Big decisions don’t always come with big clarity

In nursing and management, I’ve made hundreds of hard calls, often without enough time or perfect answers. In this episode of Raise the Anchor, I’m sharing the decision-making tools I lean on when the stakes are high, and how those same tools supported me through a recent emotional moment in my personal life.

Whether you’re in a leadership role or just facing a decision you didn’t see coming, this episode will help you:
 ✔️ slow the mental chaos
 ✔️ trust your gut and logic
✔️ make a call without knowing the outcome

It’s not about being fearless. It’s about leading yourself through it anyway.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Welcome to Raise the Anchor, the podcast that explores what happens when we stop drifting and start choosing. I'm your host, Melissa Burbridge, and each week we dive into real, raw stories of transformation, moments when people dared to raise the anchor and change course. Whether you're navigating chronic illness, burnout, big life pivots, or healing from the inside out, you'll find inspiration and truth here on Raise the Anchor. This is your space for honesty, hope, and the courage to begin again. Let's raise the anchor and set your course. Hi, welcome to another week of Raise the Anchor. This week, it's a little bit of a deeper discussion. We're going to talk about making big decisions fast. in a crunch. When you think that you're going to need weeks or days or months to think about it, but you really only have minutes. I have a lot of experience with my current position as a nurse manager or even as a nurse in doing this. It's a fast paced job. I have to make that decision like that, or it's literally life or death. So I want to give you some of the methods I use to do that. To do that, I want to say that Last week, it kind of helped me make a huge decision. We had to, unfortunately, put our dog down and I didn't really have time to think about it. So using these methods helped me make that decision quickly, methodically, and knowingly before we actually had to do that. So I'm going to go over that. I've written down. So if you guys want some of these, I will put a PDF in the podcast and you can download it. So every day I have to look at situations and think, okay, if I put this resident here, what kind of scenarios can happen? Is this resident going to harm the other residents? Is there going to be conflict with staff needing to do more care on this resident. There are so many dynamics that go into every single decision I make at work, whether or not to contact the doctor, to talk to the family, to do a gajillion different things. So having these methods is imperative. I don't think I could do my day to day without that. So the framework to doing These decisions are the pause protocol. So I will slow down when I'm in a rush because the last thing you want to do is make a snap decision while you're rushing and not fully thinking. So I slow down, even if it's for like 10, 20 seconds. Take two deep breaths, calm and reset, and look at the situation. I triage think. So what matters most right now? So when I was a property manager, sorry, Jenna, she used to get frustrated with me because a lot of people would come at me all at once with problems and I would be like, are they going to die? Are they going to die if we don't do this today? Because she had so many properties and we had so many things that we needed to work on and everybody wanted their thing right now. Even if they... you know, just complained about it. So I would triage, well, what's most important? Same as a nurse. You have seven patients. You have one that's a diabetic. You have one that has wounds. You have one that's like really not doing so well, which is patient are you going to see first and as a nurse you think of the abc's process as a property manager i was thinking fire flooding any of those kinds of things so you have to think about the framework as to what's most important now so i i call that my triage what can wait what needs to be addressed right now uh team input But final say being by you. So how collaborating with your team. A great example of that today was attendant breaks. It's not something you think you're going to talk about, but talking with your nursing team and your CCAs about when these attendants should be taking breaks so that you can pre-schedule their breaks so that there's no conflict down the road with them taking their breaks. They all know when their breaks are going to happen. The staff knows when their breaks are going to happen and you don't have to worry about thinking about where the attendant is for their breaks. So having that input is vital. Gut and evidence. So I don't know if any of my listeners here believe in human design. I do. I like mine. I'm a generator, if anybody's asking. So I have to go with my gut or evidence when I'm thinking about decisions. So if I... Get asked a question, say, can my resident have an electric blanket in their room? I'm going to say no. I don't even have to think about the gut or evidence. I think fire because I'm experienced in knowing that. But if you don't know what's going on or what's happening, think back, okay? Do you want to go to Paris this week? What's my gut telling me? No, because I'm going to have to plan that piece. Yes, I want to go to Paris, but I don't want to go this week because I don't have the money. I don't have the plan. I haven't looked into restaurants. I haven't done any research. If you know somebody with celiac, they usually have to do research before they go anywhere. So yeah, no, I'm not going to go. What is the evidence behind? So gut and evidence. So marrying your instinct with available data. So if somebody's asking you, Do you want to go to Paris? You're gonna say, well, you know, this time of year is very expensive. Usually you have to save up for so long. There's gonna be a lot behind that piece. Detach from perfection. That is something I've struggled with, not gonna lie. So definitely making sure that you're going after something. So I usually like to make sure everything's ready. before I go after something. So if I was to switch jobs tomorrow, I would want to make sure everything in my current job is all done before I go into the next job. But if that current job is making me absolutely miserable, why should I make everything perfect before I go into the new one? Give your notice, walk away, see you later. That sounded cold, but just make sure. So you want to do the pause protocol. You want to trial... triage thinking, team input, gut and evidence, and detach yourself from perfection. So those are some of the tools I use. And it's funny that I didn't think of them those ways until I was putting it in ChatTube Tea to kind of help me come up with the exact framework that I wanted to. But all of those