Do you ever find yourself in decision paralysis? Unsure what the 'right' thing to do is?
And wishing you could just know for sure everything would be okay, before making that next move?
Whether it be choosing to stay or leave a relationship, taking the next step with your partner, or something totally different - this episode is going to help you make decisions confidently - knowing you have no idea how they will pan out.
Mentioned in this episode
Do you ever find yourself in decision paralysis? Unsure what the 'right' thing to do is?
And wishing you could just know for sure everything would be okay, before making that next move?
Whether it be choosing to stay or leave a relationship, taking the next step with your partner, or something totally different - this episode is going to help you make decisions confidently - knowing you have no idea how they will pan out.
Mentioned in this episode
Hey guys! How’s everyone doing? In my group coaching programme this week we’ve been talking about decision making. Which is a very hot topic and one that a lot of people have a lot of mind drama about. And so I wanted to focus on it in today’s episode and talk about how we can make decisions in our lives, when we don’t know what the future holds. Which is always. Let’s be honest.
So let’s dive in. Do you ever find yourself in decision paralysis? Where you just can’t decide what the ‘right’ thing is to do? I see this with my clients a lot. Asking themselves, and me, what the ‘right’ decision is? As if that thing exists and we just need to uncover what it is. Or as if there’s a board of directors we can go to to issue a certificate naming something the correct and appropriate decision.
But in reality, there is no such thing as the right thing to do - there are just different decisions. Right and wrong is subjective - and so 100 people would have a hundred different opinions on what was ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ circumstance to circumstance. And for most people, we tend to base whether it was the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ thing on whether we feel negative emotion afterwards. So if I feel regret or doubt after I’ve made my decision, it must have been the wrong choice - right?
But that is not actually the case. Because negative emotion is not created by a choice being right or wrong. Because remember, that doesn’t exist. That’s not a thing. Choices aren’t right or wrong. They’re completely neutral. And it’s actually our thoughts about them deciding if it was right or wrong. And the emotion you feel about a choice after you’ve made it is created by those thoughts - not the thing itself. And I’m going to say that again, because it’s really key here. The emotion you feel about a choice you’ve made is created by your thoughts - not the choice itself.
For example - you could decide to have children - and your brain will almost definitely offer you the thought ‘I shouldn’t have done this’ at one point or another and create a feeling of regret. I think most if not all parents listening can relate to having that thought before. Just like if you’d chosen NOT to have children - your brain will probably whisper ‘you should have had kids’ at some point. And create the same feeling of regret in your body. Your brain will say these thoughts that create regret simply because it’s a human brain - not because the decision was objectively right or wrong.
And where I see my clients getting stuck in decision making is when they try to make their decisions based on what may or may not happen in the future. So let’s look at the example of your partner cheating. Maybe you’ve found out they’ve cheated and you’re trying to decide whether to stay and forgive or leave. I’ve coached people in this situation and it often comes back to the same question - ‘But what if they do it again?’ And then they feel paralysed in the decision making process. Because they’re basing their decision on something 1) totally out of their control and 2) that they don’t know is or isn’t going to happen. So how are they meant to decide?!
They tell themselves, well if I knew they were definitely going to stay faithful in the future I’d stay, but if I knew they were going to cheat again I’d leave. And that just is so unhelpful. Because we don’t know that. And we will never know that until it does or doesn’t happen. So we cannot base the decision on that.
And what my clients are really most afraid of is they’ll make the decision, maybe to stay - and then something WILL happen again in the future - and then they’ll have to beat themselves up and call themselves stupid. They’re afraid because they know if they guessed ‘wrong’, if things don’t turn out the way they hoped - they’ll be horrible to themselves and blame themselves for not being psychic. I have a whole other episode on why you don’t need to see it coming which will also be useful on this topic - so definitely go check that out if you haven’t already.
So what’s the alternative? We have to make the best decision we can with the information we have at the time - and vow to have our own backs however it pans out. We have to have a relationship with ourselves where we’re not going to beat ourselves up or be mad at ourselves for not being able to predict things that are outside of our control.
And one of the best ways to make a decision is to look at your reasons either way - and assess which reasons you like more. And I’ll give you an example. Say my past client’s reasons for staying in her relationship, after her boyfriend had behaved in a way she didn’t like, was I just don’t think I’ll be able to find someone else, I’m scared to go back on the dating scene, I don’t think anyone else will want to be with me - those are most likely not reasons she would like. Those reasons wouldn’t feel good and aligned to her. And making the decision from a place of fear is likely not the place she wants to be making it from.
