From Fear to Clarity: A Guide to Making Confident Life Decisions
Interview By Brandi Fleck
This is a transcript of the conversation between myself, Brandi Fleck, Host of the Human Amplified podcast and Franklin, Tenn. life coach, Bridget Meadows, on how to get out of a decision-fatigue fueled loop of stagnation. Keep reading to choose your next step with confidence, and leave over-thinking behind.
Feeling stuck, unsure which direction to take in your career or life? In this powerful interview, life coach Bridget Meadows shares how to make confident, aligned decisions—even when fear, doubt, or overthinking try to get in your way. Whether you're at a career crossroads or just craving more meaning, this guide is packed with insight, tools, and inspiration to move forward.
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Table of Contents:
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What Does It Mean to Be Human in a World Full of Pressure and Possibility
Brandi Fleck:
[2:05] What does being human mean to you?
Bridget Meadows:
This is such a big question, but I really liked it. I actually talked about it with a few people.
And to me, there's this really interesting duality of opportunity and responsibility or burden that comes with being human.
Because as humans, we have this higher intelligence and ability to think beyond our immediate survival needs, which means we can do these beautiful things like create and build community, learn and grow and pursue meaning in our lives, art, technology, things beyond our basic day-to-day survival.
But the price of that is that we have the burden of knowledge of knowing that our time on this planet is finite. We can experience things that the animals don't experience, existential dread or anticipatory grief of things that haven't happened yet. But because we don't have to live in the present, we can get stuck in the past or stuck in the future. The irony of not having to live in that immediate moment of survival is that we end up forgetting how to enjoy the present.
[3:20] My sort of journey of like thinking about being human is about how do I take advantage of that and not let myself get caught up in the burdens and remember that living in the present and seeking enjoyment and little pointless pleasurable things do matter, even though in the moment they might feel like they don't. But they really do. They're kind of what it's all about.
And so bringing all the pieces of our animal and human sides kind of together into just being like, how do we enjoy the time we have?
Brandi Fleck:
Beautiful. Thank you.
Bridget Meadows:
Thank you.
Brandi Fleck:
[3:56] All right, everybody, today we are talking to Bridget Meadows from Franklin, Tennessee. She's a life coach, a working woman, a loving partner, a busy mother, and the emotional support person for several needy pets. She's passionate about food, music, animals, friendship, social justice, and beliefs that finding the funny in any situation can save our individual and collective sanity.
Bridget is an expert in change management and decision making and is the founder of Bridget Meadows Coaching, a business dedicated to helping people at a professional crossroads get unstuck, choose their next steps with confidence, and get back to enjoying their careers.
And so many times, I think we try to separate our careers from our personal lives, and compartmentalization can be helpful. But in today's episode, we're going to talk about finding fulfillment and enjoyment, maybe necessarily when you don't have to compartmentalize. And finding that fulfillment and enjoyment on your life path, which involves both parts of life, choosing your authenticity, and bringing your whole self into your decisions and decision-making process.
Not only does this have a positive impact on your own life, but a positive impact on the larger world. So Bridget, welcome to the show.
Bridget Meadows:
[5:16] Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me on here.
Brandi Fleck:
Yeah. So after all that, what else do you want our listeners and viewers to know about yourself?
Bridget Meadows:
Yeah, I appreciate it. I have been a business owner as a life coach now for just over a year after pivoting from a 20-year career in food innovation. My team and I were responsible for things like new product and packaging developments, as well as strategic leadership in compliance spaces. So things like regulatory quality and food safety.
As you mentioned, I'm an expert in risk management and change management because of that experience. And because of my approach to leadership, really, I've been a coach for more than a decade, because that's just the strategy that I use to lead teams.
Now I've sort of shifted my career away from bringing change to life within businesses in ways that are safe and strategic to ensure success. And I'm now bringing that change to life within people's lives as a life coach. And I've built my business on my own values, which are things around enjoyment, partnering with others, being very practical and efficient with the solutions and approaches we take in order to give us the freedom to sort of enjoy and be ourselves everywhere we go in our personal lives as well as at work.
So that whole, you know, duality of I have to be this person here and this person here. No, we're able to kind of be ourselves wherever we go.
I just think we spend too many hours at work to accept less than an enjoyable career.
It doesn't mean you won't have some stress in your life or won't have stressful days and every day is easy, but it means you will have that fulfillment and that the job is aligned to what you value and just helps light you up with meaning and purpose and happiness that goes beyond just like, gosh, I really enjoy baking at my house. No, I really enjoy what I do. I really enjoy the time. I really enjoy the way I make money and operate in this world. And so my business is all around providing practical solutions to help you enjoy your work again, whatever that looks like for you, because that's a very personalized individual journey.
Brandi Fleck:
Yeah. Oh, man, I think that's so wonderful.
[7:25] The reason I do this podcast is because I made the switch to like start enjoying my life more because we do spend way too much time working to not enjoy it. So totally agree. And food safety. Oh, my gosh, I feel like we could do a whole episode on that. That is so interesting.
