CONNECT with Sheila Botelho Podcast

Why Reducing Decisions Is the Key to Your Next Growth Phase | EP 493

• Sheila Botelho

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You’ve built something powerful. Your audience sees the polished results, the consistent delivery, and the next-level strategy. But behind the scenes, your energy is leaking through endless, invisible decisions—most of which no one else even sees. In this episode, I unpack what decision fatigue really looks like in the lives of women who are already running impactful businesses, and why it hits hardest when you're scaling something meaningful.


This isn't your typical productivity hack episode. We're going far beyond buzzwords. I’m walking you through the emotional and energetic cost of constant decision-making, sharing real-world founder examples, and offering the exact self-regulation, business design, and messaging strategies I use with my clients inside the Embodied Success Method to help them scale with clarity—not chaos.


If you’ve ever found yourself stuck between two good options, overanalyzing your next step, or quietly wondering why things feel heavier than they used to—this conversation will feel like a deep exhale. And by the end, you’ll walk away with clear tools, thoughtful questions, and one decision you can make today to start reclaiming your energy and momentum.

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Sheila:

you've built something meaningful. People know who you are, but lately even the simplest decisions feel heavier than they should. You're not stuck, you're just tired of sorting through noise that doesn't match where you're headed. In this episode, I'm breaking down what decision fatigue really looks like for women like us, why it hits hardest once the momentum kicks in, and how to reclaim your clarity so your energy flows toward what actually matters your creativity, your clients and your peace. Hi, welcome to the Connect with Sheila Botelho podcast. I'm committed to helping you reconnect to your purpose, elevate your well-being and build your version of a happy, successful life.

Sheila:

Today's conversation is one that I've been thinking about for a while, and it's truly based on how many women I've spoken to recently who are feeling the same undercurrent, and so I know it's time to bring this thing to light. We are going to talk about decision fatigue, but not in the way that you might have heard about it in productivity circles. We're going beyond the buzzword today. We're looking at how it shows up uniquely for ambitious, soulful women like you, people who are creators, founders, leaders, legacy builders of businesses, who may have been in the game for a while but who are quietly carrying the weight of a constant decision-making experience in a rapidly shifting world. We're going to talk about how decision fatigue can subtly steal your time, steal your creativity and your spark, and whether you're scaling a personal brand or whether you're running a traditional business. But it even could show up if you're leading a family or holding space for a global team, and by the end of this episode, you'll see how decision fatigue might be playing out in your life right now, what it's costing you and, more importantly, how to come home to yourself and find more ease without sacrificing your ambition or your depth. So get cozy, sidle up with something warm like a coffee or a tea. I've got my almond milk matcha over here and let's go there.

Sheila:

The first part of this whole conversation it really begins with understanding what is decision fatigue. I alluded to it on this week's mini-sode but truly, when you look at the definition Harvard Business Review gives it, they define it as the decline in the quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision-making, and that's truly okay. That's the definition, but I really wanna talk about what is it in real life terms? So, when we think about it, it's that moment when your brain goes blank while choosing a dinner spot, or when you open Instagram and can't even decide what to post because your mind is toggling between 10 options. Or when maybe your team is waiting on a direction and your inbox is full of quick questions at the same time, and suddenly you're so overwhelmed you just scroll through the inbox and don't respond to any of them. And now maybe you're thinking well, sheila, that is just what being a grownup looks like in 2025. And that may be true, and it's also a signal. It's a very real red flag that the volume of choices is outpacing your clarity. And I know I'm not alone when I talk about this, because so many people have been talking to me about having too many tabs open these days. Because when you're holding all the roles visionary operator, parent partner, friend board chair, friend board chair, class snack supplier it adds up decision by decision.

Sheila:

And here's the kicker it affects high functioning, high achieving women even more, not less. Because we're capable, because we're deeply creative and we see all the options and we know that we could do them all well. Options, and we know that we could do them all well, and that's what makes it so hard to choose. So sometimes I say this to my clients. Just because you can do it doesn't mean that it's yours to do, and you know they kind of sigh in relief. So maybe you're sighing a little right now too, I know. Even just saying it, I want to take a deep breath in, and it feels good knowing that we have to remind ourselves of these things. So let's explore where this shows up, because it's rarely just in one place you may find it in.

Sheila:

I'm going to give you a bunch of examples here. So the first one is investments. You open your calendar and you can't decide should I invest in a VA, in a new brand shoot, or maybe a strategic advisor? And then you do none of them because choosing feels too loaded. And, let's be real, sometimes you spend more time researching the options than actually executing. One Decision fatigue loves to dress up as research.

