51 | Attitude, Effort, + Decision Making
51 | Attitude, Effort, + Decision Making
In this episode, I share the intricacies of parenting, self-discovery, and one of our family's fundamental philosophies: Attitude, Effort, and Decision Making (AED). It’s a mindset framework that our family uses to ensure we’re optimizing each day to the fullest, and originally arose from my son’s elite soccer journey.
Given many of our daily challenges, the philosophy of “attitude, effort, and decision making” is a practical tool for self-reflection. It offers a framework for you to evaluate your mindset, your output, and your choices. As we step into 2024, let this philosophy be a source of inspiration for your resolutions and a companion for the ups and downs of life.
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Intro: Welcome to A Pleasant Solution, Embracing An Organized Life. I'm your host, certified life coach, professional organizer, and home life expert, Amelia Pleasant Kennedy and I help folks permanently eliminate clutter in their homes and lives. On this podcast will go beyond the basics of home organization to talk about why a clutter-free mindset is essential to an aligned and sustainable lifestyle. If you're someone with a to-do list, if you're managing a household and if you're caring for others, this podcast is for you. Let's dive in.
Amelia: Welcome to Episode 51, “Attitude, Effort, and Decision Making.” It’s always good to be able to look back at past choices and behaviors through a lighthearted lens. My eldest daughter just turned 17 years old, and I see so much of myself – my work ethic, my confidence, and my future focus – in her. When I was her age, I wanted nothing more than to be independent, highly educated, and on the path to a successful career. I wasn’t the least bit interested in having children, raising children, or being in the position where I had to think about others. I met my now husband two years later, at the age of 19. Now, her path most likely will be completely different than mine, but I do see my “before” picture in her at this moment.
When I settled into the idea of having children, I chose to have them back-to-back, knowing that if there was craziness to be had, it would be best to invite it into my life all at once. I intentionally traded the second half of my twenties and early thirties for the empty nest that will arrive by the time I’m 50. I took the decision to become a parent seriously, and my closest friends would attest that my approach to birthing and parenting my kiddos was done with a heightened level of purpose.
I’m quite proud of the people my children are becoming. I now recognize that my intense focus on parenting – not in a helicopter or snow plowing way, but one grounded in teaching self-sufficiency and thoughtfulness – has influenced their mindsets and behaviors today. My diligence came from a deep inner knowing that I only had one shot. I was guiding them with one eye on their futures, and from the outside, I’d say my close friends would have described it as having a soft halo of Tiger Mom. As a Black woman, as a mixed-race woman, as a descendant of slaves and immigrant farmers, I can now look back and see the pressure I put on myself to “do a good job” raising my children those first handful of years.
My purpose was laid bare to me in the most loving way that first few weeks after my eldest was born. My husband’s grandfather, the Nobel Prize winning economist Dr. Lawrence Klein, strode in through door beaming and eager to hold his first great-grandchild. He gave me a big hug and congratulated me as only an economist could, “You’ve done well! Now, you only have to have two more. Three children – two to replace yourselves – and one more to add goodness to this world!” His words landed with me.
So, on today’s episode, I’ll share one of our family’s core philosophies: attitude, effort, and decision making (or AED). It initially stemmed from our son’s elite soccer journey. My husband wanted concise language to emphasize the importance of mindset with our son, and in turn, it’s impacted our entire family. As we ease into 2024, this philosophy will help give context to your resolutions and your outlook. It's the perfect framework for self-reflection and self-feedback with regards to your season of life, as well as a simple daily check-in. As always, I encourage you to adapt this philosophy for your needs. You can apply this mindset framework to an organizing project, a task at work, or to the overall mood around chores, housework, or the collective effort of your family.
On previous episodes of the podcast, you’ve heard me talk about the importance of awareness. Awareness is a way of noticing your thinking and internal dialogue in a way that places you in the present moment. For many of us, there’s a default layer of harsh judgment that’s an undercurrent in our minds. It says things like, “I should’ve known better” or “That was a stupid choice.” A common one is, “I'm a hot mess” or “this place is a hot mess.” These sentences aren’t the truth. Instead, they’re your automatic, uncontrolled response – judgment that’s a well-worn internal pattern in your mind. These sentences aren’t supportive and instead dampen your attitude or outlook.
Attitude, in the context of our family philosophy, is about your outlook or overall mindset. It’s a measure of your level of positivity towards the task at hand. Now, I’m not talking about toxic positivity – the sense that you should be positive or else! – but instead about whether you’re seeing the glass as half full or half empty. My husband describes it as, “what you put out into the world is what you get back.”
For example, my son has held the dream of being a professional soccer player his entire life. This translates to training off the field each day, even when the team is on break, even when we’re on vacation, even when he wakes up not wanting to put in the work. He’s human and a young man. He doesn’t always want to lift weights or run on the treadmill, yet he has a vision. Of course, he can choose not to do the extra work and own the consequence of not putting value in the value bank that day. He can choose to do the extra work with a low-quality attitude based on his current emotional experience. However, most likely, the training session will feel heavy, like it’s a slog. His attitude will influence his effort and translate to a particular set of results for the day. Or he can check-in with himself before the training session, gauge his attitude, remind himself of the bigger picture, long-term why, and course correct his attitude to make the exercise purposeful and meaningful.
