in PGSD and you look in Ask a Coach or listen on the coaching calls when I am coaching on this, you will see me dive deep into this question in particular of whether you have a clean reason. So I want to walk you through three decisions that I have recently made and using this framework to show you how that I do it so that you can see it in action and also get the update of these decisions.

So we will start with number one, which is my decision that I have made about the best of the podcast episodes that I release on this podcast. I have nearly 600 podcast episodes at this point, and there are so many incredibly helpful episodes that are timeless that have been published on this podcast. And so I find myself referencing a lot of episodes quite often, past episodes.

And when that happens, I often will publish it as a best of the podcast episode on the podcast so that it is at the top of the feed, given there are so many episodes and so that you are able to listen to that episode, revisit that episode, just basically saying this is something that is timeless on this podcast. And I want to make sure that it doesn’t get lost in the archives, that you are able to listen to it. So what was the decision I made in November? The decision was that I’m not going to be doing best of the podcast episodes from then on and into 2026, that I want to record all new episodes.

I really am developing out my intellectual property and wanting to do new episodes as a way to assist me with developing that out. And also that I can bring that new body of work onto the podcast. So that was what the decision was and why I made it.

The new decision that I have made, this is step three, is that I’m allowed to do best of the podcast episodes. And really my power planning allowed me to see that I was having this thinking about no best of the podcast episodes from an all or nothing place. I felt inspired when I made that decision.

It felt like the right decision and it’s so important I don’t make my past self wrong for making that decision. I made the best decision I could with the thinking that I had at the time. But when I was doing my power planning, I could see just by the way I was approaching podcast episodes when I would have something I wanted to say that I’d already said on the podcast and seeing myself being able to be like, no, I have to do a new episode because I said no best of the podcast episodes.

So even though there’s an episode I really want to reshare, I’m not allowed to reshare it. And for me now at this point, I really have a sense of when I’m being all or nothing with a decision and tying my hands behind my back and being like, no, it has to be this way from a place of trying to get it right, as in it’s the right thing to do to make a decision and stick with it no matter what, instead of actually I can do a decision update at any point in time and I’m going to review that decision update to make sure there’s a clean reason, which is part of the process as I’ve mentioned, but I’m allowed to change my decision at any point. There’s not this like it’s right to stick to it and it’s wrong to change it mentality that we can have as perfectionists.

They can have us making really big business mistakes because we’re scared of getting it wrong. It has us not thinking clearly and having us follow through with a decision that it actually doesn’t make sense to keep following through on. So the reason why I’m changing it and I’ve mentioned it, I have 600 podcast episodes and past episodes I want to be able to reshare and it’s an unnecessary rule that I can’t reshare them.

I can still achieve my goal of developing my intellectual property without having to have this rule of no best of the podcast episodes. So did I review it for being a clean reason? Yes. And do I like my reason for changing it? Yes.

The second decision that I made was relating to the number of episodes that go out each week on this podcast. So I used to do two podcast episodes when I first started this podcast. And then in 2021, which is the year that I had my daughter, my first child, I decided to go from two episodes to one episode because the reason I had two episodes was partly just so I could get so much experience with podcasting.

I could get double the experience. Basically, I could improve twice as quickly because I was doing episodes twice as often. And also this has been well documented on this podcast that having that volume of podcast episodes was a really important part of me being able to release my perfectionism handbrake when it came to podcasting because doing two podcast episodes per week meant that there was less preciousness and less pressure on each episode.

So the decision to do two episodes per week, that’s step one. Step two, why did I make that decision? Because I wanted to get back into podcasting properly. And I really liked doing two podcast episodes before, but I, in 2025, released a lot of best of the podcast episodes.

And I love that I did that. What it meant also was that my practice in podcasting and sharing ideas, I did a lot less of that. And I just wanted to return to showing up and sharing my ideas, my intellectual property, developing that, as I mentioned, and doing two podcast episodes per week felt like a really good way to do that.

Also, it had just been on my mind for so long to do two podcast episodes per week. In 2023, I got coaching from my coach on, hey, I want to do two podcast episodes. And she coached just stick to one.

And so I did just stick to one. And still then two years later, I was like, I really want to do two podcast episodes per week. And so I gave myself permission to do two podcast episodes per week and to try it out and to have an extended period of time to do that, to do that for the entirety of 2026.

As you will notice when I’m releasing this, it is not after 2026. We are in February of 2026. So I’m updating the decision before that full time period has come to pass, but being fully committed to it for an extended time period, not just seeing how I go, but being like, I’m going to do two episodes per week for the whole of 2026 allowed me to be able to update the decision.

To make a strong decision makes it way easier. And a committed decision makes it way easier to update it. If you’re just waiting into every decision and waiting to see how it goes and trying it on, it’s very hard because you haven’t been committed to that decision.