But if her reason for staying in the relationship was - ‘I believe he’s sorry and is putting in the work to work on himself and I want to see how we can grow from this together’ - maybe those would be reasons that she DID like. They may be reasons that feel good and aligned to her and intentional. So asking yourself what are my reasons either way here? And do I like my reasons? Or are there some unhelpful, limiting thoughts and beliefs I need to challenge here so that I can make this decision from a clean place.
Am I believing I can’t make one decision for a certain reason - for example, I can’t leave because I can’t handle dating again. That is an unhelpful, limiting belief that you don’t want to hinge your choosing to stay on. You want to challenge that belief. And consider how that might not be true at all. What if you COULD handle dating again? What if you believed you could totally go out there and meet someone else and survive the whole dating process? Then would you still choose to stay and work on this relationship with this person?
And sometimes people will say to me, well what’s a good reason to stay? Or what’s a good reason to leave? And the answer is - I have no idea! That’s totally subjective. There’s no list of approved ‘good’ reasons to do anything, your job is just to check in on whether you like your reasons for your decision. Which by the way can just be ‘Because I don’t want to’ - if you just don’t want to do something, that is reason enough. But just be honest with yourself about why that is.
And most of the time when we’re kind of sure we know what we want to do and we’ve half committed to the decision - that’s when our brains will offer us the sneaky ‘But what if…’ thought. But what if… THIS happens. Or but what if… THAT happens.
And the most dangerous thing you can do is not answer that question for yourself. Because left unanswered, what if thoughts just create panic and uncertainty. Because usually what we’re subconsciously answering that question with is ‘We couldn’t handle it’. Your brain is saying ‘But what if they cheat again?’ and your subconscious answer is ‘I couldn’t handle it’ or ‘It would prove I was unloveable’ or ‘I’d feel like such an idiot’ - your brain is following up that question with a very painful thought that is actually totally optional.
So you have to really consider the fear your brain is offering to you. Answer it - what IF that happened? Then what? What is your brain most afraid it would mean? What might you think and feel if that happened? I was coaching a member of my group coaching programme this week and she said she was afraid if she picked a certain job opportunity over another job opportunity she had, that if it didn’t go to plan she’d be unable to get other opportunities in the same field as her previous job. And so I asked her, is that true?
And she paused for a minute and really thought about it and then replied - no, it’s not actually true. She knew many people who had done that. She’d still have the same skills and her experience from the new job opportunity would actually just broaden her skillset. This is why answering your brain’s fearful questions is so important. Because her brain was spinning her a terrifying tale that wasn’t even true. And she needed to go back to her brain and so - okay brain, if this doesn’t work out - here’s the plan. This is what we’ll do. And reassure it that whatever happened, she could handle it.
Let’s look at a relationship example. Let’s say you’re trying to decide whether to move in with your partner. And you’ve looked at your reasons and you like your reasons for wanting them to move in - you’ve cleaned up any fearful, insecurities or unhelpful beliefs. Then your brain whispers.. ‘But what if when you move in together they get sick of you or you realise you’re not compatible?!’
Answer that question. So what if that happens? What is your brain most afraid of if that did happen? What’s the worst thoughts and feelings your brain is afraid to have if it did? Because that’s what’s always behind our scary what if thoughts… your brain is afraid of experiencing a certain emotion. It’s afraid to feel regret, or sadness, or heartbreak, or rejection, or shame. So we have to first understand why we’d feel that way - what thoughts would create those emotions. And then decide if that thing did happen what we’d want to think and feel about it on purpose.
With this example - if you moved in with your partner and then later down the line you broke up or they left you - you’re probably going to want to feel negative emotion about that. You wouldn’t want to be happy that you’d have broken up - and we call this clean pain, the pain we want to feel in response to a circumstance happening. But what usually keeps my clients awake at night is the fear of the dirty pain - which is the pain created by thoughts they wouldn’t choose on purpose. Thoughts about how the circumstance happening would mean something about them or their future. So maybe with this example, your brain would make them ending the relationship mean you weren’t good enough and unloveable, and that you’ll never have a long lasting relationship.
And THAT is what your brain is most afraid of. So you have to challenge that and decide, okay IF they move in and it doesn’t work out - here’s what I’m going to choose intentionally to make it mean about me. I’m not going to choose to make it mean I messed it up, or that I’m unloveable, and I’m not going to choose to regret the decision to let them move in - I’m going to have my own back regardless.
Same with the cheating example. Say you decided to take your partner back after they behaved in a way you don’t like. But your brain keeps doubting the decision and saying ‘but what if they cheat again?’ or what if they lie again? You have to decide on purpose what you’re going to make that mean.
