185. Fake Oracle Decision Making
Should you move to Miami?
Talk to that hot person at the bakery?
Launch a business?
Use all your savings to spend 9 months jobless and traveling the world?
Making decisions can feel sticky. Hard. High stakes.
I was coaching a client recently about whether or not she wants to have children, and she felt super stuck.
I had an idea about a way to coach her through that, and the idea turned into a tool that I’m teaching in today’s podcast.
It’s called Fake Oracle Decision Making (FODM).
In today’s episode of Satisfied AF, I’ll walk you through exactly what FODM is and how you can use it yourself.
Oh, and if you want to know how that coaching session turned out, stay tuned! In a few weeks, I’ll be airing a guest episode where I bring that client on so she can share all about FODM and what she ultimately decided when it comes to having kids or not!
Want customized support creating your wildly delicious life? Let’s hop on a free consultation call.
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WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
What Fake Oracle Decision Making (FODM) is and how it came to exist as a coaching tool.
Why FODM can move you from overwhelmed uncertainty to clarity and relief.
How to use FODM yourself.
What to do if you’d rather have me walk you through FODM than DIY it.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
The Satisfied AF podcast is the place to learn how to create a life and career that’s wildly delicious. Want a steamier sex life? We’ve got you. Want a more satisfying career? We’ll cover that too. And you can be sure we’ll spend lots of time talking about how to build connected, fun relationships that can handle life’s ups and downs. No matter what goals you’re working on, this show will help you create a one of a kind life that is just right for you. Join me, life and career coach Kori Linn and each week I’ll give you lots of practical tips, tools, and proven strategies to help you create all the satisfaction your heart desires.
Hello, hello, hello, happy Wednesday. I hope you’re having a glorious day. I’m having a really nice day, even though right now today in Sacramento there is so much pollen in the air. It looked a little bit like snow and made it quite hard to breathe when I took my walk, and even like walking across a parking lot to get to the grocery store because I did a little weekday grocery shopping earlier and it was pretty intense. But I’m still managing to have a delightful day and I hope you are too.
Okay, we have a really cool topic this week. So recently I was coaching a client of mine about a decision she’s struggling to make, or she was struggling to make before we used this tool. So the decision was whether or not she wants to have children. And I know some people know right away that yes, they want to have children. Some people are like, definitely not. But a lot of people aren’t sure.
And even if you’re sure about that, there’s so many other things that people feel confused about or ambivalent, or they really kind of struggle to come to a decision or to know what the “right” decision is. And as I was coaching this client, I kind of came up with this idea.
And what it was is it’s kind of like if you want to have takeout for dinner and you’re not sure where you want to have takeout from, you come up with a few choices. But then if you say Thai, Indian or Mexican food, and if your partner says Mexican, that might be the exact moment at which you’re like, no, I really wanted Thai. But right up until they said Mexican, you weren’t sure which one you wanted maybe.
This happens to me all the time. And sometimes in my head, I just imagine like, well, what if the person said this, how would I feel in my body? And I’ve used this to make decisions a ton, but I hadn’t used it quite like that on a coaching call.
So basically what I did is I said, we’re going to pretend we’re doing a coin toss. I didn’t actually have a coin, so I wrote down a side of the coin, right? Between heads and tails I wrote one down and I asked the client after I’d written it down, I said like, what’s heads? What’s tails? And then I told her what the coin flip answer was. And I kind of asked her how she felt in her body and like what her immediate response to that was.
And so the reason I’m calling this tool fake Oracle decision making is because I think a lot of times we want a true Oracle. Like we want someone to just know the right answer. We want someone to be able to give us a guarantee, like this is 100% right for you or 100% wrong for you.
The casual definition of an Oracle is a person giving wise or authoritative decisions or opinions according to Merriam-Webster. But the real original, I think, meaning of an Oracle is like someone who communicates with the divine, right? Or uses divination. So it’s almost like being able to read the future or being able to hear the voice of God or whatever.
And I think that’s the level at which sometimes people want to be reassured about like, okay, this is definitely what I should be doing. But there is no reassurance like that. Sometimes we do have an internal knowing that’s very certain. You know, my old coach, Kara, used to say like, there’s no certified letter from the universe that is going to assert like, yes, this is the one.
