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Discerning Your Next Right Thing: An Interview with Emily P Freeman

• Amy J Brown, Carrie Holt and Sara Clime • Season 3 • Episode 131

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Amy Brown talks with Emily P. Freeman, author, and podcast host of The Next Right Thing, about what happens in the space between when we have a decision to make and when the decision is made. Emily talks about the importance of doing one thing at a time and how decluttering our inner life can help us make clear and confident decisions. Emily’s journal, the Next Right Thing Journal, helps her in her practice of reflection and encourages her to notice patterns. Both she and Amy use it to process their lives to help make decisions with ease. 

June 6, 2023; Ep. 131

Title: Discerning Your Next Right Thing: An Interview with Emily P Freeman

Key Moments:

[4:04] Soul minimalism and decision-fatigue
[8:19] Trust yourself towards the best decision at the time
[10:26] Focus on becoming better through decision-making, even if the outcome is not ideal
[15:02] Improving decision-making 
[17:36] Reflecting on past decisions can lead to confident future decisions
[21:09] Benefits of The Next Right Thing Journal 

Resources:
Emily P. Freeman.com 

If you enjoyed the show:

Welcome, today. This is Amy Brown, and I am so excited to talk to our guests today. Today on the show, we have the one and only Emily P. Freeman. Emily P. Freeman is a Wall Street Journal Best Selling Author of the Next Right Thing, Simply Tuesday, A Million Little Ways, and Grace For The Good Girl. As the host of The Next Right Thing Podcast, she helps people make decisions by creating space for the soul to breathe and offering a fresh perspective on our inner life with God. Emily and her husband live in North Carolina with their three children. You can connect with Emily at www.emilypfreeman.com or on Instagram @emilypfreeman. 

Amy: I would like to welcome to the show today, my friend Emily P. Freeman. Hi, Emily.

Emily: Hi Amy, it's so good to be with you.

Amy: Good to Have you here. So for those who don't know you, could you give a little intro into who you are and what you do.

Emily: Sure thing. Well, I live in North Carolina with my husband, John; we've been married for almost 22 years. We have three kids, twins who are finishing up their first year in college. Then our son is finishing up his sophomore year in high school. I write books. I am one of those weirdos who decided that she wanted to do homework for a living, so I write books. I have written five so far. I love to stand at the intersection of faith, creativity, and discernment. A lot of what I do and love to do is to help people discern their next right thing in faith, work, and life. One other job I get to do that I love is I get to hold space for people as a spiritual director. I sit across from people one on one and have a front-row seat to what God is up to in their lives. That is a role that I humbly hold, and I'm really grateful for. That's an overview of the work that I do.

Amy: Well, I have to say at the start that our book is, in large part, thanks to you because you were such an encouragement as we wrote this book. I have to say that in public. But I'm gonna give a true confession. I first heard about your podcast, and it's  The Next Right Thing Podcast.  How many years have you had that?

Emily: It's been six years, I think. Okay.

Amy: I heard about your podcast, and I had read some of your books. I think it was Modern Miss Darcy, Anne Bogel said, "Emily Freeman has a new podcast, and her voice is lovely." I was like, I don't need another podcast,

Emily: Who needs another podcast?

Amy: Who needs it? I didn't listen right away. Then I happened to be moving. We had bought a house, and then we were moving our house. You know how it is. You have to get your house like no one's ever lived in it. 24/7, I listened to your podcast. I have to say, I felt like you were talking directly to me. You put words around things I couldn't put words around. You gave me tools I didn't even know I needed because they made sense as you were sharing about the next right thing and decision fatigue. The thing I was thinking at the time was I'm a very organized person.  I have to be, I have six kids. I feel disorganized internally all the time. A better planner, even though I love a planner and will always buy a new one, and a better system is not taking this away. What I would like for you, if you'd be willing to talk about, is the idea of how you came to the idea of soul minimalism and decision fatigue. I don't think we realize we have it.