Bridget Meadows:
Yes, absolutely. And I still do, I will say, I still do a little bit of consulting in that space. So I would be happy to come back and talk about that more. But yeah, the pivot that I took, even though on paper, it seems like a really big one, like food science to life coaching feels crazy. It's really only like a one to two degree shift because it's all about managing risk and what do I want to change and how can I practically make sure that that change is a positive one or doesn't mess anything up.
[8:14] It's the same approach in both places. So even though it seems odd, it's actually a very natural pivot. It makes a ton of sense when I look backwards. But like most things, it doesn't always make as much sense when you look forwards.
How Science and Intuition Work Together
Brandi Fleck:
Yeah, for sure. I totally see how that pivot would work. And so without getting too much into food safety, though, I know there was a lot of science involved in what you did. And there's a lot of intuition involved in life coaching. So how How do those two things, science and intuition, work together?
Bridget Meadows:
That is a great question, because often these ideas get pitted against each other as if they're in competition. But if you think about intuition being a real sense, it's a gut feel. It's subjective based on your own experience and history and values. But I believe intuition is real, although learning to listen to your own is sometimes a skill learned over time.
[9:09] In contrast, science, I think science often gets like promoted as like, oh, this is absolute truth.
But really what science is, is a process. And that process seeks to eliminate the kinds of subjectivity and personal bias that is good in intuition, but is not helpful when you're trying to come up with like what's observably true based on evidence.
But realistically, every scientific discovery started with somebody's intuition about how something did or did not work. And they had their own creativity and thought to set up an experiment and figure out what the hypothesis is and then find some evidence to support or reject that idea that came out of their intuition.
I think the scientific process of experimentation is a great way to confirm our intuition.
And the reverse is also true. Science has proven that intuition and belief are real things that can affect outcomes. The placebo effect is probably one of the most well-known ones.
[10:08] If folks aren't familiar with that, the easiest explanation is that if we believe something is working, it does have the ability to make us feel better.
The biggest example is like in drug trials, the act of taking a pill actually can make people believe things are better, even if the pill has nothing, does nothing for you. And so they have to set up the experiments to sort of account for that. But we can harness that placebo effect with our own intuition and say, you know, if we're doing mindset work, it's a placebo for our nervous system. Our mindset being in the right place does matter. And it can help us create completely different outcomes for ourselves if we believe things are possible versus being convinced that they are not. If we believe things are possible…
[10:53] They don't magically come true because we intuit them or manifest them into reality. But if we believe things are possible, we are able to act in a way that we believe they are possible. We might make that phone call. We might answer that question different. We might take that action step or investigate something.
And if we don't have that mindset, we're not moving at all because we've already convinced ourselves it's not possible. And if we've convinced ourselves it's not possible, it's not because we are not going to do anything to challenge that belief.
So for me these two pieces are both still very important in my work because intuition grounds us in what's important for us, and really I use the term experimentation more than I do science, but experimentation can help us prove that out in ways that are less dangerous than like just going full board down the road of like I feel like doing this so I'm gonna quit my job and go live in the woods for a while.
That might be our intuition talking to us but practically speaking we probably want to experiment with that idea on how could we do that. And so that's very key to my process of helping folks who find themselves at this crossroads say, okay, I don't like where I am. What can I do about it?
The Real Reason You Feel Stuck at a Crossroads
Brandi Fleck:
[12:02] Okay. And you said the word crossroads. So many people find ourselves at crossroads. I feel like it's just part of the human experience. Why do you think that is?
Bridget Meadows:
Well, really, change is a constant in our lives. You know, the whole world is always changing around us. We are changing over time. We're learning and growing. We're rejecting things we once embraced. We're embracing new things we once rejected.
[12:33] We may not be changing, but the environment around us is changing. And so we no longer feel like we fit. So ultimately, along our path, we encounter these moments where that comes to a head and we have a choice to make. Do we stay on the same path or do we change it up?
The crossroads is just the easiest, I think, visualization of this. It's like, you know, oh, do I go right, left, stay on the path or maybe head backwards? But I had a friend challenge me on this recently.
I thought this was so fun. He said, well, maybe it's not a crossroads, but it's a cul-de-sac. And I went, oh, that's perfect. So you get to the end of the road and there's this infinite circle of loop that you can just sit and spiral on for a while until you figure it out. And do you go backwards out the way you came? Or do you find sort of a new direction to forge a path? But the idea of a cul-de-sac versus a crossroads, think of all the directions that you could go when you have a full 360 view to forge a new path. That can almost be overwhelming.
And as humans, we can get really excited about all those possibilities, but we also get really nervous. Our sort of lizard brains, our evolutionary survival brains are really scared of change. Our brains evolve to keep us safe, not happy.
[13:45] So change is a threat.