Sheila:

Another area it could show up in is in business pivots. So maybe you've been sitting on a rebrand for a year, or you've got a product that really works, but you're tired of it and you don't know whether that's boredom or intuition talking. And what do we do when we're unsure? We take another course. We rewrite the copy, we let it simmer until it evaporates completely, or worse, you launch something that no longer feels aligned because you were too tired to clarify the thing that would. It shows up in visibility strategy. Have you ever recorded a video, deleted it, rewrote it, re-recorded and then never even posted it? Hey, I've been there many times, sometimes five times in one morning. Back in the day, you think to yourself I just didn't feel right. But it's not about the words, it's about the weight of trying to say everything perfectly.

Sheila:

When your vision is not fully anchored, when decision fatigue is running the show, even simple posts start to feel like dissertations, which they really never should. It can show up in relationships, so, for instance, never should. It can show up in relationships so, for instance, if you're the glue in your household or in your business, think about all of the decisions that you're making on behalf of everyone. It can truly chip away at your own decision-making stamina. Should we do this vacation? Do we need to switch schools? How do I help my partner with their stress?

Sheila:

Even emotional labor is filled with choices how to respond, when to hold space, when to speak the truth, when to hold our tongues and not say anything and just go on a walk. It can show up in team leadership, of course. So if you're running a team, everybody who comes to you saying, oh, do you got a sack? Those times they become like another micro decision. And when you haven't carved out time to decide what kind of leader you want to be this quarter, you end up defaulting into reactivity mode. And of course, it shows up in parenting. So whether you're managing a toddler's snack rotation or deciding which high school offers the most balanced curriculum or best sports, it all adds to your brain's load, even things like, oh my goodness, this one's big for me. What's for dinner? It becomes the emotional landmine when your bandwidth is already tapped.

Sheila:

And let's not even talk about the hidden calendar stress of signing permission slips and planning birthday parties that meet expectations that you really never agree to. Okay, that's one thing. I didn't do a whole lot of thanks to home education. But, oh my goodness, the conversations with clients and friends who have. It's a big deal. And here's where it gets tricky. You might look high functioning to everyone else. You're doing all the things, your calendar is full, your team says you're crushing it, but inside you feel like you're constantly behind, like your to-do list has a to-do list, you know. You start asking yourself questions like why can't I just choose, when really the better question is what am I carrying? That's making it hard to choose. I invite you to use that one as a reframe next time that comes up for you.

Sheila:

So I want to share a little bit about what happened for me. When I first entered the online space, I had this clarity kind of land in my lap just about the offers I was putting out. I found like that came to me. My people found me. I really felt anchored and I knew what I stood for and I wasn't trying to be everything to everyone. It felt like walking on a clear path with good shoes and like the sun's shining and the birds are singing and I know who. I helped, I knew the outcomes they could expect and I had such deep trust in the work I wasn't performing, I was sharing and it just all worked.

Sheila:

Then came the rise of the personal brand and hey, I love a good brand moment. Give me the right lighting and a message from the heart and I'm in my happy place. But suddenly I was being told to be on every platform in every format and to launch everything. Now, was I actually being told that? No, I wasn't, but that's the message I was picking up by watching everybody around me. So one week it was you need a mini course. The next was go all in on retreats. Then it was why don't you have a low ticket monthly program? Oh, and why aren't you doing Instagram lives every single morning while you put your makeup on? And I laugh now because I mean, hey, some of these are actually recent, right, but at the time it wasn't funny, it was confusing and exhausting, and I started to feel like a shapeshifter, constantly toggling between strategies, tones, price points.

Sheila:

One day I was writing a copy that really felt poetic to me and the next I was being told to optimize for conversion, like whatever that meant. I was spinning, not because I lacked vision, but because I had too much vision. I could see how all the options might work, but I couldn't figure out which one would work best for me. So what happened? Well, I froze Hello, not visibly, not emotionally, but truly. It was a mental freeze, an energetic freeze, and I call that functional freeze freeze, and I call that functional freeze, and other people do too. So I could still perform, I could still post, I could still respond to emails. My emotions weren't out of control or anything. I showed up for my clients, I smiled on camera, I was doing the thing, but I wasn't making decisions from true desire. I was making them from depletion.

