Processing Feedback: Decide

Episode Transcript

The Processing Feedback Decide card states, “Processing feedback should end with a clear decision, a deep understanding of why that decision was made, and a readiness to move forward.” And the card invites you to deliver the verdict, which you can do for meaningful feedback you’ve chosen to adopt by completing this: “I commit to improving skill because reason.”

Let’s bring this suit home. So much of this processing suit has been about hard inner work, evaluating the credibility of a source, sorting feedback into bins, searching for patterns, including the ones we’ve been avoiding, turning toward difficult emotions instead of away from them, calibrating with people we trust, granting ourselves permission to discard, selecting the one thing that matters most. That’s a lot of reflection, and reflection is genuinely valuable. But here’s what this final card wants to make unmistakable. All of it has been leading to something, a decision.

Processing that never ends in a decision can become a form of unhelpful ruminating. And I say that with compassion, because staying in analysis can feel productive. There’s always another angle to consider, another opinion to gather, another night to sleep on it. I’ve been in that struggle so many times. But at some point, continuing to process becomes its own form of avoidance. The reason processing deserves ten cards of its own is precisely because arriving at a clear, often hard decision is a skill, maybe one of the most underrated skills in all of feedback literacy.

And notice what the card asks for, not just a decision, but a deep understanding of why you made it. That’s what the verdict captures in a single sentence. “I commit to improving this skill because of this reason.” The because matters enormously. As we touched on with the Aspire card in the receiving suit, it’s the why you’ll fall back on when the work gets challenging, and if the change is meaningful, the work will get challenging. A decision without a reason attached to it might be far easier to let go of when times get tough. A decision with its reasoning written down is something you can stand on.

There’s also that third element that the card names, a readiness to move forward. This is why using feedback is the next suit in the deck. The entire using suit assumes you’ve done this work, that you’ve made your decision and you know why. Because what comes next, especially when the feedback involves complex or hard changes, is building a genuinely strategic plan, integrating the change, practicing it over time, reflecting on how it’s going. That’s a different mode entirely. Processing is the deliberation room. Using is the training ground. This card, this making of a decision, is the doorway between them.

That’s card 10, the final card of the Processing Feedback suit. If there’s feedback you’ve been processing for a while now, maybe a long while, ask yourself honestly whether you’re still gaining clarity or just circling. If it’s circling, it may be time for the verdict. Make the decision, write down the why. You may find that the decision itself, the simple hard act of making it, is what finally converts all that reflection into growth.