And it gets us into that fight or flight or freeze cycle that so many people are familiar with. We don't want to get it wrong, but we don't want to stay put. And we don't want to disappoint people and everything feels wrong. And so we'll just sit there and spiral in that cul-de-sac. I thought this was such a fantastic analogy. You know, so we just sort of get stuck there and we're not sure what the best path to take is.
Brandi Fleck:
[14:13] Yeah. Wow. I love that analogy. And I hadn't heard it before, but it reminds me of, you know, back before I did the work in my personal life, I used to always be like, you know, the torture of a choice. That's one of the things I used to say so much when I was growing up because I was so used to being in survival mode that when I had choices in front of me, it's like I wanted the freedom to choose, but it was so difficult. And a lot of my clients, As a trauma-informed coach, I also work with clients, and they have this same thing happening.
[14:49] So what else is behind that? I know you mentioned fight or flight. Can you elaborate a little more on that?
Understanding Decision Fatigue
Bridget Meadows:
Sure. Yeah, realistically, to think about this world we're living in, we have more choices than any time in history because of this advanced technology, customizable world in which we live. Even children, on average, make 3,000 decisions in a day.
[15:16] Humans, adult humans, make more like 35,000.
Now, and imagine for kids how many decisions they are making even in so much structure in their lives, right? They're not making the decision, do I go to school or not? Or, you know, and which route do I drive? So much of that structure is set for them. But they're still making decisions about, like, who do I talk to? And what do I wear? And do I speak up? Do I finish my lunch? Do I get a snack later? Like things like that.
And adults are doing that too. Plus we're deciding how to show up at work and which way we should drive in or what's for dinner or do I want to shop?
And at the end of the day, you get to this point of decision fatigue. And that is really common just after making so many, they're mostly micro decisions, but your brain is active and your brain is working to make every one and it takes a whole. And so these micro decisions just get us into this fatigue moment. And I think everybody can relate to this. If you've ever gotten home and feel decisioned out and you just go, I just wish someone else would just decide what's for dinner.
[16:16] Like that's the easiest one at the end of the day. Or like somebody pick what we watch on TV. I don't even care. You know, because you just don't have the energy, the spoons, like whatever, you know, like a metaphor you want to use. You just don't have any more brain power left to make it. And so in a world with all these micro decisions, then when it comes time to make a big one, where the stakes are really high, we're already at this sort of like deficit.
And yeah, our nervous systems are like, ooh, that's a really dangerous one. And we tend to lean towards stability instead of making the change.
Brandi Fleck:
[16:51] Okay. So you're in this cul-de-sac and you've got all these options, but you also might have some decision fatigue thrown in.
How do you decide where to go?
Bridget Meadows:
Yeah, well, I would be remiss if I didn't suggest working with a coach who specializes in decision-making and managing risks.
[17:10] But ultimately, I, as a coach, am not going to give you that answer because that answer is going to be very personalized based on your values, your experiences, your comfort with risk, or your comfort with risk after working with a risk management expert. We get into those things together when we work together, and I help find out what drives you and what you're passionate about in your life.
Those things are really important foundations to getting your nervous system back to a place where you're able to make a good decision.
We talk about what's holding you back from those things that you want and really get around those sort of perceived roadblocks, because most people actually do know what path they would prefer. But all they see are the potential downsides of it, because that's just how our brains function. We're really good at thinking of the bad things that can go wrong.
Managing Risk, Alleviating Fear
But the process that I use, if we can get your nervous system back to normal and evaluate those risks from a place of calm instead of fear, then we see, are there things we can do to sort of neutralize those risks that are real? Not all the risks are real. Sometimes we're just worrying. For example, I worked with a woman who wanted to find another job. She was really unhappy in her job, but she had already decided, I want to leave my job. I'm going to find another one. She was not having a lot of luck finding another one, and she was spending all this energy applying.
Once we started talking, what came out of our conversations was that she actually really wished she could start up her own business. And when we started talking about that more, we found out she actually had had her own business in the past. But she had already decided that that sounded too risky and she didn't want to go down that road and she sort of ruled it out and considered it like a dream that she should ignore.
But when we actually dug into the risks and got curious about like, okay, what are those thoughts? What are we thinking here? What's the concern? We were able to find that some of them weren't real. And some of like, I can't make enough money to do that. But when we looked at her budget, it was clear that that wasn't actually going to be the thing that held her back when we really looked at it. Or that it wasn't going to be like that forever. It was going to be, oh, a few months and then this. And, you know, so that made it look better. And we were able to find and create some things to put in place around like, let's have a budgeting conversation. Let's do this.
What can you shift? What can you do in three months? What can you, you know, talk to your husband about in terms of time management or other things? And really kind of a mix of like budgeting and practical tools and some belief in herself that she had the tools to go do this if she put her energy towards it. And that really helped her quiet those fears. And she started making a plan right away to rescale her business. And so she started it back up part-time.