Emily: Yeah. Well, that's a great question. And I'll tell you that I started to get really fascinated by this idea of what happens in the space between when we have a decision to make and we actually make the decision. That tension in between or the time in between knowing that a decision needs to be made, not knowing what to do next, and actually making it is an interesting formational space in all of our lives. Many of us respond to it differently. Some of us make decisions really quickly because we are predisposed to do so because of our personality or because we really dislike the discomfort of an unmade decision. For others of us, because of fear of choosing wrong or regretting the decision we make, we take forever to make those decisions Then we live in this constant state of chronic hesitation, and the decision fatigue piles on. I got really nerdy and curious about that space. I started to pay attention to it my own life, in the lives of people around me. You know how it is like when you're gonna go buy a car and you think, I think we might get a Toyota, you see them everywhere, which of course you see them everywhere because Toyota's are everywhere. You get what I'm saying is that that once I sort of brought that concept to the fore of my brain, I saw it at play everywhere. I started to notice through the lens of actual minimalism, thinking about how, when we are in our homes, and we get that spring fever, and we all are little minimalists on the inside, I think, sometimes. We're fed up with the clutter, and we have to clean out, and we literally clean out our closets and our desks in our rooms, and the feeling that you get when you feel, ah, it's all cleaned out. If you only do that once a year, it doesn't have much of an impact. The same is true for our inner life. I think, actual minimalists on the outside, they kind of adopt a lifestyle of minimalism. Now, whether that's the extreme, I have one item in my closet. I don't think anybody truly you know, that I know lives that way. But the concept of being someone who regularly has a habit of decluttering in your external life, that's sort of a habit of minimalism, and I think the same can be applied to our inner life.To me, decluttering is to my home, as silence, stillness and solitude is to my inner life, is to my soul. I have found that the practice of quieting myself on the inside, of sitting for a bit on the daily to release some of the things that I collect in my soul. Whether that's a conversation I had with a kid this morning, whether that is an unmade decision I have to make, whether that's something that I'm really worried or anxious about, these things accumulate on the inside. We go about our lives as if, you know, all as well, I'm gonna wake up and do the thing today. I think having a regular practice of decluttering, on the inside, in the form of some silence, some stillness, and some solitude, even if it's the tiniest five-minute pocket, can go a really long way when it comes to me having to make a clear, competent decision in my life.

Amy: I love that. I think when we think of decision-making, we make a bunch of them every day, but it's realizing the toll it takes on us. It's a big decision as we're going to move or that we spent all this time with. I don't think I realized how tiring all the other decisions were to me. I'm a pretty quick decision-maker. I think in listening to you and reading your book,  I realize sometimes I'm making decisions out of fear; sometimes I make them out of I'm not going to have enough time to deal with this later, so I'm just gonna make it. I don't necessarily make a bad decision. What I had to understand is the decisions are on the surface, but all that's going on underneath can be really tiring and exhausting. I think your book, and some of the things you've talked about in the podcast have definitely been helpful in noticing that. What would you say about...? I think part of decision-making is asking the right questions.

Emily: Oh, I think more than half of decision-making is asking the right questions. In fact, I would say that a decision really starts with a question. It starts with a sentence. If you can't put your decision in a sentence or a question, then I don't think it's time to make the decision yet. I think a lot of times, our indecision and our decision fatigue come from trying to force a decision when a decision is not ready to be made. Yes, asking the right questions is key. I would also say, asking the first questions, rather than the final questions, because so often, we're like, well, here's the decision, what's the right thing to do? What's my decision? The reality is, rarely, sometimes it's true, but rarely do we have a decision where it presents itself, and I decide in one movement. Instead, it's often a series of smaller decisions, tiny questions (what I call arrows), small decisions of arrows that lead you to the next right thing. Then you eventually come to a final decision. Usually, when that happens, by the time you actually make the decision, it's usually pretty clear, or you've had some signs along the way that gives you some confidence that you're moving in the right direction. You make the best decision you can make at the time. Does it mean that it always turns out right? Of course not. All we can do is follow those arrows to our next right thing and trust that we are people who are wise enough, discerning enough, aware enough, and connected enough in our community to be able to make our best decision for the time that we know that we can.

Amy: Could you talk a little bit more about the idea that...(I think a lot of people think I'm gonna make a decision, and then if something goes wonky down the road, they think I made the wrong decision). This idea that decisions come, and the outcome is going to be this specific thing. When that specific thing doesn't happen, all that doubt comes in, can you talk a little bit about that?