And you don’t have to make that mean your decision to take them back was the wrong one. Did you know that? You can choose to stand by your decision and believe it was the perfect decision for you at the time, made from reasons you liked, and that regardless of what they choose to do or not do in the future - you made the right decision for yourself. And you can decide not to make their actions, or however the situation pans out in the future, mean anything negative about you. You can choose to love yourself and have your own back either way.
So many of my clients are afraid of making decisions and then things not going the way they planned because of how mean they’ll be to themselves on the other side of it. If they take their partner back and they cheat again - they’ll call themselves idiots. They’ll feel embarrassed and ashamed. And like they were foolish. But all of that is optional.
You’re not an idiot or stupid for not being able to predict the future. You’re not supposed to be able to! We have no idea what might happen in the future, and we can’t base our decisions on trying to accurately predict things we cannot predict. We can only decide on purpose not to beat ourselves up whatever happens, let go of the things outside of our control, and make decisions for reasons we like at that time.
And I can almost hear some of you screaming as you listen to this - ‘But I don’t want to get hurt!’ And the truth is, yes you do. You want to get hurt sometimes, because if you decided to never ever put yourself in harms way and risk getting hurt - you’d have to live alone on a mountain and have no relationships. You don’t want that, you want to have loving, open, and vulnerable relationships. And even if you did go live in the mountains with no relationships - your brain would STILL create negative emotion that hurts. You’d feel lonely and sad and maybe even regret about that choice. Your brain is coming with you in any decision you make.
And this is why being open to the full 50/50 of emotions - the good and the bad - is so important. Being willing to feel pain and grief and sadness and trusting yourself to handle it. Because it is an inevitable part of being a human on this planet. But your brain isn’t going to want you to do that. And it’s going to want you to base your decisions on what would create the least discomfort or negative emotion for you. Which actually is sometimes going against what we truly desire.
For example - before I became a coach, I had a decision of my own to make. I had to decide whether to leave my comfortable job and career to enter into the unknown world of coaching and train and try and figure out how to build a business and client base from scratch - something I had no idea how to do. And my brain would whisper, but what if it doesn’t work? What if I fail? And the truth is, I had to be willing to fail and go through negative emotion - and trust me, there has been a lot of negative emotion I’ve felt while building my business, because I have a human brain - and I had to be willing to handle that in order to create something I really wanted to create.
The same could be if you know that a person isn’t capable of being the partner you want - maybe they act in ways that go against core values for you or you don’t want the same things long term - but your reason for staying is you don’t want to face the pain of going through a breakup. Your reason for leaving may be because you know this isn’t actually what you want for yourself but your brain is still going to want you to stay to avoid negative emotion. This is why not basing it on trying to avoid negative emotion and making sure we like our reasons for our choices is so so important. We want to assess the facts of a situation and make a decision based on reasons that we like and feel good to us, and then commit to having our own back however it pans out.
And just understanding that your brain is always going to be afraid of negative emotion, because it’s a human brain. And not basing your decision on how to best avoid it, is important. Because you can try and avoid it all you want, negative emotion is coming. Because that’s the reality of being a human being on this planet.
You could choose to leave your relationship, and you’d have to face negative emotion. You could choose to stay in your relationship, and then you’d have to face some negative emotion. There’s going to be negative emotion either way, my friends - so rather than making decision based on trying to avoid it, make decisions based on reasons that feel aligned to you and take you closer to what you truly want.
And this brings me back to what I mentioned at the start of this episode, about there being no right or wrong choices. I always like to remind my clients of this. There are no right or wrong paths, just different adventures. You could stay in your relationship and have one adventure, or leave and have a different adventure. You could quit your job and start a business and have one adventure. Or choose to stay and have a different one. All adventures will have their own share of positive and negative emotion. Difficulties to overcome. Problems to solve. And your brain will have mind drama down either path - because it’s a human brain.
So which adventure is the adventure you want to choose right now? If you knew you would be kind and supportive of yourself and that you could handle anything that happened down either path - which would you choose?
Okay guys, that’s all I’ve got for you today - I hope it was helpful! The next round of my group coaching programme - Master Your Relationship Mind Drama - is going to be opening its doors in December. And in order to make sure you don’t miss out, you’re going to want to go and get yourself on the waitlist. So I’m going to drop the link with all the details and the waitlist in the information section of this episode.
And can I ask you to do something for me? Could you go ahead and give the podcast a little rating on whatever platform you’re listening from? This is how I can keep reaching more people and spreading the word of this work.
Okay guys - have an amazing weekend, and I’ll speak to you all next week - bye!