How to Make the Right Decision & Release Indecision

Ever spent a sleepless night worrying about making a decision? Or not taken a leap because choosing to invest in yourself or stretch beyond what you’ve done before feels so scary? Ever heard yourself saying, “I don’t know how. I don’t know what to do. What if I make the wrong decision?”

I get it. Indecision is a hallmark of codependency and perfectionism. If you’re always trying to keep other people pleased with you, not judging you, liking you, thinking you’re doing things perfectly and that you’re constantly achieving and succeeding, then making decisions that feel risky can feel really scary. 

Sometimes too scary to bear, which can lead to classically codependent black and white thinking. It can lead you to not see the growth opportunity or the possible outcomes of investing in yourself, just the worry, fear, and possible failure, where failure is a bad thing, which we know it’s not, but does your brain?

Humans socialized as women are taught to doubt ourselves, to not prioritize our needs, to put family first, that asking for or even knowing what you want and need makes you selfish, which is posited as a very bad thing. 

And what I’ve learned over decades of doing this work is that so many women have so deeply lost touch with our own desires and wants.

Remember, codependency is when you chronically put other people and what you believe they want and need above what you want and need, taking care of them first. 

And it’s also when you feel other people’s feelings. When you allow other people’s emotional state to dictate yours.

Alternately, the flip side of that could be that in a household where a parent or caregiver is engaging in activities the family doesn’t approve of or society doesn’t approve of, such as drinking more alcohol than folks would like, using substances, any other addictive behaviors, buffering. Sometimes one of the children can choose to become the scapegoat.

That child can take on that scapegoat personality and can in a way, work to be seen as the problem because that feels safer than having their parent be seen as the problem.

Whichever way this cuts, it sure can make making adult decisions very challenging. 

All of this can make it feel like you have to go it alone, while also taking care of everyone else and prioritizing them.

So my love, you, yes you, have a prefrontal cortex, a neocortex, and that’s an amazing thing.

It’s the part of your brain that drives your executive function. Reading, writing, arithmetic, driving a car, the evolved human functions. One of the most important higher brain functions is being able to think about your thinking. Meta thinking. Being your watcher and of course, that part of your brain also makes decisions.

You can look to your future and decide what you’re going to do, and you can get present in the now and can make choices for your future self and your present self, and that is remarkable. Your lizard brain, the ancient part of your thinking machine can only worry. That’s its job, thank you very much. To look for danger constantly so you don’t die.

But that worry part can keep you from moving forward, unless you step in to practice making decisions for your own future from your prefrontal cortex, which can mean putting aside the perfectionism and the codependency long enough to tap into your intuition, your gut knowing.

To be able to say, “I’m going to do this for me because I’m worth it, even though it’s scary to make the investment, even though it’s scary to take the leap, even though other people may not like it.”

And that’s when we evolve as humans, when we tap into our highest potential. That is such a beautiful thing. 

One of the ways that I think about practicing making decisions is to make them ahead of time, which we use the thought work protocol to help us do, to decide Monday I’m going to work out at 8am and I’m going to practice that thought.

I’m dedicated to movement, even when I can’t go to the gym. Or I’m going to say yes to investing in me, and I’m going to launch my online business or train as a life coach, or work to change my thought habits with a coach, or my goodness, whatever it may be for you.

Apply to grad school, write the novel. You make the decision for your future self and you honor those decisions. 

That’s how we retrain that primitive lizard brain, which is survival obsessed, and thus, lives for instant gratification because that gives you dopamine, and dopamine feels really good. More please.

Another thing that can happen when we let our lizard brain drive the bus is confusion. It’s when you get a case of the I-don’t-knows. And when we decide, because it’s a decision, my beauty, to stay in that confusion, that rumination, that spin, is that we do exactly what we say we want freedom from, and that’s being stuck.

I don’t know equals stuck. It’s simple math. 

Add a reptilian brain in there. You’re super stuck because instead of making and honoring a decision, you spin around in I don’t know. And it’s usually not that you actually don’t know. It’s that you’re continuing to feed that thought into that lizard brain, and that T, that thought that you don’t know leads directly to your feeling. Confused, stuck, overwhelmed, anxious, about a decision that you could just make for yourself using your prefrontal cortex.