Emily: The thing that has helped me along the way is to truly believe, not just say, but to truly believe that what's more important than the decision I'm making is the person who I am becoming. The process of decision-making is forming me, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, but it is forming me. Paying attention to the way I'm being formed, the person I am and am becoming means that no matter the outcome of the decision, if it goes amazing or if it goes terribly, I am becoming someone in the process. Sometimes that forming process, as much as I don't like to admit it, happens in a more rich and deep way when my decisions flop or when something doesn't go right or doesn't go great. I think part of maturity and growth is disconnecting the process from the result. That's not always true, like in a corporate setting. So often, if we're in a business mindset or in a work mindset, our performance is often judged by the outcome. Does it go well, or did not go well?" So that's how we know if we made the "right choice." But when you think broadly in life, we're not such straight line humans as that. It would be great if we were because then maybe would feel better. It's always this binary, I do these things, and it's always going to go a certain way. We know that's not the case. All we can do is trust that I am becoming someone and that the process of decision-making is making me into someone. It may go well, and it may go terribly. As I trust myself, trust God, trust my community, I can take the next step in confidence, even if the result isn't great. I'm going to learn from that result. I'd rather learn other ways, but I can still learn from that result, and continue to do my next next right thing.

Amy: Right. I love that. I want to ask you specifically for our listeners who are special needs moms, what would you say to that mom... I don't want to say they say this, I'm not meaning like they have a new diagnosis, or they have all these options ahead of them for a decision for their child, and that is very overwhelming. I'm not dismissing the feeling, the grief, and all the things that go around being a parent of a special needs child. What would you say to that mom who thinks I don't know where to start, Emily? Where do I start making decisions because they're coming at me so fast? What's the primer? That's a really simple way that you would say, where can we start if that's not something we've thought about?

Emily: Well, it's an excellent question. It's one that I think keeps us spinning in a room of multiple decisions. The reality is we will never graduate, retire or be able to quit making decisions. Especially if you're in a place, as you were saying, you're a mom of a child of special needs, whether it's new, or whether it's been your whole life, you have an extra layer of decisions you're making that other parents don't have. That's a reality. The same thing I would say to anyone, I think, is to answer your question is. As much as we have tricked ourselves into believing that we can multitask and do many things at once. The reality is we really can only do one thing at a time. Now, we might be able to do one thing at a time, in really fast consecutive motion, one right after the other. I think accepting my own humanity, that I am one person in time and space, and then I have permission to do one thing at a time. Then pick a place. It doesn't have to be the exact right place to start. Picking one place to start can make a lot of difference. It might not solve all the problems, or you might not be able to make all the decisions that you want to make in the day or in the hour as it requires. One thing at a time is a really helpful practice and one that actually takes a lot more discipline than it sounds like it should take. I think it's true. Even just this morning, and this is like the most mundane, ridiculous notion of life—this very morning. I was traveling last week I came back to my desk this morning, and Amy, I spent three hours deciding what to do. Three hours. Why? Because there were so many things to do. Right before you and I started this conversation, I thought, Emily, it would have been so much better if you just would have picked one thing. It might not have been the right thing. It might not have been the best thing. But you would have at least made some progress in one thing. I'm always reminded of that. Here I am, I've written a book on decision-making. I've hosted a podcast about it for six years, Amy, and still, it's a principle, I'm still learning. It's forming me. But slowly.

Amy: I love that. You have The Next Right Thing Journal. I'm gonna plug it because it's very helpful, the idea of reflection around decision-making. Some of the things you've said over the past in your podcast have been signposts for me to reflect on when I'm feeling overwhelmed. One of my favorite episodes, and I don't know which one it is, is when you collect gurus. I am a queen of collecting gurus. What I mean by that to our listeners is, when there's a problem... Let's say I have a diagnosis for my child, I want to read 17 books, instead of stepping back and giving myself some space. I keep collecting more and more expert opinions. That is one of my first signs, I'm overwhelmed. Then I need to take a step back. Another thing that I think has been really helpful is you have what's the life energy. Remind me how you word it. 

Emily: The life energy list. 

Amy: You have that in The Next Right Thing Journal. Every month, you ask: What drains you? What brings you life? As a mom, there's a lot of emotion that goes around my decisions at times as having kids with mental health issues. I remember paying attention to the things that drain me, and also paying attention to the emotions around them. I'm just gonna give an example: therapy. There are all kinds of therapies we go to as special needs moms, and I get really tired. I'm such an introvert. I didn't have to be at every therapy. But my narrative was a good mom's that every therapy. When I started making life draining and life energy list, I realized when I'm going to the grocery going, I'm adding all those things together. Errand running exhausts me. I was not present for either thing. I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't started doing some of the tools that are in your journal. So that's been very helpful for me. How is reflection helpful as we start to make decisions? I mean, I've said a little bit. What would you like to say about reflection, the next right thing and decision-making?