We uncovered how much she hated applying for jobs. And once she took that energy away from that and put that energy back into her business, she had part-time clients. She's working and she's spending her energy there and she's making a plan for scaling that up to full-time now. And she's so much happier putting the work and energy towards, you know, it's not overnight. You can't snap your fingers and I go from employed by someone else to full-time salary that I've created from thin air. So it's taking the time, but she's just so much happier putting the effort and energy towards this thing rather than spending endless energy applying for jobs that ultimately she doesn't even really want.
But really, that's kind of, that's just an example of like one crossroads where it's like, yeah, this is the path I'm on. What's the right one to take? And checking in along that way, too, you know, really checking in on how is this feeling as we go through?
How to Know if You're on the Right Path
Brandi Fleck:
[20:43] Okay, so I heard you say that there were practical steps that you could take in a situation to kind of alleviate the fear and calm a person so that they could make a better decision.
Once you've made the decision, though, how do you know that you're on the right path?
Bridget Meadows:
Yeah, really, it goes back to that great question you asked at the beginning around intuition and experimentation.
So how does this feel in my body as I am moving in this direction? I'm moving slowly. I'm not running into a fire. You know, I'm stepping carefully into an unknown and I'm looking around and I'm checking in both with myself and the environment around me.
It's so nice to hear from people when they're on the right track, I feel lighter or I feel so energized. That is usually a sign that this is really dinging something in your own value system.
Sometimes, though, you might also feel stressed or worried, which is a time to sort of check in and experiment before committing full time to something. Experimentation is actually a big principle of mine, and it was a big catalyst for the change in my career over a year ago.
I got this advice that the people who are happiest in their careers treat their career paths as an experiment, not an identity.
And as a scientist, it sent chills and goosebumps up all over my arms because I had always put myself in this very, you know, limited box of, like, science. Okay, so I'm a scientist, and then I'm a manager of scientists, and then I'm a director, and then I'm a department head, and, like, why am I still not feeling happy?
[22:26] Ultimately, it was because I had treated it as an identity and not really leaned into some of the things that lit me up. And those things were around collaborating with other people and finding solutions to problems and helping forge new paths of things that are possible, bringing these new things to life that didn't exist before. Like, those are the things that get me going.
And then that permission to experiment and do that in a different way—so doing that as a life coach was what led me to a whole new mindset of like, if I'm doing it this way, if I'm experimenting, I'm learning with everything I try. Not everything is going to work, but it's not failure. It's an experiment. And I learn and then I can do it differently. And so that, for me, that was a huge mindset change.
So helping people think about their decisions not as a blood contract that they have signed with the Universe, but it is a small step, an experiment that you're taking to look at something new. And if it doesn't work, you can always take a step back. It doesn't send you down that road forever. There's an analogy that…
Decisions are Hats, Haircuts, or Tattoos
[23:38] All three of those things are undoable.
Just very different levels of undoable, right?
A hat you take off instantly.
A haircut, you have to grow it out. You might look a little foolish, but ultimately you can get a haircut back to what you had before. And haircut decisions are things like moving or taking a new job or whatever. You know, you might have some adjustment periods if they don't work out and you need to back up or change something, but they are ultimately changeable. And so no decision is set in stone, or I should say very few.
The tattoo decisions are things like major financial investments or marriages and divorces. You know, those are undoable but they are quite painful to undo and they can leave scars, literal financial and emotional scars.
But those are the ways if you can think about decisions as like it's okay to try, it's okay to experiment, it's okay to learn in a safe environment or a safer environment, then the idea of, oh, I learned something and I'm not going to do that again, or I learned something and I'm comfortable when I approach it this way, it becomes a very individualized journey to move ahead with that sort of confidence and safety that you have a safety net, that it isn't leaping without a parachute.
Brandi Fleck:
[24:58] I love your analogy of like the hat, the haircut, or the tattoo. I think these are so helpful, and I would love for listeners to take that away and just remember that it's okay. Things are undoable. It's just what level are you willing to undo them at?
Bridget Meadows:
Yeah, absolutely.
We tend to treat decisions, you know, again, it's an evolutionary thing in our brain that we have to sort of use our higher senses to fight—our brain doesn't know that that's not a tiger ready to eat us. It's like, no, this is just a grouchy coworker or this is just a bad day. But like to our brain, it's like this is life or death. And so when your brain is in that mode, it's really hard to make a logical sort of thought out calculated decision about like, OK, I can do this and this and this, and those things will make it better.
Discover What Truly Matters to You (And Why It Changes Everything)
Brandi Fleck:
[25:51] Yeah. And one thing that you mentioned too, that I would love to dig into a little more is identity.
And like, there are so many people who—so we've got the people who compartmentalize and like, okay, this is work, this is life. I don't combine them. But then we've got the people who do just identify with what they do.
How do you go about separating your identity from your career, or at least having a more healthy holistic version of your identity.
Bridget Meadows:
[26:21] Yeah. I mean, that's such a good question. The approach that I've always sort of thought about it is, I am me all the time. It was actually a line from a song that I heard that I really loved. And so the idea of being yourself all the time is, I think, something that's very compelling to people.
