How to Make Decisions
The more women I talk to in my life coaching practice, the more I witness decision-making as a bottleneck to women's success.
Because if they aren't making decisions, they aren't taking action.
They aren’t moving forward.
They aren’t making mistakes, learning from them, and then growing beyond them.
They’re just remaining… stuck.
After having a client call this week where my client and I made three key decisions in her business in just a few minutes, she felt the biggest weight off her shoulders to have these off of her plate.
And after sharing with my Instagram community about this rapid-fire decision making, I received lots of validation that decision making is, in fact, an issue for many.
So today, we’re diving into this.
But first, let’s examine why we’re indecisive in the first place.
Where does indecisiveness come from?
The fear of making a decision is often a byproduct of perfectionism or a fear of failure.
If everything needs to be perfect, then there isn't room for error.
If there isn't room for error, then there's no room for making the wrong decision.
If there's no room for making the wrong decision, then you've got to think long, hard, and excruciatingly about your options and weigh literally all of them, OR ELSE!!
This painstaking process might feel like it's healthier than just committing to a decision, but it's toxic to your growth.
Additionally, fearing failure is detrimental to your growth as well.
Because if there’s one thing successful people know, it’s that repeated failure brings success.
So if repeated failure brings success, then the opposite must be true, right?
Possibly.
I’m not going to say that avoiding failure guarantees failure, but it definitely guarantees remaining stuck in the same place.
And you can perceive that however you’d like.
The indecisiveness misconception
A common misconception is that not making a decision is healthier than making the wrong one decision.
But this could not be further from the truth.
As Jen Sincero states in her book, You Are a Badass:
"Deciding is freedom. Indecision is torture."
Not making a decision weighs heavily on your thoughts, stunts your growth, and poisons your confidence.
Not to mention, it's tiring on relationships when you ask for advice from a friend, they invest time in giving you advice, and you proceed to weigh your options for six more months.
Why indecisiveness is so unhealthy
We as a species are meant to grow, learn, and evolve by taking action, making mistakes, and learning from them.
When we remain in a state of inaction due to fear of making mistakes, fear of failure, and fear of criticism from making a "bad" decision, we prevent ourselves from learning and evolving the way we're designed to do.
In other words, while our peers are growing and thriving, we remain stuck.
And when we remain stuck, a lot of unfun stuff happens.
You become grouchy and resentful
The universe doesn't get to experience your awesomeness
We grow more insecure over time
The more action someone takes, the more they learn, the more confident they become.
Because as new situations present themselves, they think, "Hey, I've got this."
And when you tell yourself you've got this over and over again, chances are, you can tackle just about anything that comes your way.
How to make decisions like a boss
I am here to help you break your indecisiveness once and for all.
Because you deserve to.
You deserve to be the person who takes action and fails forward, and does something totally badass with your life.
You deserve to be the person who inspires others to do the same.
You deserve it all.
So please pull out a pen and paper, read through the below, and apply these tools to the decisions that you've been dragging your feet on because I know it will get you on the path of moving forward.
Remove the idea of a decision being right and wrong.
I know this might be brain-breaking to get behind, but I'm going to ask that you trust me on this one.
All the available options are just options, and your goal is to figure out which option feels good enough right now for you to take action on.
To remove the idea of it being right or wrong, and instead consider them as just options.
And when you take action on one of the options, one of two things will happen.
It will either feel really good and move you closer to your desired result, or you will learn something.
So you either are winning because you moved closer to your desired result or gathered enough information to make another decision.
When you look at decisions as either winning or learning*, it becomes more empowering to make decisions from a good place rather than a fearful one.
So every decision you make, recognize it as just gathering information to get you closer to your desired outcome.
2. Don't ask for others' opinions… yet.
So often, we prevent ourselves from taking action because we gather others' opinions before we get clear on our own.
And when we have way too many people's opinions, it becomes a lot harder to hear what our guts are telling us.
Instead of immediately surveying your friends and family on your next big decision, try to clarify what you feel the answer is for you.
Once you have an idea of what your gut is telling you, then select 1-2 people to bring it to for their thoughts.
But before you give them free rein to share all thoughts, provide them with some direction first and let them know what you feel is best for you, so they can give you advice that isn't in direct contrast to your intuition.
3. Find the fear.
Ever recite "I don't know… I just don't know" a thousand times when someone asks you what you're going to do?
I'm going to kindly ask that you don't lean on that phrase and instead get real clear on what you do know.
When we instead build out our options to recognize what the outcomes may be, we begin to find the fear rather than cover it up.
| RELATED: How to be more courageous in your everyday life
"I don't know where to move" becomes "I'm afraid of being judged for moving back in with my parents."
"I don't know if I should stay in my job or not" becomes "I'm afraid of screwing over my team if I leave."
Once we get to the actual fear that exists, we can begin to break through the fear of judgment and the fear of people-pleasing.
Find the fear, and then choose to break through it.
4. Remove the fear.
If you want to get to an answer quickly, ask yourself, "If I wasn't afraid of anything, what would I choose?" or another way of putting it is, "If no matter what I could have my ideal outcome, what would I do?"
While these may feel like idealistic questions, they allow you to find what your heart desires a lot sooner, which will always be in the direction of your dreams.
(Side note, if you can't get past this fear, apply to work with me, because I'll get you past it.)
5. Have your back with your decision.
To decide means to cut off all other options and possibilities.
So once you make your decision, you have to stick with it like white on rice.
| RELATED: Five decisions I made that transformed my life… and how you can make them, too.
If you waver on it at all, you're literally putting yourself through unnecessary pain.
You've thought it over, you decided what made the most sense for you, and now it's time to act.
After you take action and identify if it has brought you closer or further from your desired result, then and only then are you equipped to make a new decision.
So even when that little voice jumps in and says, "are you sure????" have your back and remind it, "yes, I am."
Decision Making in Action
On Black Friday, I spent way too much time deciding which daily planner to purchase for 2022. I was deciding between The Day Designer that I used for 2021 or The Simplified Planner, which I've used as a weekly planner in the past.
My Day Designer experience has been fine, but something was calling me to a new one. So I went back and forth between the two browser tabs for what felt like an entire day when I finally decided that I needed to purchase the Simplified Planner to allow myself a different experience.
And you know what I realized after I made this decision?
If I use my new planner and don't totally love it, I can always ditch it and buy a different planner to use for the rest of the year.
Mind-blowing, right?!
We convince ourselves that once we make a decision that there is no coming back from it, when in reality, all that we have to do is move forward on it enough to learn something and make a new decision.
If I love my new planner, I learned that buying that planner gets me closer to my desired result.
And if I don't love it?
I learned something.
*An important note on learning…
After you decide and realize it didn't get you to your desired result, it's imperative that you be kind to yourself and move forward quickly.
Don't call yourself stupid, don't wallow in the outcome, focus on using the "Oh, I learned something," and then move forward on making a new decision.
Beating yourself up doesn't help you move forward; it just makes you feel like a big fat loser.
Adopt the method of making a decision, taking action, learning from it, and then making a new educated decision.
That's how you make decisions like a boss, friends.
You are meant to learn, grow and evolve, and you're only going to do so by taking action.
To apply the above to whatever options you have available to you and move forward so you can achieve all you're meant to.