Sheila:

And let me tell you, when your message starts coming from that place, it really lands differently. People can feel it, I mean you can feel it. It's that sensation of moving through molasses or maple syrup right, of writing captions that sound okay but they really don't move anyone. It's like you're always feeling like you're behind, even when you're doing everything right or what someone said is the right way. So that was the moment, the quiet moment when the early seeds of what is now the embodied success method were planted, not from some flashy mastermind download or a like crush it, energy boost, but it was a real whisper from within that there has to be a better way. It came to me actually during a walk. I remember the exact spot. I was in my running shoes, I was outside, I wasn't planning content, I wasn't thinking about anything about business. I was really just thinking about peace, about joy and about the version of me that used to feel lit up by her work and not buried by it, and I realized that what I wanted wasn't to do less necessarily. I just wanted to do the right things for me in the right seasons with the right energy behind them, and that was the start. And I will say this your next breakthrough may not come from another sprint. It might actually come from slowing down and listening, from noticing and from trusting your own quiet. Enough is enough, right. So let's bring in some women who are modeling what it actually looks like to step out of decision fatigue and into what I like to term sovereign clarity. And this is just something that really helps me when I look at the stories of other women who've gone before me and they've done things differently.

Sheila:

And there's a few podcasts I think in 2018 that I was listening to, and this person was a regular on a few of them and her name is Allie Webb, the founder of Drybar, and so she had talked about how, at one point, she was the face of the brand, managing the demands of brick and mortar growth, media, investor pressure, all while navigating founder burnout. And it was so cool because she shared what she actually did. She actually delegated visibility, she handed off public facing leadership roles and she stepped into selective mentorship. She traded hustle for discernment and made peace with not being the loudest person in the room. It was so interesting to hear her talk about how her second act didn't scale louder, it actually scaled smarter. So her clarity became her brand and in doing so she created space to lead with intention and not adrenaline. And she got so centered and so many beautiful things happened for her after that time in her life and relationships because she had more mental bandwidth and emotional bandwidth.

Sheila:

There's another founder that I was listening to recently on a podcast, melanie Travis, the founder of Andy Swim, and she was talking about how she tried every visibility hack, every marketing lever, and it worked until it wasn't working and she hit that inflection point and decided to make a different move. She returned to her roots, which was sharing direct customer stories, building slow brand trust and anchoring everything into a simplified, consistent message. And you know what was really interesting about it? The growth curve didn't flatten, it deepened. Her revenue actually increased when she stopped saying yes to every shiny opportunity and leaned into a cohesive vision.

Sheila:

There are so many great examples, and one of them I've really enjoyed using these facial wipes at the gym recently. The Honest Company makes and the founder of the Honest Company is someone by the name of Jessica Alba, an actor, and I love following what she has done, because she has publicly chosen to draw a line around what she shares about her family, and this isn't a PR stunt or anything, but it's to protect her peace and her kids' sovereignty, and in doing so, people trusted her brand even more. So, when you think about it this way, boundaries are not barriers to growth. They're containers for it. So these are examples I wanted to share from different industries, because it's so easy to get so myopic and think about our own type of business and our own like what are we doing? Or what is that person that I'm seeing in the networking group all the time? What are they doing? And what they're doing might work beautifully for them, but it's so important for you to think about what you want and what works best for you.

Sheila:

So this whole thing it's about being focused. It's about doing the things that actually land for you, and the through line for all of this is your next growth phase won't be found in another decision-making matrix. Typically, it'll come from getting rid of things subtracting noise, streamlining your yeses and building from a place of internal alignment, because I've found that when you reduce decisions, you really reclaim a lot of energy, and when you reclaim your energy, that's how you start to grow things with more intention and reduce the overwhelm in your life. So this week I invite you to ask yourself where can you create more clarity? By choosing less, just making less choices.

Sheila:

Let's get nerdy for a minute, okay? So the average entrepreneur spends two to four hours a week stuck in indecision, second guessing a headline, wavering over who to hire, who to fire, reworking an offer for the 10th or 11th time, and that adds up to one to 200 hours a year. Now, if your energetic bandwidth is worth, let's just say, $150 an hour, let's just throw that number out there. It's likely worth more than that. But anyway, you're looking at $15,000 to $30,000 opportunity cost just from not deciding. Isn't that wild? But truly, let's think about it. It's not just about time and money, it's about traction. It's the podcast episode you didn't launch because you weren't sure if the cover art was on brand. It's the new hire you put off because you didn't have time to write the SOP, and so you're still doing all the admin. It's the product that was supposed to go live last fall.