Now, realistically, if the me all the time is like, I sometimes need to be a snack goblin on my couch wearing pajama pants, like that's probably not me as I show up in a very big corporate job.
But the idea of kind of knowing yourself enough to say, what are the environments that I can operate in as authentically as I can?
You know, there's going to be some social norms we have to go into, but those social norms should never be something that grates against our values so strongly that we just can't operate. And I think at work, we have a certain expectation of like, well, if I loved it all the time, I would do it for free. And they don't, you know, and they're paying me, so it's okay if it sucks a little bit. That's true, but when it sucks a lot, or it really starts to rub up against a value, or it's not you feeling your best, or you feeling like you are valued for who you are, someone's trying to put you in a different box, like, you start to feel that. You feel that intensely.
[27:45] And that is, I think, the journey that I was on to understand, like, why in this identity box, this scientist box, this leader box that I had been happily living in. I didn't hate my career for 20 years. You know, I had been happily living in it, but why had it drifted into something that felt so different? And it was part change on my part and part change on the industry's part and change at places I worked. And it just ended up in this place where there was this real conflict between what I valued and how I could show up and how that would be perceived.
And so I think we become like the frogs in the pot with the water slowly turning up over our careers. And then maybe something happens, you know, something can happen in personal lives. That happens to people all the time, right? A family illness. I have clients who, you know, have changed jobs because it's like I have a parent who's diagnosed with cancer and I'm going to be there for them. And I'm going to shift my career to do that. Like, that's a beautiful thing. If your career will allow you to do it, or you might have to leave and do something else.
But that idea of aligning yourself and your values around how you show up, it just requires knowing yourself and knowing what's important to you, as well as knowing the sort of values and structure and culture of where you might operate. And hopefully setting yourself up where those things aren't in conflict, that those things are in a lovely harmony that can also allow you to be paid and survive in a capitalist world.
Brandi Fleck:
[29:13] Yeah, yeah. So I hear you say that values are a really big part of being able to be who you are at all times, is living by your values.
Bridget Meadows:
[29:24] Yes, I believe that strongly. For me, one of those values that I have found is humor and enjoyment and being able to laugh at dark things and not letting the dark things around us get us down. That's just who I am. And I have uncovered that through a lot of different tools.
There's some values assessment tools. There's things like the Enneagram. There's things like personality assessments. None of those things are, you know, perfect truth. But as you look through those and and evaluate yourself—therapy is helpful. Coaching is helpful. All these ways that we get to know ourselves better, absent of the sort of cultural and family influences that would tell us who we are. We know better who we are. And when we dig those things out, then we come to like, oh, this is what I care about.
And so for me, it's not the only thing I care about, but values of funny and enjoyment and pleasure pop up in all of these things that I had done before that it's just like, yeah, I'm here to have a good time. I want to enjoy things. I also want it to be meaningful. I want to take care of other people. I want to help blaze trails.
But ultimately, I'm not going to want to do those things if I'm not also enjoying my time doing it. So that's one example. Someone else might be grounded very strictly in social justice or a sense of wanting to build communities, a purpose. It varies. It varies completely. And so that's where I can't, as a coach, help you make a decision without you understanding what's important to you.
[30:59] That's really where you come into the picture to be able to talk about like, yeah, this is what I value. I value inclusion. I value security. I value having a high salary. Those things are all OK. It's non-judgment.
But like, what is it that's important to you that is not going to be negotiable? And we work around that because almost all the rest is negotiable. We can figure out ways to make those problems seem lesser or to soothe that fear in your head that may or may not be real.
How to Find Out What’s Meaningful to You
Brandi Fleck:
[31:28] Yeah. And also, how do you know what's meaningful?
Bridget Meadows?
Just for yourself?
Brandi Fleck:
Yeah. I think a lot of times people get sort of stuck in a rut and they like, I don't know, it seems like sometimes things just don't have meaning. You're just doing things out of habit or whatever. How do you make that shift to even know what is meaningful to you?
Bridget Meadows:
Yeah. Again, I will recommend working with a coach because there's a lot of great tools to dig into what that is or a therapist. Therapists can be really helpful with that, too.
But there's a lot of good like journal prompts and and assessment tools and things like that you know prompts like: “If I'm not blank, I am nothing,” you know, and like thinking through like if I'm not doing this I'm not important or I'm not feeling like myself. I feel most like myself when I am blah. And not necessarily like going to work but like it might be helping people or it might be like, I am at my best when I am doing this.
You can also ask the people around you what they think you are good at. They can't tell you what they value, but often if it's something you value, you're probably putting energy into it unconsciously. And so who are some trusted people around you, including children.
[32:45] Who can help assess like, what am I really good at? When you see me being good at something or when you see me helping you or when you see this happening, like, what do you see? I actually got this feedback from a couple co-workers and my kids, and it created kind of an arc of like, wow, okay, because several…one of the themes that popped out as I was sort of doing this own digging into my own sort of value structure was, what am I good at?
