Indecisiveness and why making the RIGHT decision is overrated

One of the common themes with my clients that I see is their consistent questioning and doubting of themselves when it comes to making decisions.   Decisions with raising kids, decisions with career choices, decisions with relationships, and especially ending relationships.  “Will I make the right decision?  Will it all work out?  Will it happen the way that I want it to?  What will people think of me?”  Some seem big and it feels that the fate of our lives are in the balance. Some are small (such as figuring out where to go with your significant other for dinner).  Big or small we can still struggle with decisions.  Even with the seemingly most confident people that we know, or that we know of, the shadow of doubt creeps up on their shoulder from time to time as well.  So how DO we know if we’re going to make the right decision?

Well, we’ll never know.   Sorry.  There is no way to know if you’re about to ruin your kid’s psyche forever by refusing them their 3rd episode of Thomas the Train in a row…or if you’re trying to figure out if you should leave your job for a new one.

Here are some reasons why it doesn’t matter that we have to know if we’re making the right decision:

1.  There is no such thing as certainty and ultimate safety.  There is nobody that can get out of life untouched.   Sorry again.  I know that freaks parents out.  But we know that over protecting ourselves and others keeps us and others from engaging in life.  Since I figure we all want to engage in life, I’ll continue.

2.  Don’t allow yourself to live through your expectations!  Our expectations are nice stories but they aren’t reality.  Ultimately, they are not fair to you, or those in your life.  Especially in relationships.  Expect someone to make you happy in a relationship?  Don’t.  It doesn’t work.

3.  Focus on what you can control.  This is pretty much why expectations aren’t our friend.  We can’t control them.  Often when our hopes, dreams, sense of failures and accomplishments are tied into other people or outcomes…we end up disappointed.  Sometimes we’re devastated.   Living by waiting for things out of our control to “come through” for us doesn’t seem very stable, does it?

4.  Hindsight is 20/20.  Yeah, let it go.  We don’t have some super power that allows us to know what we don’t know and as much as we think we “just should have known better”. We didn’t.  Let it go.  Forgive and let go. This is where resentment to self and others is born.  Don’t let it.

5.  That thing you did that one time?  Yeah, everyone forgot about it except you.  We shouldn’t let that never ending loop of a story from that one thing that we did that one time influence our future actions.

6.  Life is for living.  Not over analyzing.  Life is for doing, not thinking.  We do life, we don’t think life.  Be here now.  Not only will we benefit but the people we are in relationships with will thank us as well.

Indecisiveness, like many things, isn’t necessarily good or bad.  Sometimes not making a decision is the best thing we can ultimately do.  Whatever the case, recognizing the bigger picture by not over inflating the true importance of what decision we make is what we have the most control over.  A big part of that is letting go of what happens after we do come to a conclusion.

Decide, trust, let go!  And it doesn’t have to be in that order.