are protocols I use all the time. So if you want to transfer those skills into a personal effect, because I'm a nurse, you can do it if your teenager asks you to borrow the car. You can say instinctively you don't want them to because they're a new driver. So pause. Take 30 seconds. See the reasoning as to why you're saying no. Check your gut. and your evidence. Have they ever had an issue with taking your vehicle? Have they always had gas in your vehicle? Have they always treated your vehicle? Are there new scratches? The gut and evidence piece. Triage thinking, what am I doing for the rest of the day? Is it a possibility that they could actually take the vehicle? What do I have to rearrange for them to have that vehicle? team input, talking to your spouse or your other teenager in the house, seeing if they have any issues with that piece or what would have to be arranged. If it's you having to drive with them, that's a whole different protocol. Detaching from perfection. So making sure you're not kind of talking to them in a negative way because you're thinking that you're You know, them taking the vehicle is going to be an inconvenience or you're worried about them crashing or you're worried about a gajillion other things instead of actually looking at what they want the vehicle for. Is it something you guys can talk about? Or is it you letting go of that view of them being a child? Yeah. And is that what's holding you back? Like, look at what is holding you back from letting them take that vehicle. What I've learned about trusting myself in these decisions, I kind of, I still question myself at times. There's always going to be those times that you're going to question yourself. You never want to be talking to a family and saying, I don't think your loved one qualifies for a surgery, even though, they want their loved one to have that surgery because there are so many other factors. There's age, there's medication, there's, do they have dementia? And you feel cold thinking that way. Last week when the vet asked me to put our dog down, I'm talking a little quieter because I don't talk about it too much with Danica yet. That was the hardest thing, but I kind of knew where my head was lying earlier than that because of traumatic events that happened that evening when they asked, do you want your dog to be resuscitated? I hesitated. And normally I would not hesitate in that decision. It would be a yes to CPR, but I hesitated. And I took that reaction as something more is going on here. And that's what we talked about later on. You cannot tear up about that. With that loved one needing surgery, you have to look at all of the factors and whether or not it's actually going to be a good outcome for that resident. I often get families who are not prepared for long-term care, and I will say that our long-term care facility is probably not the best one to put them in just because it's so wide open and old. But those families are feeling the guilt of having to put their loved one in that nursing home. Those families are feeling the guilt of not being able to take care of their loved one or not being able to be there all the time with their loved one. And their loved one is feeling abandoned or they're feeling like they just gave up their whole life. They've gone their whole life with their partner. Or they've gone their whole life being on their own and independent, and now they're going to have to be in a home where other people are going to tell them what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. They're not going to have that freedom that they've had their whole life, so it is a big change. And so we often have to start grief talk. I'm glad that we do Grief Cafe at my facility because that kind of helps them talk about that piece. But those are all big decisions that they usually have to make like that. They're told at the hospital that their loved one has to go into long-term care. They don't have time to think. They have no choice. Kind of like I had no choice to put my loved dog down. You think you have a choice, but you don't really have the choice if you're really stepping back from the picture. And that's something I will also do with a lot of my bigger decisions is take a step back. That's where the taking that breath, taking that pause can help you detach from the immediate feelings of that decision. So those are a lot of the tips I know is all over the place i'm kind of all over the place and i kind of blabber but you guys seem to love me because you guys keep uh listening so i hope you like it i'm trying to add a little more structure to these solo ones because i could just feel on subjects all day long um but what of those five that framework what of that framework did you most resonate with you don't have to do all of those Those are just all of the different types of things I do when I make big decisions. One decision I've been avoiding because you're waiting for the perfect moment. So that's like that perfection piece. I tend to hold on to my decisions sometimes for a long time. That's why I'm sharing with you how I make these big decisions. because that's how I ended up in the mess of staying in a career for a long time that was making me physically sick. That's why I wanna share these pieces because I don't want you to be holding onto that piece because all we wanna do is get better, do better, be better, and have the life that we're meant to have. So I hope you find these strategies effective. Let me know if there's something in that piece that you want me to talk more on on a future episode. Another episode I'm going to talk about on the next one. So in two weeks, my solo episode is going to be feeling forward. We're going to talk on that subject. I love that subject. I still do that all the time, failing forward, because failing is not the end. Failing is giving you a lesson, and we're going to deep dive on that, and I might see if I can't have a special guest for that one, but we'll see. Thank you for tuning in to Raise the Anchor this week. Next week is an interview episode. Again, if you want the framework, the PDF, it will be in the show notes, either on Buzzsprout Apple, or any of your podcast things. It's also on YouTube. We would love to have more followers on YouTube. So think about subscribing, liking, commenting on YouTube. Till next week. Thanks for tuning in to Raise the Anchor. If today's episode spoke to you, share it with a friend or leave a review. It helps more people find their way to healing and hope. Follow along on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube for behind the scenes, extra content and real life moments. And be sure to join the email list at linktree slash raise the anchor so you never miss an episode. Until next time, here's to calm waters, steady winds and the courage to chart your own course.