Let’s say you want to be more mindful of your family’s spending and budgeting to build an emergency savings fund. Your attitude about money, about your ability to cut expenses or increase revenue, or about your ability to keep the long-term vision top of mind matters. (And again, insert your current analogy or goal here – whether it’s decluttering and organizing your home or pursuing a multi-step project at work.) After you’ve determined your why – why you want an emergency savings fund – assess your overall attitude. What’s your outlook? How do you feel about doing the work of spending less and saving more? Do you recognize and deeply believe in the benefits of temporary discomfort for longer term satisfaction? These are important questions to consider, especially when you’re choosing to make a change in your current habits.
When I accept new coaching clients, one of the questions I ask at the beginning of our time together is, “Why do you want to do something that’s hard?” You know what season of life you’re in right now. You know your current circumstances, your current needs versus wants. Making progress towards your desired goal may be the exact needed thing to make other areas of your life run more smoothly or with ease. Establishing an emergency savings fund is deeply personal and achieving it is 100% possible. You’re more organized than you think. Yet, your attitude towards the daily effort and daily decisions ahead will either make the process feel like a slog or it will make the process feel purposeful and meaningful.
The beauty of this AED philosophy is that you can grade yourself or give yourself feedback on each of the three components: attitude, effort, and decision making. Each component has its own elements, therefore you can work to improve your attitude, for example, and that will naturally influence your effort and decision making. You can grade yourself excellent at attitude, and in turn focus on improving your daily effort. They’re interrelated but not wholly dependent on one another.
So, the second component is effort. Effort is an output measurement. For example, I could have the absolute best attitude about my business and my abilities as a coach, yet if I didn’t tell y’all that my services were available, if I didn’t actively put in the effort to say, “I can help you,” you’d never know that A Pleasant Solution exists. Effort is where many of us get stuck, and in my opinion, it’s often related to component number one – attitude. You can have a positive outlook on spring cleaning and decluttering, however, if you don’t schedule the time to do the tasks, your effort will fall short. You can be excited about clearing unwanted food out of the pantry, but if you stop halfway through, your effort wasn’t enough. My son can head to the gym to lift weights and run with a positive mindset, yet he also has to be willing to push his body to do the work. He can run at a recovery pace, or he can run at a sprint. Neither is better than the other. What matters is whether his effort is aligned with his intention for the workout.
If your goal is to steadily build an emergency savings fund, you’ll have to make the effort to cut your spending and / or increase your revenue. Habit changes come with a level of discomfort because your brain prefers to stay safe in its current comfort zone. Effort is a choice. In our household we talk about reaching for a level of self-satisfaction where you’ve determined that you did what you set out to do with purpose. Now, I want to pause to remind you not to use this philosophy as a way to beat yourself up further. It’s a tool for measurement and reflection. If you notice that you’re punishing yourself, please seek mental health support. Doing more, increasing your effort, in this context is meant to be self-supportive. It’s setting up an automatic transfer on payday into your emergency savings account. It’s lowering the notification ceiling on your credit card so that you know that you’re off your intentional spending path sooner rather than later. It’s making daily decisions that put you closer to your goal.
The last component is decision making. In my opinion, decision making is one of the most powerful tools you have. The more you decide what you want and what makes sense for your life and home with purpose and intention, the more self-trust you’ll build within. I opened this episode by highlighting my slightly intense approach to parenting. When they were young, I expected my children to break the rules and push boundaries. Yet, I always brought them back to owning their role in their decision. It was less about punishment, and more about cause and effect. Let’s say they had a task to do, like pick up their toys or play their instrument. They may move throughout the day with a wonderful attitude… and they might choose to procrastinate. As the hours passed, I’d remind them every so often of their task. I’d still expect full effort, even if they were tired, because they’d made the decision to wait. The consequence was self-imposed, I’d remind them. They had agency and choice, and they’d exercised it against themselves in this instance.
Now that my eldest daughter is in high school, she’s learned how to self-regulate her choices around studying and self-care. She chooses when to procrastinate, when to work smarter not harder, and acts with integrity as much as you could hope a thoughtful teenager would. So, decision making, in this context, is rooted in integrity. You’re always making choices – choices about how to spend your time, how much effort you’re willing to put in – and it often feels better to choose the easy path than the hard one.
It feels better to delay the work of picking up toys or practicing your instrument. It feels better to run at a recovery pace rather than a sprint. It feels better to do 6 reps of weights than 10. Yet, each of these micro-moments is a decision, and this is what both my husband and I aimed to teach our kiddos. Life isn’t happening to you. You’re an active participant who’s creating the results you currently have. You don’t have to do more unless you truly want more. And wanting more comes with trade-offs.
To create an emergency savings fund, you’ll have to trade ordering take-out for cooking in. You’ll have to buy fewer bottles of alcohol. You’ll have to use what you have rather than default to buying new. You’ll want to be more conscious of your Starbucks expenditures. You’ll want to keep your ‘why’ top of mind multiple times a day. You’ll need to decide over and over and over and over that it’s important to you. That’s what my son has done year over year for the last decade. That’s what I did in those first handful of years of parenting when I wanted to curl up and cry from exhaustion. Of saying over and over to my kiddos, “try again,” when they’d speak some kinda way to me or to one another. It was decision after decision to stick to the plan knowing that the long-term reward was worth it.
So, give yourself credit where credit is due. Praise your attitude, effort, and every single decision that you make. Self- reflect and adjust where needed. Remember, you can tweak your daily decisions while keeping your effort and attitude the same. You can apply this philosophy on a large scale or employ it multiple times a day. It’s a quick check: How’s my attitude? What’s my effort like? Is this decision in alignment with my larger purpose? These questions put you back in the drivers’ seat of your current situation and give you the agency to decide what’s next. It’s brilliant, and it’s simple. I’d love to know what y’all think, so feel free to reach out. Talk to y’all soon.
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