So you can’t really see clearly when it needs an update. So the new decision, step three, what is the new decision? The new decision is to do one episode per week on the podcast. And what I’m going to be doing is a bonus second episode if I want to do it.

So you can also see what I’m doing with these decisions. I’m having them still be clear, but I’m not having them be as all or nothing as they initially were. So for this, I’m allowed to do two episodes per week if I want to, but my standard week is going to be doing one episode.

So why am I changing this decision? So this is looking at, do you have a clean reason for changing this decision? Like what is the thinking behind the decision? Really what brought this up is my power planning. Again, that I could see having two episodes per week, while it is quite quick for me to record an episode, I have a high level of self-trust around podcasting that I have developed through a lot of experience podcasting at this point, and also a lot of intentional work on developing my self-trust is what we teach inside PGSD. So when I was looking at my power planning and just seeing really clearly in my power planning, what the opportunity cost is, what the trade-off is, because if I wanted to do two podcast episodes every week and have them be new episodes every week, that is going to take a certain amount of time for me to create.

And there are other things that the business needs more than me having two podcasts every week. And so I liked the reason for updating the decision and I am updating that decision that there is going to be one podcast episode every week. And decision number three is one that I shared a bit of last week with the episode that came out, but the decision was for 2026.

The original decision was to sell only Perfectionist Getting Shit Done. So to not take on any new one-on-one coaching clients and to only have PGSD be the thing that I sell. And the reason, so step two, why did I make that decision was to focus back in on the core thing that we do in the company, which is to help perfectionist entrepreneurs take consistent action in their business so that it can grow.

And PGSD is the on PGSD and not have the attention be elsewhere. So the new decision that I made is to open the power planning course for enrollment and to sell both PGSD (Perfectionist Getting Shit Done), which is my program for perfectionist entrepreneurs and the power planning course. And why I’m changing that decision is to offer people, offer you a stepping stone into perfectionist getting shit done.

And we haven’t had the power planning course open since September 2024. So it’s been about 18 months since it was open. And then before that, it was about 18 months since it was open.

And we just get so many questions all the time about the power planning course. And so I wanted to update my decision and give you an opportunity to learn power planning and to experience what it’s like to work with me. It is a self-study course, but there are coaching core replays on power planning in there.

So you can see what it’s like to get coached by me and what it’s like to learn from me. So you get to experience that plus the benefit of the power planning. And so I like my reasons for doing that.

And so I have opened the power planning course for enrollment. You can go now and sign up at samlaurabrown.com/planning and be inside the power planning course today and be power planning by the end of the day, because it only takes an afternoon to learn how to power plan. So those are the three decisions that I have made.

And it’s so important just to take away from this that changing your mind isn’t a sign that you are flaky. It’s not a sign that you’re not committed. It’s not a sign that you can’t follow through with things and that you can’t trust yourself.

What actually happens is if you make a decision and you don’t allow yourself to change it, and there are times where a decision does need changing, but if you don’t allow yourself to change it in those instances, you will actually break your own self-trust. You will lose trust with yourself by sticking to something that no longer makes sense. If the goal isn’t like it has to be 100% a clean decision, no matter what, you need to be able to trust yourself to know, I sufficiently believe this is a clean decision that I’m making.

I’m going to make it. Because if you are scared to make decisions, that means your business can’t grow because decision-making is a requirement for business growth. You need to make decisions.

You need to be able to update decisions. And if you are scared to make a decision for fear of making a mistake, for fear of making the wrong decision, then your business will stall out and you’ll be falling during decisions that no longer make sense. You won’t be able to adapt.

You won’t be able to innovate. It is absolutely essential for business growth that you have a framework for updating decisions and that you allow yourself to update decisions and you do that from a place of self-trust instead of where perfectionists often just want this place of certainty, of knowing 100% for sure that it’s definitely the right decision. That just isn’t possible to know that.

But what you can know is that I have a clean reason for making that decision. I like that decision. I’ve investigated my emotional state behind that decision and I can see how that’s going to play out and I’m happy with that.

And then that’s the best you can do in entrepreneurship because there are so many factors that go into how things play out. So we can’t be waiting for absolute certainty that it’s 100% the best decision. Or this is another thing, and I coached on this last week, in perfectionist getting shit done, that a PGSDer came and she was having a hard time making a decision.

She’s a jewelry designer and she was making cardstock for her earrings. So cardstock is the bit of card that you’d attach the earrings to and it has information about the business. And the way she was thinking about that decision was making it so hard for her to make it because her perfectionist brain was like, this is a really important permanent decision that needs to fit in with my 10-year plan that I have for the business.

