Why Making Decisions Can Be So Hard - 4 Reasons Why and Strategies To Intervene
Are you feeling stuck or unsure of your next step? Are you feeling exhausted by over-thinking your options?
Life is a creative process and as such, it is literally fraught with decisions. The choices you make define your path in life. If you're feeling stuck, you may have come to a crossroads. Perhaps you sense it's time to make a choice, but can’t decide which path to take.
Difficulty in making decisions is quite a common experience. It can be challenging for a number of reasons. Let’s look at four contributing factors, as well as four strategies you can use to intervene when decision-making becomes an issue for you.
WHY MAKING a Decision Can Be HARD
1. You may feel you lack sufficient time or energy to devote to making a decision. Life gets busy and sometimes it’s hard to find a spare moment. Often, making a decision takes less time and energy than you might think. You may be amplifying how difficult or time-consuming making a decision will be.
2. Sometimes a fear of failure, a lack of confidence or information may be what’s preventing you from making a decision. If so, it can be helpful to name your fears, which brings them down to size so you can work with them.
3. You may feel stuck when you have two or more good options, or afraid because you feel the decision holds particularly high stakes. It can be confusing to analyze all the various possibilities. Here, it can be useful to prioritize a number one principle or guideline among the alternatives you’re considering to simplify the process.
4. Striving for perfection can complicate the decision-making process. Procrastinating due to perfectionistic standards is time-consuming and requires a great deal of mental and emotional energy. If this is the case, it can be helpful to focus on finding a “good enough” option, rather than arriving at “the very best” alternative.
When you consider the opportunity loss and many consequences of indecision, perhaps you can appreciate how essential it may be that you claim your most valuable resource - your relationship with yourself.
Four STRATEGIES TO FACILITATE DECISION-Making
1. Deepening your relationship with yourself increases self-awareness. This self-knowledge can provide you with the information you need to grapple with the many decisions life presents. Self-awareness can help you claim your own voice and provides valuable perspective to inform decision-making. It can help you make decisions more easily by building your self-confidence and self-esteem. A self-confidence boost may give you the additional fortitude necessary to face your fears.
2. Making decisions can be encumbered by the specter of uncertainty, which is often anxiety-provoking. Anxiety is an expression of unconscious fears, which if not addressed, can stop you in your tracks. Alternatively, facing your fears about making decisions can be life-transforming. Facing your fears encourages you to take action to meet the challenges of the path ahead, often offering personal growth and transformation.
3. Mindfulness practice can provide you with a powerful tool for decision-making. It illuminates the way catastrophic thinking in the face of uncertainty often exacerbates anxiety, rather than relieving it. Catastrophization, a defense mechanism used to ward off feelings about uncertainty, tends to invite needless worry about worst case scenarios that generally never come to pass. The path forward involves noticing catastrophic thinking, challenging the “scary stories” you’re telling yourself and instead cultivating your capacity to sit with “not knowing.”
4. Finally, relating more consciously and authentically to yourself is critical to making decisions that are right for you. Making conscious decisions informed by your own thoughts, feelings and beliefs ultimately supports you to feel more contentment and fulfillment in life.
Sometimes in life when anxiety prohibits you from making a decision, a decision gets made for you. You can avoid this trap by getting guidance to make decisions that are right for you. Regardless of your challenges, you can get help to claim your voice and find your way. If you’d like to take more control over your decision-making, reach out to set up a free telephone consultation.