So instead of it being like, oh, we’re going to consult the Oracle, right, I call it fake Oracle decision making because the whole point is that it’s not an Oracle. It’s like we’re using the idea that there could be a right answer that we’re being delivered. Not so we can go with whatever that answer is on that coin toss or by taking a survey of other people, it’s more about once you hear whatever the coin toss said or the other people say, it’s about you tuning into your own body and your own awareness and your own response or reaction to what other people have said or what the “Oracle” has revealed.
Basically fake Oracle decision making is a way to know your own mind from a different angle than the angle that you normally come into contact with yourself with. Because if you’re just sitting around thinking like, what should I do? I have to decide, that’s the direction you’re used to coming from.
But if you go through this side door of like, well, in the heads or tails I said, tails meant not having children and I said heads meant having children and I got tails, what’s my immediate reaction to that? Do I feel like, ah, relief? Do I feel excitement? Like, ooh, that’s what I wanted anyway. Or do I feel like, oh shit, just in this moment I figured out that actually I want the opposite answer to be the one that’s revealed right now?
So that’s how fake Oracle decision making came to exist as a coaching tool. And spoiler alert, if you want to catch up with my client that I developed this tool with, I actually just recorded a podcast with her and it’s coming out in a few weeks. So her name is Kelsey and she gave me permission to tell you that.
And so Kelsey and I are going to talk you through what it was like for her in that moment of hearing that fake Oracle and what that allowed her to do. And spoiler alert, it was really helpful to her and it helped her see the decision in a different way that really allowed her to move forward.
And then we also are going to coach live a little bit on that podcast. So if you’ve been wondering, like what even happens on a coaching call, like what is coaching actually, you’re going to get a sneak peek behind the scenes in that episode of what it’s actually like to work with me. And so Kelsey and I will talk through like what happened in the original session, and then we do a little coaching. So that’ll give you multiple views of what that can be like.
But that being said, you don’t have to wait until then to use fake Oracle decision making to help you move from overwhelm or uncertainty to clarity and relief. So let’s talk through how you could use fake Oracle decision making yourself. And I’ll just say right now, if you’d rather have me walk you through fake Oracle decision making than DIY it, that’s an option too.
I have room right now for new one-on-one clients in my three-month coaching package. And I also, when there’s room in my calendar, do offer single session coaching packages. So if you’re like, I just need to make a decision on this thing and I want Kori to walk me through it, that’s absolutely an option. And you can just go to KoriLinn.com/learnmore and book a single session there.
Okay, so what’s a decision you’ve been trying to make? Like, are you deciding whether to move across the country or not? Are you wondering if you should talk to that hot person that you see at the bakery every weekend? Have you been noodling on whether or not you want to finally launch your business in 2024? Or are you really tempted to quit your job and use all your savings to spend nine months traveling the world, but it also feels like a really scary decision to make?
Whatever decision or multiple decisions you have to make, I get how sticky they feel. They can feel super hard. They can feel super high stakes. And I do think fake Oracle decision making will give you a different take on making that decision. So let’s walk through how you can do it.
So there’s a few different ways. I like the coin toss method, you do need a second person, I think, or an actual coin, right? So you can decide like, okay, heads is I move to Miami, tails is I stay living in Seattle. And then you do the coin toss and then whichever side you get, what’s the immediate response in your body?
Are you like, fuck yes, I knew I wanted to move to Miami? Or are you like, oh shit, actually, now that that’s the fake Oracle I’ve gotten I’m like, nevermind. What this is going to allow you to do is, again, it’s going to allow you to see your body’s reaction to the presented fake Oracle information.
If you’re not a coin toss person, there are lots of other ways to do this, right? Like let’s say you’d have a decision and it has more than just heads or tails, right? More than two choices. So you could write down the different options on little pieces of paper and put those papers in a Mason jar and kind of like swirl them around and then draw one out like you’re picking a raffle ticket winner.
And so this is just a different way of doing the same thing. It’s like, if you have five options, right? It’s like, let’s walk through what your five options could be. It could be like quit my job and spend nine months traveling. It could be launch a business. It could be try to get a job in a different industry. It could be try to get a job, like a different job in the same company. Or it could be like try to get promoted, right? Those could be like five different things you could be pondering for your career.
You could write all five down, you put them in a Mason jar, you swirl it around and you pull one out. And let’s say the one you pull out is like try to get promoted. How does that feel in your body? Are you like, fuck yes, that’s the one I wanted to do anyways? Or are you like, I knew that’s the one I should be doing, but you feel this resistance like you don’t want to do it? What comes up for you? And then how can that inform you about what decision you’d like to make?