And that was putting so much pressure on the design that she was 99% done. She had the decision that she already needed to be able to get it complete. She had the answer and she wasn’t allowing herself to follow through on that because she had made the decision such a big deal in her brain that it felt so scary to actually pull the trigger on that decision.

So how you relate to decisions and how you think about yourself when it comes to decisions and make decisions is absolutely important for business growth. So inside PGSD, I just want to mention about this because it’s really important. We coach you on a few things relating to this.

So number one, what we do is we notice when you need to update a decision, but you haven’t realized yet that you need to update it. And we also notice when you are changing a decision that it actually makes sense for that decision to stay the same and to deal with your emotions in a different way other than changing the decision. So there’s that piece.

We just have that awareness and that set of eyes and that insight into, first of all, business mechanics and how to grow a business and also what it looks like to be in certain emotional states when making decisions so that we can see the vibe essentially behind the decision to know if that decision, for example, is made from a place of wanting to avoid discomfort or to avoid boredom. Also, what we really deeply support you with in PGSD is looking at the reasons why you are changing a decision, because this can be really challenging if you have a perfectionist brain, which means that unless you have intentionally developed self-trust, you probably find it quite hard to trust yourself, to trust your own judgment, to trust your own thoughts about things, and that we can, when we’re making a decision to avoid discomfort or to avoid some kind of emotion we’re not wanting to feel, we can feel so inspired while doing that and be like, oh my God, I just had the best idea. It’s so exciting.

And that oftentimes, even though it feels exciting and that’s a great decision to make, that once the emotion settles, it’s not actually a sound business decision to make. And so, we really support you with looking at why you’re changing the decision and do you like that reason for changing the decision. And also, the third thing is when it comes to updating a decision, and I didn’t go into this in this episode, into the investigation I did around different options, but it’s so important that you consider there are lots of different options when you update a decision.

It isn’t either do this or do that. There are so many different options and you need to have a process for really looking at what all the options are without feeling overwhelmed. And we support you with this in PGSD because what we will do as perfectionists, we go into that all or nothing black and white thinking of like, it’s either A or B, and I don’t want to do B, so I’m going to stick with A or vice versa, instead of seeing there are so many options.

And because our perfectionist brains just go into that overwhelm as a way to stop us from taking action and keep us safe, that if you don’t have a process for allowing yourself to consider lots of options without then feeling overwhelmed about it, if you go into, I don’t want to have lots of options to pick from because then I don’t know which one’s the right one, it’s really challenging to update a decision effectively. So that’s why in PGSD, we are teaching you self-trust through the tools of power planning. That’s such a cool way that you learn self-trust is through having plans for your week and following through with them and having that be flexible.

So like you’re learning this same skill set when you’re power planning, when do you update your plan and when do you keep it the same? So when you are power planning, you will naturally be able to better follow this process and be able to update decisions effectively because your self-trust will be higher and you will be experienced in being committed without being inflexible. We often think it’s perfectionist if I’m committed to something, that means I can’t be flexible in it. It has to be like this, no matter what.

And then that brings up so much fear of burnout or actual burnouts because there’s this like, I have to do it and I have to then ignore my own needs and ignore so many other things to be able to do that. It’s actually I’m committed and when I’m the most committed, that means I’m adaptable, I’m flexible, I figure things out as I go as needed. So I want to invite you into the power planning course, samlaurabrown.com/planning is where to go to sign up today because that will teach you how to trust yourself and that will ripple over into this decision making.

And decision making is an absolutely essential skill to be able to develop yourself and the way we teach you decision making in PGSD is by having you increase your own decision making abilities with support instead of us saying, just do this, just do that. And then you are left with no additional decision making skills. If we just say, here’s what you have to do and just go and do it and you don’t need to understand why, what we support you with, because this is so essential for taking action is being able to make decisions and we support you with the review of that, the exploration of that.

We really, really, really teach you how to have your own discernment and judgment in your business and be able to do that from a really grounded place so that you can grow your business. So sign up for the power planning course today, highly recommend getting in that to develop your self-trust and to start power planning. And then highly recommend joining us in Perfectionist Getting Shit Done when we open doors very soon.

So that is all for today’s episode. I hope you have found it incredibly helpful and I will talk to you next week.

Outro
I hope you enjoyed that episode. So as mentioned, the power planning course is now officially open for enrollment. You can go to samlaurabrown.com/planning to sign up today.

You can learn power planning within one afternoon. I will personally guide you through your very first power hour. Everything is in there for you to start power planning.

It’s a very simple process. Anyone can learn it and you can use it right away to build your business. You can say goodbye to overwhelming to-do list and start power planning so your business can finally grow.

So samlaurabrown.com/planning is where to sign up today.