Sheila:

That's still collecting dust in your drafts folder, and while it's easy to want to beat ourselves up over it, of course that's not the point. We're not going to do that here. We are going to have grace on ourselves, but we are also here to say it clearly, to name the cost financial, emotional, creative and then consciously choose a different path, because your next level isn't waiting for the perfect decision, it's waiting for a clear one. Deciding is a power move. It's not about rushing, it's about trusting. It's about saying I've gathered enough and I trust myself to move.

Sheila:

I found that when you reduce the number of micro decisions that you make daily from what to eat to what to wear, to whether that Instagram post needs more emojis you free up capacity for the decisions that actually move the needle. And that's where your next growth phase lives in the clarity, in the movement, in the space that gets created when you stop holding everything so tightly. So here's a question to take with you into your week what's one decision you've been postponing that if you made it today, it would immediately create momentum? Let it be simple, let it be imperfect, just let it be made. Let me walk you through the exact shifts that I coach my clients through, ones that free up focus and restore clarity for them so that they can actually start moving forward in their work without adding more to their plates.

Sheila:

So the first one is decide your filter. Not everything deserves your energy period. One of the first things I ask my clients to create is a decision filter, a clear, simple rubric that they can run every opportunity, dm or idea through. If it's not a full-body yes based on revenue, resonance or relevance, it's a pause or a no. Sometimes I laugh and remind them you're not an airport. You don't need to respond to every landing because you know what happens. When you try to do that, you become available to everything and powerful in nothing. The second thing I have them do is pre-decide content, offers and operations. Reduce the micro decisions. Structure saves energy.

Sheila:

So if you're waking up every day asking what should I post today or what should I focus on first, you're already burning brain power. You could be spending on your brilliance or like that hot yoga class, hello. One founder that I worked with went from posting whenever inspiration struck to implementing a four-week content plan that aligned with her sales cycle. I thought how brilliant is that? Just align it with the sales cycle. I thought how brilliant is that, just align it with the sales cycle. You're good to go. She told me I didn't realize how much brain space I was wasting trying to be brilliant on the fly, and now her ideas still land powerfully, but they're created from flow within a framework and not chaos. So, using templates, using timelines, using messaging pillars these aren't just nice to haves, they're really business self-care.

Sheila:

And third, honor your nervous system, please. Every single founder that I admire, whether they call it a regulation practice or not, I know that they have one. They figured out that their creativity and leadership are all downstream from how calm and centered they are. So I often say create your pre-meeting ritual. So, before a client call a sales conversation or a visibility moment, breathe, stretch, speak a mantra to yourself. My go-to, I love to say, is I'm not behind, I'm setting the tone for how I lead. You do not need to push harder, you need to prepare differently. And, lastly, return to your essence. This is something I always am reminding clients about that you came here for impact, not for applause In the noise of growing something really beautiful and powerful. It's so easy to lose your inner compass, but when you move from that deep place inside where you know what you stand for what lights you up and what actually matters. Your clients feel it and they're drawn to you not because you're shouting louder, but because you're resonating more clearly, and that's what makes your work so magnetic and that's what builds trust.

Sheila:

Without trying, the method I created the Embodied Success Method and Meditation is about getting back to you your energy, your rhythm, the way that you show up in the world, without compromising your impact. Because if you're anything like the founders I work with, you're not just building for Q2 revenue. You're building something that lasts, something that honors your values, nourishes your nervous system and expands your capacity to lead without burning out. You're building for your family. You're building for your community. You're building for the woman who you really want to be down the road and the women who will come after you. You really want to be down the road and the women who will come after you, who will look at your journey and feel permission to do it their way too. So that is truly what the embodied success method is designed to support. It's not about doing more. It's about doing less, with greater clarity, deeper intention and strong results, because when you reduce decisions, you reduce friction, and when you reduce friction, you access more energy, you get more focus happening, and that's when momentum comes. This method helps you streamline your mental load so you can make fewer decisions and better ones, ones that align with your body and your business model and, of course, the seasons of life that you're in. So if you're craving more simplicity, spaciousness, more aligned action, download the Embodied Success Method found in the show notes. It is free, it's immediate and it's designed to help you move forward with less effort, so that you can go out and make a really big impact in the world.

Sheila:

If today's episode landed for you, send me a message on Instagram or LinkedIn. You can also text me from the show notes. And, more than anything, notice this week. Where are you spending energy deciding when you could be directing? Your spark isn't gone, it's just hiding under a pile of shoulds. Let's clear that pile together. If you've been loving the Connect podcast, it would mean the world if you'd tap follow and leave a quick review. It helps more incredible entrepreneurs like you find these conversations. Thank you for listening. Have a beautiful rest of your day. Big blessings, thank you.