Your lizard brain tells you that confusion is important because remember, its job is to keep you safe. And if it has decided that decision-making is scary, it’s going to be biased towards not making decisions. So it feels important to think it over and ruminate, but there’s another way, which we’ll get to in a moment.

Another reason why you might spin in indecision is that you fear making a “wrong” decision.

And listen, before thought work, I used to look backwards and call all sorts of decisions wrong decisions, like dating that person I dated in 2002, taking that job or class, going to there, wherever there was.

And I would tell the story, those were the wrong decisions, which kept my lizard brain rubbing its little hands together, feeling all smug and self- satisfied. If it could talk it would be like, “You see, I told you to stay at the back of the cave and do nothing. Sure, you won’t grow or heal or evolve, but you won’t regret. You won’t die.”

Here’s the thing my love, regret is a choice. Your lizard brain doesn’t know that. Your prefrontal cortex knows it for sure. It has a tattoo of it. Regret is always a choice. It’s optional. You don’t have to do it and it gets you nowhere. So what if there were no wrong decisions? What if that wasn’t a possibility?

What if instead, you could honor the you that made those decisions, knowing what she knew at that point in her life, and just move on with love and acceptance? 

Feel into that. Just accepting. She dated that person, she took that job, she moved to that city, she got that degree, she did that.

By giving your past self and present self extra love and care and understanding, you open the gateway to making decisions now, without spinning in confusion, because you know and trust that future you will not judge you by looking backwards and shaking her little fist at you. You know, trust, and believe that you will have your back, that you will honor that you were in the stage and phase of evolution that you were in in the moment you made that choice and that’s perfect.

Making decisions for yourself and your life, worrying about what other people will think of you is codependency in action, perfectionism in action. It’s not a loving choice for yourself, my beauty. 

And please, I get it. And I’m telling you from the other side of these thought habits, they keep you spinning in stuckness, confusion, self- doubt, anxiety, not moving forward towards the life of your dreams.

Trusting yourself is a process. It’s also a choice you get to make each and every day. 

Today, I’m going to trust myself and my intuition to guide me in the right direction, and I’m going to make decisions for my present and future self with love.

And of course, trauma can try and get in the way and that’s understandable, totally. And my most beautiful love, you have two options. Stay stuck in your stuckness or gently, lovingly encourage yourself and remember, in this family, we firmly encourage ourselves. We lovingly coax, we never push ourselves.

So you can encourage yourself as your most loving parent to make one more decision for yourself today, from that really conscious, thoughtful watcher place, practicing these thoughts.

Decide you’re going to have your own back no matter what, that you’ll honor yourself. 

I want to share some super practical reasons why I want you to get really comfortable with the discomfort of making decisions for your present and future self on the daily:

• Efficiency. 

Being decisive is efficient. Ruminating is not.

Being in confusion and worry, not efficient. Wastes your time and most importantly these days, your limited human energy. Why stay in that emotional energy suck when you can just decide that there are no wrong decisions and just move forward?

Make a choice and go with it, knowing you can change your mind in the future if you like the reason you’re changing it. It’s so common to just put off the inevitable because you’re scared you’re going to mess up or do it wrong. But in fact, you’re not using that one moment, that opportunity to its fullest capacity to build your life. You’re worried about something you’re not doing instead. See what a hot mess that is for your mind? 

Making decisions saves time and saves energy.

• Sometimes your feeling is also your verb, your action. 

That is when you’re worrying about making a decision, you’re not taking action. You’re not moving your life forward, and that indecision is your action and your feeling and the result is not building an intentional life.

It’s only checking in with your intuition, with your gut feeling, and then taking action, making that decision that can free you from this bind. 

Be lovingly decisive and take courageous action to move your life forward with intention.

• Continue to evolve and grow and to create trust and confidence, to know for yourself that you are a person you can trust to make decisions. 

Showing yourself that you’re a person that makes bold, brave decisions is how you come to see yourself in a different light.

Thinking it over and over doesn’t. That’s just science, babe. It never has and it never will. 

When you make a decision, you expand your world view, your vision. 

You do the thing and you either learn I want to do that more, or wow, I so don’t want to do that again.