Emily: Well, the best indicator of future good, solid, competent decisions are decisions we've already made in the past. Sometimes, we can forget, I've been on this road before. I have felt this feeling before. This feels like Groundhog Day. But the art of reflection and sometimes the discipline of reflection can help me remember what I already know. I would say, for a mom who's making a million decisions for her kids for their well-being and safety, for the flourishing of your kids, part of the practice of reflection, the gift it can give to us, is remembering that there are some things that we know that we have forgotten to trust. That some knowing cannot be footnoted, cited or cross-referenced. I think especially as a mom who's surrounded by lots of doctors and lots of professionals, and maybe even gurus that we have collected ourselves, because we want to have all the knowledge, we can subconsciously (not even meaning to do it) begin to negate our own inner knowing, and our own wisdom and competence that you have been gifted. I think what reflection can do for you is remind you what you already know; that you are the mom for this kid at this time in place. There is no other mom for this child. It's you, and you are the one uniquely designed and gifted, no matter how incompetent we feel, no matter how ridiculous we feel, and how much we feel like we're wrecking it all up. Padraig O'Tauma is a writer, and a poet that I love to read. He's an Irish poet and theologian, and he says, "We know more than we know, we know." It's a simple statement. I think that's what reflection can do. It can remind me who I am, what makes me come alive, and what makes me die on the inside. Those things are important because it influences how I show up in the room. It influences how I show up in an IEP meeting, how I show up at a conference, and how I show up at the grocery store all the things. Knowing those things about ourselves can be a real gift to not just us, but everybody around us.

Amy: I think The Next Right Thing Journal has helped me understand myself in a way that has helped me move into situations. There are certain situations as a special needs parent that bring some trauma. My co-writer, Carrie, the hospital; she's been there so many times. She's able to recognize, before the hospital stays come, how her nervous system is feeling and the things that are making her stressed. It's the same with me. There are certain things that if I hadn't started reflecting. I don't think I would have noticed that I probably would have gone every time and thought why am I so rattled? I would say the reason that I love your journal is I've been a journal for years. We all know that if you're journaling, you can say, I'm really worried about blah, blah, blah. You wrote that 20 years ago. You wrote that 10 years ago.

Emily: You wrote that 10 minutes ago.

Amy: Nobody's going to read two pages of your story. The Next Right Thing Journal is monthly, it's concise, and it gives you a way to reflect that's not overwhelming. I would love for you to talk about it. I mean, you wrote it, so I think you probably know more about it than me, even though I use it.

Emily: Thank you, Amy, I'm glad you use it, I use it too. I think that my best commercial for the journal is I am sharing with you what I've been doing for years. I've already been doing this for many, many years, even though the journal just came out in 2021. We put all my lists together in one journal, and now we all can use it. It's a 12-month journey, and you can use it any 12 months. You don't have to start in January. You can start in April.  It's just seasonal. It is divided into quarters, so you can do three months at a time. Then there's a series of questions for reflection on those last three months, whatever three months they are. As I said, it does not have to start in January. But the gift of that is that this journal is friendly to bullet points. You do not have to write in complete sentences really on any page. There's a monthly list. There are a couple of daily lists. You don't have to do it daily at all. There are some seasonal lists. The idea is, rather than maybe a journal that you only have blank pages in, might give you like a real deep look into every day of your life, or even every day of your inner life. What The Next Right Thing Guided Journal does is gives you more of a bird's eye view or maybe even a 10,000/20,000-foot view of your life as a whole. If you do start it in January, or once you're done with the whole year and you look back on the year, the journal gives you a very, I'll call it like a flippable version or flippable way to look at your life, where you can rifle through pages at a glance and be able to to get a good feel or a good pulse on what the last 12 months have been like, where you recognize you had a lot of energy, where you recognize you had a lot of loss of energy. What you are grateful for, and even some fun lists, monthly. What are you reading? What Have you been watching? What have you been listening to? What's something you made? Being able to fill those lists out monthly kind of help you keep track of what voices have been influencing me.  Where Have I found great joy? What am I grateful for? What do I want less of? What do I want more of?  While they're very simple questions and they require simple answers, after doing that for 12 months and having a rhythm, you will know yourself better than you did before you started. It helps us when it comes to big decisions, and small decisions in daily life. It helps us make them with a little bit more easel, a little bit more comfort. Honestly, I have found the journal. I don't know if this makes sense, but it helps me take my life a little bit less seriously because I see the rhythm of how this goes. Yeah, I've been here before; we've done this before. I know I'm gonna come out of it because I have a record of that here in this journal.

