One of the most profound issues I’ve noticed over the past 12 years of working with folks on their transformational paths is that people are incredibly challenged in their decision making. It seems like that would be such a basic and simple thing to do, yet experience shows me it is not. It’s become very obvious that most people have a striking inability to make a decision with absolute confidence.
By that I mean that once they make a decision they’re not able to let go and move on in life. Their internal dialogue wanders back to whether or not they’ve made the right choice and they waste time and energy further mulling over lists of pros and cons even when that choice is seemingly over and done with.
They’re too busy worrying about whether they made the right choice and being concerned about how people are going to judge them and if others will think they are stupid. Good grief! All that thinking is bound to exhaust a person for sure!
And that’s assuming the person actually made a decision.
The majority of folks will do anything to avoid making a choice – especially when they feel a lot is at stake. For example, let’s say we’re not enjoying our current work situation but because we don’t have a new job to replace our current one we won’t make a decision to leave.
Same thing with relationships.
People will stay in a relationship that is unfulfilling, unsupportive and not particularly loving, just because they can’t make a decision to leave. Or maybe we should be more honest here and say they won’t leave because they’re too worried about what others will think and how they are going to be perceived. So instead they’ll justify their fear of judgment and fear of hurting others and bury it by saying they don’t know what they want and can’t make a decision.
To that I say bull.
You are lying to yourself first and foremost and to everyone one else second. Your fear of hurting others – is simply unadulterated EGO. It’s all about you, you, you. How others are going to see you and how you are going to see yourself. You cannot hurt others. You can take actions in life that people take personally and use to hurt themselves because they are living an ego-ridden life too. You’re not that important and neither am I.
Part of the reason why the decisions are so hard to make is because we have so many conflicting thought forms going on in our heads that have our attention – we can’t see the forest for the trees. This is the perfect excuse and mental strategy for keeping us from looking at the true issue and making a choice. If we don’t make a choice because we are consumed by the list of pros and cons we won’t be judged and all will be well.
Except all won’t be well because we’ll be living out our lives trading safety and certainty for a passionate, exciting, uncertain, authentic and audacious life. If we don’t make the choice to leave our job or relationship we can pretty much guess what tomorrow is going to look like. In fact we can be certain of it. But if we take a chance to chance and do something different – and go the route of the heart – we won’t know what’s going to happen, what others will think of us or if we are going to fall on our face.
I can tell you that I’ve fallen on my face many times.
And if you haven’t noticed – I’m still living and breathing. When I left my practice, most of the medical community thought I was crazy. But so what. I’m living my life not anyone else. As long as I don’t judge myself – all is well. And that’s the kicker isn’t it? Worse than anyone else’s judgment of us – is our judgment of ourselves.
I learned long ago that people who are bold are people who have surrendered self-judgment. They have adopted a rule and that rule is this: I no longer will ever hurt myself with my own thought forms again because I love and respect myself too damn much.
If you haven’t adopted this rule I highly recommend it. Banish self-judgment. Stop worrying about what others are going to think about you. Be kind and set boundaries with love rather than fear. Stop waffling and wavering and make a CHOICE already! Get on with your life.
If you need help making a decision ask for it.
If you need a mentor spend the money and get one. If you need a business coach do it. Don’t put anything off until tomorrow because tomorrow may never come for you. Or it might and when you’re on your death bed you can lay there pondering a life time of regret. Your choice.
So I’m curious – do you have trouble making decisions and once you do does your mind drive you crazy chewing on your choices?
Make sure you post below and let me know.