And they said, breaking down big, complicated things so that they don't feel as complicated anymore. And of course, the teenager said that much differently than the 50-year-old coworker. But it was the same thing. It was like, no, you take these big, complicated problems that seem unsolvable, and you sort of break them into meaningful parts. And suddenly those parts don't seem as scary anymore. And we can do things about this and break this and, you know, and get it to that….and for teenagers, especially, every problem is just a, you know galaxy ending catastrophe if they are allowed to sort of spiral on. And so like, okay, come on back down and let's talk about this and bring it in. And so that is that's a role I play in my house too—help the teens who I mean, you know, it does feel that big when you're that age. It's it's totally normal. But to be able to realize, OK, what can you do about that and where you have control and where you don't have control and being willing to kind of give up the control where you don't have it, but seize the control where you do.
And be like, that's where I have ability to put some energy. Why am I going to put energy over like what this person is thinking about me? Can't control that.
But what steps am I going to take to know that I am doing the things that I can live with? That's where I should put some energy.
And those are two very different places to be thinking about. One is much more tempting in terms of like, I'm going to spend so much time thinking about what she thinks about me. But really, if you're over here going, yeah, but what am I happy with myself and what I'm doing? And am I showing up in a way that feels fair to me? And okay, I feel good about that now, you know, and spending your energy where it actually makes the most sense.
So that's, I think I answered your question. I'm not sure. I kind of rambled there a little bit maybe, but coming back around to that connection to yourself and understanding who you are and what you want to spend time on.
Brandi Fleck:
[35:00] Absolutely.
Bridget Meadows:
And so practice too, and experimentation again.
Brandi Fleck:
[35:04] Yeah. So practice, experimentation, and that your life will be meaningful if you're doing things that are like true to you.
Bridget Meadows:
Important to you.
Brandi Fleck:
And the meaning just comes.
Bridget Meadows:
Yes. Yeah. It's your life. You should be living to your values and the things that are important to you, not what someone else has told you is important.
How Individual Change Sparks Collective Impact
Brandi Fleck:
Yeah. Yes. Okay. Well, on that note, I would love to talk a little bit about larger society because these individual cases and examples, these great examples that you've brought up, I feel like are a microcosm of a bigger societal pattern. So do you think that society is at a crossroads or a cul-de-sac? And if so, how do we create change as a collective?
Bridget Meadows:
I do think we are at—our society is at a big crossroads, specifically, you know, our country certainly feels like it's at one right now.
[36:01] I wish I had an easy answer for this. I do not have an answer for this, because wouldn't we all love to be able to fix the things that are going on with an answer like this?
But, you know, I do think this idea of what do we value is helpful and also could be used for nefarious means, right? Because if what you value is hoarding money and resources and power, you get the worst of humanity. Versus if what you value is, you know, I value collective freedom and thought and, you know, free exchange of ideas and things like that. That's going to be much better for society, at least in my opinion. But then that's not everybody's opinion. So I'm not sure how we bridge those gaps other than I think probably everyone should go to therapy.
Everyone should consider working with a coach and everyone should be thinking about what they want their life to mean.
[37:01] I suspect that some of the folks who are doing the most of the wealth hoarding and the power grabbing and whatever haven't actually done a lot of deep introspection about who they want to be as a human being and are more about this is just what they think is supposed to be the picture of a very successful white man. Not all white men, but certainly some of these guys running around creating the chaos. So I can't imagine that they've done the kind of introspection and work to think about, like, what do you actually want your life to be about and mean?
I think there are a lot of external forces leading people down what sounds like happiness and success and power and influence, but really, ultimately, they seem miserable as individuals. And I think that's going to have, you know, impact collectively on our society that ultimately is negative if we can't figure out how to sort of coalesce and fight that.
The biggest thing for me in this current environment, I will say—I'm not creating change as a collective, unfortunately.
[38:11] But I refuse, again, because I value pleasure and enjoyment and humor, I refuse to let this stuff get me down. I'm going to find the funny. I'm going to find the way to laugh at it. The darkest stuff, I'm going to find a way to laugh at it because I just refuse to let it break me. It might be a spiteful streak I have. I don't even know to be like, I'm going to enjoy this despite your foolishness. But it is very real for me to be like, nope, I'm not going to let that get me down.
And so I think my purpose, at least in the near term, is to be sort of talking about enjoyment and joy in general. And how do you find joy in your life in a time of great stress and great pain and great challenges to our sort of collective humanity? I don't have all the answers to that yet, but I'm seeking them. And I think maybe seeking them is part of the point.
Brandi Fleck:
[39:09] Yeah, absolutely. And as you were talking, I started thinking about, well, it sounded to me like you were saying that to make collective change, each one of us as individuals have to do the introspection and the inner work to be happy and enjoy our lives. And that will make the meaning in our lives. And then as individual contributors to the collective, that changes the flavor of the whole body of humanity. And so one by one, even if it's slow, even if it's a process, it's the journey, not the destination, I guess, we will eventually get there.