Either way, you learn, you grow, and most importantly, you get out of confusion, out of that spin. And that helps you feel more confident because again, you’re showing yourself you’re someone you can trust to make decisions. And when you make decisions, starting with small ones and building up, you can get more and more confident.

I’m a huge proponent of being intentional, thoughtful, absolutely. I’m not telling you to make rash judgments here or rash decisions. My work is the opposite. I’m all about mindfulness and being intentional.

I want you to think about this; there is such a difference between making a decision from the energy of being thoughtful, and the energy of confusion, stress, I don’t know, self-doubt or I need to think this over for ages. 

That is the rushing energy of sympathetic activation that can lead to that dorsal shutdown of I don’t know, it’s too stressful to make a decision, I just won’t.

I have a series of questions and prompts to offer you, to help you make decisions in your best interest with less confusion, stress, and I don’t know, less I have to think about it, and more clarity.

• What if you brought beginner’s mind to this? 

Saw it as a brand-new question. Realize that you’re a new human today in this moment. You’ve never lived this day before. This is beginner’s mind. 

It means coming to every moment and decision like it’s a totally brand-new thing. 

• Consider remarkable possibilities. 

So often we’re scared to make a decision because we’re scared it won’t turn out as we hoped. Pause and consider both options leading to amazing, phenomenal outcomes you may not even have ever contemplated.

So let’s say you want to make a decision about your relationship and you decide for now, I’m going to stay with this person. And in that process, you learn about your capacity to show up with unconditional love, to put down your owner’s manual for someone else and you practice setting boundaries and your life is phenomenal.

Or you decide to leave your relationship and you explore the process and you learn about yourself, and you practice setting boundaries, and your life is phenomenal. What would you choose if both possibilities lead to amazing, remarkable outcomes? Try that one on.

• What if you could say yes to both things? Hold duality and find balance. What if you held both options as possible?

You can rest sometimes and you can work sometimes. Deciding to do one this moment doesn’t obviate the option or the other. You can decide to stay in your codependent relationship while you work on yourself with a coach like me.

You don’t always have to pick the black or white option. 

Just know that if codependency or perfectionism are your habitual thought habits, then black and white thinking may be your default. 

And that’s a habit you get to explore and work with. You can hold duality, grey, my love. 

• What if failure is not a problem? 

Failure is a most amazing thing. So what if you made a choice? Took that leap and said yes and it was a failure and you learned and were able to grow? That sounds wonderful to me. What if it’s totally okay to fail at something?

• What would future you say? 

It’s so easy to think we know what our past selves should have done and to be past critical. I do not recommend it. Instead, you can take all the wisdom and zoom forward five or 10 years and ask your future self what they think you should do now.

• What would love do? 

This is a question I first heard the amazing Oprah ask us to ponder. There’s not much more to it. Think of love as this beautiful magnificent universal life force and ask what love, self-love, love of your family, love of the world, what would the energy of love invite you to do?

Would love invite you to take a leap for yourself? 

• What choice moves you forward in life? 

So, most of the time we’re overthinking something because we feel fear, and that’s okay. And you can feel that fear and make the choice anyway.

• What’s the best- and worst-case scenario? 

This one is simple. For me, it’s not taking the leap. Not enrolling in the course, not starting that program, not entering a relationship, not leaving a relationship, not putting myself out there. This is the worst-case scenario. It means I’m saying no to the best-case scenario in which I say yes to an opportunity that gives me the queasies and the potential to fail and learn and grow.

And doing all of that, that’s the dream, my darling. And I want to say this clearly. This process can be so uncomfortable, it can bring up stress, past trauma, past worry. 

For me in my life, what’s more uncomfortable is not learning how to make a decision on my own behalf.

This will feel scary and that’s perfect. Feel it all. And then make the decision anyway and move your life forward with confidence, efficiency, bravery, thoughtfulness, and self-love. 

Honor your healthy, loving adult relationship with you more than any other relationship. You break through codependency and perfectionism when you do this each and every time. And when you value yourself, your life, your needs and desires, your growth first, when you attend to your thoughts and feelings first, instead of wanting, wishing, or waiting for someone, anyone else to do it for you, you are evolving, you are growing, you are changing, you are becoming.

Thank you for taking the time to read Feminist Wellness. I’m excited to be here and to help you take back your health!

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