So something I do want to bring up is that there is no right answer. So this fake Oracle decision making is not going to help you figure out what the “right” answer is. It’s just going to help you see kind of what your underlying feelings are in a different way.
But I think it’s also important to mention it’s not necessarily going to eliminate all of your social conditioning. So take the getting promoted example. If part of you really thinks that’s what you should be doing, when you draw that answer you may be like, ugh, I knew it. I knew I should be doing that. So just note that that’s a really different bodily sensation than relief. Like, yes, this is the one I wanted to do anyways. Or then excitement of like, Oh, it’s going to be fun.
Feeling obligated, to me, that’s not a good enough reason to do something. To me, if I feel obligated like, ugh, I knew that’s what I should be doing, that indicates like, oh, there’s some socialization here about what an appropriate or correct response is. And then I get to decide if I want to go along with that socialization or if I want to make a new choice about how I want to show up in the world. If I want to socialize myself in a different direction, if I want to embrace a new perspective.
What else might come up when you see the fake Oracle? You could have a feeling of dread. You could have a feeling of overwhelm. Now, again, these feelings are just information about how you feel towards that option.
The ones I look out for are like tingles of, okay, this may be the choice I want to make or relief and excitement, right? If you draw one and you’re like, yes, to me that’s an indication that that’s something you really want to do. And then maybe there are other obstacles, right? Like maybe you’re not sure how to do it, or maybe you need more information, or maybe you need to talk through an action plan with a friend or someone like me.
To me, that means this is what I want to do, but maybe I’m not a 100% sure how, versus that other obligation one. I feel like that’s like a really heavy energy and that says like, this is the one I feel pressured to do. But you don’t have to do the things you feel pressured to do. Just because you’ve been socialized to do something or that at a certain age you have to be a certain way, doesn’t mean you have to make that choice.
One of the things that Kelsey and I talked about, and we’re going to talk about also in that interview that we have coming up in a few weeks, it’s like, who is your life for? What is your life for? Is your life for doing what you “should do,” or following a certain prescriptive path, or is your life for trying interesting things and following what sounds delicious to you?
And the real truth here is I’m not here to tell you what your life is for, you get to decide what your life is for. And if what you want to do is follow a sense of obligation, you’re allowed to. And some people derive a lot of joy and pleasure from that. I personally don’t. And so for me, it’s really helpful to look out for like, what do I think I should do? And does that actually line up with what I want to do and who I want to be? Or is that a shackle I would like to free myself from so I can live my life as more of an expression of my desires and my values?
Okay, so there you have it. That is fake Oracle decision making. And I think it can be really helpful and give you kind of an interesting, different gut check on what you really want to do, what really sounds delicious to you, what really sounds deeply satisfying to you. And also you can do this alone, you can do this with your friends. Like have a fake Oracle dinner party and you can all work on some kind of choice that has been bothering you.
Or if you’re like I would much rather be guided through this process, come book a single session or come sign up and let’s work together for a few months and we can work through the fake Oracle tool together and then really talk through all the little pieces that come up and sort them out.
And if you figure out what you want to do, but there’s a lot of obstacles to getting it, like let’s say you’re like, oh, what I really want to do, actually, I’ve realized now is launch a business, but I have no idea how to launch a business or like what the steps even are. That’s exactly the kind of thing I know about because I’ve launched my own business and been in business for six years.
Not that I know everything, but I do know a lot of stuff about building and running a business and I can share everything I know with you when we work together. And if there’s things I don’t know, I probably have resources as well that you can look into for how to find that information.
And also if you want a little taster of what my business knowledge is like, I am doing a business ask me anything call, which I named Biz Curious. Yes, that’s a bisexuality pun. And it’s happening tomorrow, actually, May 9th at 2:30 PM Pacific time. And you can also go to KoriLinn.com/learnmore to sign up for that. It’s going to be super fun and also really helpful if you are starting a business, if you already have a business, if you want to grow your business.
I’ve been in business for nearly six years. In that time I’ve created nearly a million dollars in revenue and I’ve also supported lots of other entrepreneurs from just starting out to six figures to even seven and multiple seven figures. So I don’t know everything, but I do know a lot of stuff, and I would love to share that knowledge with you either on the Biz Curious call, on a one-off session or in a three month package together.
That’s what I have for y’all this week. Have a lovely week and I will talk to you next time.
Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode of Satisfied AF. If you are ready to create a wildly delicious life and have way more fun than you ever thought possible, visit www.korilinn.com to see how I can help. See you next week.
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