[39:51] But we're going to be going through the duality that you mentioned from in the beginning as we're trying to get there. And that's playing out on a larger stage.
Bridget Meadows:
Yeah, for sure. It has to be both. And it can't be the type of individualism that is isolationist and rugged individualism to the point of, like, it's for me, not for you. You know, like, it can't be that kind of, you know, I'm going to figure out what's important to me and then I'm going to take it from anybody who might threaten me. It's got to be in terms of this is my role in a collective place. And I do think as a society, it is that duality of humanity as well.
[40:29] I'm we we get to live in a society so we owe something back to the society in terms of responsibility and so finding our role in it and where we can make an impact whatever that is that is important to us, and also we are doing no harm to those around us by doing that.
There's a there's an analogy of like a campsite a campsite approach—you leave it better than you found it And I feel like that should be everyone's approach to their lives, their relationships, the things they do in this world is how can I leave this space better than I found it? Leave this relationship better than I found it? Have this friendship or family relationship is all about enjoying the time we spend there and not about leaving it a wreck when we end it in whatever way we end it.
Investigating Fear and Risk So You Can Act
Brandi Fleck:
Yeah, that's a really good point. And about impact, I'm wondering, so say if somebody wants to make a difference in a politically charged time, they want to go out and it's important to them to speak up, but it might be dangerous to speak up, for example. How do they minimize risk in that situation while maximizing positive impact? Because it could be really scary to go do that.
Bridget Meadows:
I think there's a certain amount of like investigating that fear a little bit more. Like, where's that fear coming from? For some of us, and this is this is going to get very political for a second, but this is something I believe strongly. For some of us, this feels new, newly scary. Right. And specifically, this affects a lot of really well-meaning white women, of which I am one, where we are very scared to speak out politically because of the impacts it could have.
[42:22] But realistically and frankly, we haven't been in that crosshairs historically in as much as other marginalized groups. So queer people, people of color, indigenous people have always, you know, immigrants have always been at that level of risk.
And so it feels new and threatening to us. Sometimes that fear is just in our head, because realistically, this country has been who it has been and who, especially Black women, have told us it has been for them for much longer than we realized it ourselves. You know, it took even a second Trump presidency. And, you know, we heard about it in the Women's March and we heard about it with Me Too. Like, there are so many recent examples of sort of a collective awakening, some of the Black Lives Matter movements and things like that, where it's like, oh, we feel at risk, but that risk is not actually new.
We just newly feel in the crossroads, in the target range.
[43:18] So making that sense of that fear to be like, is that fear real?
As a middle-aged white woman looking the way I do, if I yell at an ICE officer who's grabbing somebody and shoving them in a van, and if I'm recording and yelling at an ICE officer, am I at the same level of risk as someone else who might be a person of color, might be mistaken for an immigrant of Latino origin?
I am not at that same level of risk. Now, that's still okay. I might not be ready to go out there and put my body on the line, But it is like let's normalize where it is in the scope of things and then from there go ahead and just, then from a more sort of like aligned point of view with your fear to be like, okay I have fear. The fear makes sense. It's not as bad as I probably think it is. And also, it's not zero risk.
So think about what you're capable of doing.
Do you have the resources to get out of jail if you get arrested? Do you have people to watch your children? If you don't, then you are not in a privileged position to go out there and put your body on the line. And that's okay. You should be making phone calls. You should be sending angry letters. You should be organizing in your community to take care of other people and not necessarily be on the front lines of something. So I think it's a mixture of like knowing what you can do, where it fits into the broader picture, and being okay with that. Like giving yourself permission to be like, I can't solve the world. You know, for me, I cannot solve the world.
[44:44] My unwillingness to let it get me down and my willingness to laugh at it is important to fuel me so that I have the energy to do things like collectively organize, to volunteer where I volunteer, sing. I sing with an LGBTQ group occasionally, and I have a child who sings with a teen version of that group as well.
And so being present in places and adding our voice in a way that we can add our voice to it is something that we feel really good about. We're doing the things we can do. I know the instinct is we all want to do everything, but recognizing that we can't do everything, being okay with that, and taking the steps we can take. And knowing that there's a full spectrum and dynamic of impact there. And just because you're not doing everything doesn't mean doing nothing is the only option. There's so much in the middle that you can do. And I think, again, it's all very custom to comfort and what we know and what we can control in our lives and in these places where we see injustice and we want to act.
Brandi Fleck:
Yeah. Bridget, I feel like you've given so many tangible steps that people can take in their lives. So thank you for that.
Bridget Meadows:
[45:54] Absolutely.
Quick Tips for Making Fearless Decisions Starting Today
Brandi Fleck:
Yeah. Before we let listeners know where they can find you and the amazing work you're doing in the world, is there anything else you want to share that we haven't talked about yet today?
