Overcoming Indecisiveness: When We Fear Making the Wrong Decision

Each indecision brings its own delays and days are lost lamenting over lost days… What you can do or think you can do, begin it. For boldness has magic, power, and genius in it. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Is indecision keeping you from moving forward? Do you fear making the wrong decision?

Have you ever thought you wanted something but, kept vacillating over it?

Say you started your own business. Out of the blue a former colleague calls with the perfect job opportunity. You are drawn to this job but, meet with resistance about walking away from your business. Try as you might you keep waffling back and forth on whether to take the job or not.

What do you do when part of you wants it and part of you doesn’t?

Here are five ways to overcome indecisiveness and the fear of making the wrong decision:

1.Keep notes for a least a week on your feelings. Every single time the situation comes to mind jot down what you were thinking about it in a little notebook. You don’t have to analyze it – just write it down.

Say, one day you think how much you would hate having to get up early and commute again. Write that down. Later you think the job sounds kind of exciting for a number of reasons. Write down those reasons.

After a week you should be able to see where you lean most. Go through everything you’ve written and write next to the note whether it’s a vote of yes or no. The column with the most votes wins.

2. Identify where you have the most resistance. When we resist doing something often it is because of an underlying fear or belief.

For example: Say in this example you wrote that you don’t want to get up early to commute. Or that you don’t want to be locked into giving up your time from 9 to 5 each day. And, you can’t stand the idea of having to get all dressed up every day.

Think about these feelings and see what underlying belief they have in common. Perhaps each of these complaints means that you fear that you won’t have enough time for yourself anymore.

What does this fear say about you?

A fear that you won’t have enough time to nurture yourself says that you believe when you have a job working for someone else you have to give yourself over to it completely. It says you fear losing control of your time and life. But, why?

It could identify that you have a fear of“commitment.” You might have an underlying belief that commitment means saying “yes” to everything that is asked of you. It reflects that you don’t have clear boundaries and, that you fear saying “no.”

Digging deep into where we have resistance is a great way to find where we are still stuck in our lives and where we still have work to do on our underlying beliefs.

Once you understand what your underlying beliefs are you can work on changing them. If you are a “people pleaser” and fear saying “no” you have an underlying fear of rejection and lack of self-love. So, perhaps you’d rather work for yourself where no one but you will make demands upon you. This way you never have to deal with the anxiety of saying “no.”

Time to outgrow the beliefs that hold us back

It could be that the Universe arranged this opportunity to give you the opportunity to overcome the fears you have about protecting your boundaries and saying “no” in situations where you feel an obligation and commitment such as with an employer. Maybe it’s time to learn to say “no” to working on weekends or overtime or always being the “go to” person for your boss. You need to develop a stronger sense of love for yourself and self worth by “sticking up for yourself” and saying “no” when you really want to.

3. Recognize that you have the right to change your mind. Just because you chose to do one thing at one point in your life doesn’t mean that you cannot change your mind about it. Resisting changing your mind could show that you have a belief that you must complete everything you start. Or, that if you walk away you are a “quitter” or admitting defeat. What it really says is that you fear what others will think or say about you.

You have to live for you. You cannot force yourself to do things based upon the fear of what others will think. Doing things because your ego has a need to have people think a certain way about you will make you miserable in the long run.

Start repeating this daily: I cannot control what other people think. What other people think about me is none of my business.

4. Stop taking life so seriously and allow yourself to go with the flow. Put things in perspective. If you were to take the job and it turned out you’d made a mistake you could leave. It is not the end of the world. If you started your own business once couldn’t you do it again? Or perhaps, keep it going on the side while you tested the waters of the new job? Maybe taking the job is the serendipity that places you in the path of some other great opportunity you wouldn’t have come across had you not taken it? Look at opportunities as fun and exciting adventures rather than heavy binding contracts. Have a more “playful” attitude and your life will also be more fun.

5. Go within and do a visualization exercise. Take some deep relaxing breaths and when you are ready visualize each of the two scenarios. Create one scene to depict each of your choices. Using the previous example see yourself in your home office at your desk as representing staying in your own business and then see yourself all dressed up in appropriate business attire in a corporate office setting.

Now, shrink each of the scenes down and put them inside a snow globe or glass paper weight.

Take one paper weight and put it in your left hand and the other in your right and “weigh them.” Which one feels most substantial. right or exciting or, which one draws your attention the most? The one that you keep feeling yourself drawn to for any reason is the one you really want to choose. Go with your “gut” and pick that one.

Are you finding it difficult to overcome indeciseveness? What does what you are resisting say about your underlying beliefs?

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