Amy: I love that, and I would say for busy special needs moms, one of my favorite sections is: These are the days. I jot in dinner with this kid or did this thing. I think that's super important as we go through challenging seasons to recognize life was happening all along and note it. One of my favorite parts is when you said not to take your life so seriously. I went in a different direction in the section, What have I learned this season? At first, I thought it had to be really deep. I saw one of your lists, and you're like nothing, how to make jello. I thought, oh, I don't have to put like deep things. I learned how to make a pie crust, or I learned how to do something little. I don't like this. You open the pages of the journal, You go oh, here I am again. You take pictures of yourself. That's super important, I think, especially for moms who feel like everything has to be directed toward the child. Number one, I always credit you, but the whole life energy and life draining. I think we walk through life doing our stuff, and not realizing this is really something that lights me up. We don't realize those things that can be game-changing in how we live our days. I really love the journal. Also, I appreciate on your podcast. This is all about how much we love Emily Day.

Emily: What else do you like about me, Amy?

Amy: Seasonally, you have a soul minimalist guide to the end of the year. You have some really good questions, and they don't take long. I want to encourage anyone to listen. I'm not talking about writing your whole life story for days on end. It's quick. They are quick. They're not difficult. Boy, they pack a punch when you start reflecting on them. They almost give a roadmap to where things are going with your life. I don't ever look at them and think, oh. There are times, because I'm a one on the Enneagram, that I think I don't have a quote for the month. This whole month is ruined!

Emily: Well, let me tell you, Amy. Yes, every so there are 12 pages in the journal, one at the beginning of every month, that's a quote page quote for the month. So, you write down a favorite quote. I'll tell you, I usually spend the whole month paying attention, looking for my quote. I just wrote this month's quote; it's almost the end of the month. I just wrote it this week. I want it to be representative kind of, of what I'm learning in that month. Some people would put it at the beginning. I'm gonna pick a quote for something I want to think about all month, but I do it backward. There's no wrong. You got 30 days to come up with that quote for the month. I had a spiritual director once, Phil Anderson, said in talking about reflection, and he was referring to the Enneagram and the work that we do with that. He said, "It's a wild and wonderful thing to bump into someone and realize it's you." I think that, just as you said, the journal or the practice of reflection, in general, can really be a lovely way to put yourself in the path of yourself and recognize, oh, there I am. That can be a real gift.

Amy: It also helps you see, as you said, there I am, but sometimes moms are hard on themselves. We're hard on ourselves. This is what I've learned. This is what I'm doing well. I actually did make stuff this month. As I said, there was more life going on than I realized. It is such a great tool. I so much appreciate you coming on the show and sharing your wisdom with us and thank you for your help with our book.

Emily: Oh my gosh. Well, let me say this while I have the opportunity. First of all, I am your biggest fan, you and Sara, and Carrie, the work that you've done together and the way that you have linked arms as moms have been such a beauty to watch. Knowing you way back... I don't know how much your listeners know about the story of your book and how it all came to be. Hopefully, they know a lot because it's a lovely story. To think back on, four years ago, you guys didn't know each other. In all that's happened, you looked at each other in this writing community that you were in. We were all in together. You could look at each other not as competition, not as well, I've got it harder than you are. That often happens. Let's be real in life. It's maybe even especially in this community of moms, but that you looked at each other and said, you have something I need. I have something you need. You joined forces. You've created this beautiful resource for moms. I'm cheering you on. I hope everyone gets that book. I am so excited for you all. congratulations from the very deepest bottom of my heart.

Amy: Thank you, Emily, thank you. It's crazy when I think this is really a thing. We did it. We hope that it'll be a blessing to our moms because you're right. There is a lot of competition. There's a lot of isolation. That is part of linking arms with one another in all areas of our life. It's so important that we do that. Thank you for saying those words, and thank you for being here today.

Emily: It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Amy: All of our resources, including an entire written transcript of this episode, are available on our website at www.takeheartspecialmoms.com. Thank you for joining us today.