Bridget Meadows:
[46:04] I would love to share this one tip because I think this one tip is really helpful. I have painted our brains and our nervous systems as evolutionary, you know, fearful creatures running from saber-toothed tigers. They are that. They are also absolute powerhouses of problem solving. And so if you can just accept this duality of your brain, there is a hack to get your system out of fight or flight and overthinking.
[46:32] The next time you are worrying about the thing, what if comes into your mind. This what if is a very powerful, like, fight or flight freeze mode. What if this fails? What if this fails? If this fails, I am going to get a bad review. And if I get a bad review, I'm going to get fired. If I get fired, I can't pay my mortgage. I'm a little, like, it just spirals. And, you know, I'm going to end up homeless on the street living out of a van. Like just like it's gonna it's this crazy thing that takes our brains away it's worth noting that's an adult problem teenagers they do not have this part portion of their brain adapted enough they do not think through the consequences of their decisions so teenagers make great decisions they just are bad at thinking about the consequences of those decisions are in the moment that decision makes total sense um I'm gonna speed because I'm late to work, an adult is like I'm not gonna speed because I'm not gonna get points; I don't have money to pay a fine. And I don't want to go to court.
But the teens, that impulsivity of teens is because they don't have this think through mechanism yet. But for us adults, where it's overdeveloped, we need to turn it off.
And so I want you to take that what if, “what if this fails” and shift it to “even if.”
And just by shifting that word to even if, you've turned off your saber tooth tiger brain, your lizard brain that's freaking out over the saber tooth tiger, and you've turned on this a frontal cortex problem-solving powerhouse, even if this fails.
[47:56] I'll have another chance to do it. I will learn something. I might be able to tweak that. I could launch it again. This isn't the end-all, be-all. Well, I'll have to, you know, have a day of sadness, but I'll get over it. It just engages so many more possibilities that can be really, really powerful for the things that you actually need to do. And so, yeah, that's that's something I like sharing wherever I go, because I think that helps you just again, it's just a little flip flip the switch. And it's very simple to remember. And that's a really powerful sort of risk assessment tool as well, because it's like, I can't do this because this is going to happen. I can't do this because I'll fail. Okay, what if you didn't fail? Well, then I could probably do it. Okay, so how can we focus on you not failing or not feeling like a failure? And so that's kind of the approach that a lot of the things that I work with folks takes.
[48:48] So, yeah, so if you're struggling, you know, with changes in your life, if you have trouble making your decision, sort of speaking directly to your listeners now, it is okay because it is, in fact, really hard. This is our own biology working against us sometimes, and it's okay to look for help from an expert who can help you engage some other parts of your brain. You will be able to come up with a solution. This is total DIY type work, but it's DIY with a guide. And so that is, you know, that's and we seek that anyway.
[49:19] We seek help from friends and family in the universe. And like we're looking for that that help. Working with a coach when you are feeling really stuck in these places is a great way to sort of find those practical steps to make change in your life.
Brandi Fleck:
[49:32] Well, I agree. And thank you so much for yet another tangible tip. So, Bridget, how can listeners find you in the work you're doing?
Bridget Meadows:
Yeah, I'm most active on LinkedIn and Instagram, and I'm just listed as Bridget Meadows Coaching. You can also search just on Google for Bridget Meadows Coaching bio site, and my website will come up with all the links to everything. My bio site has my LinkedIn, Instagram, my email, booking places, and links to, you know, just ways to get on my mailing list or listen to other podcasts I've been on and things like that. And I'll have this podcast posted there as well. So, yeah, that's the way to get hold of me.
I do one-on-one coaching over periods of time, and I also have a one-and-done money-back guarantee decision session that is focused on making a one decision in your life within an hour, an hour session to get you to a decision. You make it, but I'm the guide to help you figure out what it is you really want and how we can make it happen. And if we don't come to the decision in that hour, you get your money back or we'll keep working for free. So it's up to you. So that's a great tool to get you kicked off if you're really, really sitting at that crossroads and you've just been overthinking it and you just want to get a good night's sleep. I can help you make that decision you've been struggling with.
Brandi Fleck:
[50:56] Okay. Bridget, I want you to be my coach now. I'm just saying.
Bridget Meadows:
Come on over, Brandi. I've got slots. I can fill you right in. All right.
Brandi Fleck:
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been a great conversation.
Bridget Meadows:
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. I love the work you're doing.
Final Thoughts: You're Not Stuck, You're Just One Aligned Decision Away
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by decisions or stuck at a personal or professional crossroads, you’re not alone—and you’re not broken. The tools, mindset shifts, and emotional clarity that Bridget shares here prove that even fear can become a guide if we learn to listen differently. The next step? Choose your next small experiment—and give yourself permission to change.
Join the conversation!
Feel free to share your own experience and let me know if you have any questions in the comments.
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Hi, I’m the founder of Human Amplified. I’m Brandi Fleck, a recognized communications and interviewing expert, a writer, an artist, and a private practice, certified trauma-informed life coach and Reiki healer. No matter how you interact with me, I help you tell and change your story so you can feel more like yourself. So welcome!
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