What if I told you that your fear of making decisions, or indecisiveness is really a fear of something else…
When I speak to self-described “indecisive people” the #1 thing they tell me is they are afraid of making the wrong decision.
It could be between 2 things or 500 things, but the fear of making the wrong choice is more powerful than the fear of making no choice.
I could wax lyrical about “just go for it” or how you’re risking more by risking nothing.
But in truth, I’ve worked very closely with one very indecisive person and I can only tell you what worked with her.
Her indecisiveness was so bad that even dinner out was stressful, not knowing where to go, what to eat…it would often ruin a nice evening out.
Larger business decisions were out of the question.
So, we explored her catastrophizing and where it led to and almost every time it came back to being worried about what her family would think of her.
Would they question her? Judge her? Shun or even divorce her?
Her fear of judgement was at the root of her lack of decision-making.
And that isn’t solved in one session, certainly not an email from some guy.
But to work on it, a small exercise we did was for every decision she knew she was struggling with, she did a simple Pro’s and Con’s list.
What could go wrong? What could go right?
And each time, the Pro list was often much longer.
But the Con list only ever had 3 items on it.
Financial failure and loss of money, being seen as a failure, disappointing her family.
Her fear of decisions was a fear of disappointing others – so what we worked on was being comfortable disappointing others, and her decision-making, slowly over time, got better.
I know this isn’t a quick fix and I’m sorry, but this is the only thing I’ve ever seen work.
Realisation dawned that it wasn’t about decisions, but the fear of letting others down.
Learning to accept the possibility of disappointment in others was her path to decisive freedom.
Could it be that making decisions is less about the outcome and more about managing judgement?
Are you ready to let go of the fear of others’ opinions to embrace your decision-making power?
