How to get out of paralysis when making decisions – the IFS
My partner Jeff is facing many big decisions right now. He has two very different career opportunities that can pull him in very different directions. He has to decide where to stay when our short airbnb in Forestville, CA, which came as a perk of a short stay using work, although he’s not quite sure what to do now.
This has an impact on our relationship, because I recently signed a lease on a renovated barn in a small town in West Soodle County, near the beach, where I let my doodle moose go every day. After doing that if you turn around and see my parts, it was clear that my internal family system was not willing to wait long to protect me and my daughter’s houses, while Jeff made up his mind where he wanted to commit. My daughter will be home from college for the first time on December 13th, and my fertility needs to be prioritized to make sure she has a home that is Christmas-decorated when we meet. I would avoid doing anything so definite because I want to have the freedom to have the freedom to keep his options open, where I can find a good life near the way of life near the logic, like the natural Muir Beach where I lived.
Many people fight to establish themselves, but they often do not know that the instability of nature is often caused by porarized parts, Adiden on the one hand, or parts that seek easy power, fame and wealth on the other hand. There may be parts that want to prioritize relationships and being a family man- and parts of the family that want to prioritize building a nest egg for retirement or pursuing an ambitious dream. The needs and wants of those parts can fight with each other, and if there is no mediator to help those parts negotiate, it is difficult to get clarity and make a decision that you will not regret later.
Internal Family Programs (IFS) are a great tool to help us overcome these embarrassing decisions. Fire meditation can be a useful tool when making decisions. This first meditation helps you to prepare and explain the process of absence from different parts and allows independence to put a cool fire of related parts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmfruz1p2yy
The following meditation leads you through a guided practice around the campfire, where you can meet any related parties involved in a particular decision and help mediate between them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdklhzc0
Once you have met the stakeholders, it is the support of the peer groups that can help you establish clarity. By explaining your parts to another peer support person, because we will be teaching to do this weekend’s training Looking to process peer-to-peer componentsyou can further isolate it, speak with a sympathetic mirror, witness and show your parts, giving you more room to lead.
You can sign up for peer to peer processing here.
Driving the willpower to mediate between parties is the art of negotiation. It is the same as if a healthy foreign family, which is a democracy, not a sect, can discuss an important family decision, listen to all family members and come to a shared, fair, harmonious power.
So when faced with big or small decisions, try to know all the parts involved. Mapping can help you keep them separate, so you don’t know how those parts fit together. I didn’t ask him, but with the kinds of decisions Jeff faces, maybe there is:
- Partly happy with a new adventure somewhere else, with a long lasting relationship and an exciting new job opportunity
- The part that prioritizes being close to its partner, related to the attached part that is afraid of being too separated
- The sad part about leaving sonama county, is when we started making friends
- A financially responsible segment that seeks to increase leverage
- Part of seeking institutional ownership after leaving the Harvard fold
- A social justice component concerned with health equity
- A section that is seduced by power, a high salary, and the opportunity to have a lot of influence at the height of a prestigious profession
- The part that worries about inheritance, wants to build something of its own making
- The part that wants to stay included in society
- The part that loves the beach, the river, the mountains and the nature of Sonoma County and can’t miss that “la dolce vida” way of life when he thinks about traveling
- The part that is concerned about some military morale in the workplace is far away
- The part that has finished working hard all his life and wants to retire or at least rest more
- The creative part that is not defined and does not want to die and its song does not want to die
- An understanding part of a situation that requires a lot of work and a lot of fame
- Part of the damage opportunities are lost in the past, seeking to recreate what was lost to avoid grief
- The part that loves people and patients in his current activities and wants to maintain those colougial relationships
- Part of the pride that wants to be the best, in the best institutions, in the best funded organizations
- The part that feels ashamed, inadequate, and not good enough or special enough when associated with prestige, power, or leadership roles
- Part is afraid of loneliness if he takes a job away from everyone he likes
- The part of the business that wants to leave the institutional life completely and start its own business is doing something more risky
- The part he wants to sound most important is his good mental skills and good reputation
I don’t know at all what I think next to what might go on inside my partner, but we made some big decisions about my past job, I think I’m going to go for that job, I remember there was a fury of parts of the job exchange!
If you are struggling with a decision-making disability, I encourage you to do your own rounds, with or without peer support. For those of you who will be joining your peers in cross-sectional training this weekend, bring whatever decision you are struggling with. We’ll be demo-ing how this works and hopefully help a few people figure out where it was missing.
Join us for peer-to-peer panel discussion on November 1-2. (If you can’t make it live, we’ll be recording the sessions.)
Until then, good luck with whatever decisions you’re looking at right now. My heart goes out to you and all your parts and decisions.
