Indecisiveness – 8 Things To Do When You Can’t Decide
Indecisiveness sucks! Here are 8 things to do when you constantly overthink things and can’t decide what to do.
Let’s chat about indecisiveness.
In case you haven’t worked it out yet life is made up of one decision after another and the quality of your decisions affects the quality of your life. Am I right?
That being said, making better decisions is one of the most effective ways to enhance your life.
However, making a good decision requires actually making a decision, not just thinking about it! And this is where lots of people get stuck.
Too many people avoid making decisions, or they spend far too much time and energy making a decision, that shouldn’t have been too difficult to make.
But here’s the thing – a great decision actually doesn’t require a lot of time or energy the vast majority of the time.
Here are 8 tips to help you avoid both indecision and overthinking:
INDECISIVENESS – BEATING INDECISION
TIP # 1 – Know your purpose. Your purpose makes the best option more obvious.
When you know your WHY and ultimate purpose in life, it is so much easier to make a decision.
All you need to do is work out whether each choice is in line with this purpose.
For example, if your purpose is to be an ultramarathoner, it’s easier to decide what to eat and how to spend your time away from your regular job.
If you know you want to be a farmer, it’s easy to work out your place of residence wouldn’t ideally be inside a bustling city.
If you want to write a book and have a deadline, it’s so much easier to say no to watching hours of TV every night.
When you know what you want in life, the best option is usually more obvious and it will be easier to make decisions.
INDECISIVENESS – BEATING INDECISION
TIP # 2 – Be logical.
Most people make decisions based on emotion and then they use logic to justify the decisions they made emotionally.
You need to do it the other way around.
Remove your emotions from the equation.
Most people are prone to making poor decisions when they act out of fear or in haste and you don’t want to fall prey to this scenario.
The best decision however is often clear if you apply logic to the situation.
Ask yourself: how would a person living at their full potential treat this problem.
What is the natural next best step for me?
What is the most logical thing for me to do?
Consider how you would advise a friend to proceed.
That’s probably your best option.
Remember my advice: remove fear and emotion from the equation!
Thinking too much leads to paralysis by analysis. It’s important to think things through, but many use thinking as a means of avoiding action. Robert Herjavek
Don’t get too deep, it leads to over thinking, and over thinking leads to problems that doesn’t even exist in the first place. Jayson Engay
INDECISIVENESS – BEATING INDECISION
TIP # 3 – Plan your day the night before.
How many times have you woken up with an empty diary and consequently achieved not so much that day?
Compare to this a day that you have a meeting booked in or tasks that you have committed to.
It’s so much easier to make smart decisions in advance.
For example, it’s easy to say, “I’m going to meet my mother for lunch tomorrow.”
However, when the sun comes up IF A PLAN WASN’T ALREADY BOOKED INTO YOUR SCHEDULE you may find it much easier to laze around at home
Self-help tip:
Avoid changing your mind once you have made a commitment to yourself or someone else because it eventually becomes ingrained in your psyche over time that you aren’t reliable or that you can’t even make a commitment and keep it.
You lessen the value of your word when you take it back time and time again.
If you have already made a decision and it’s the right thing to do, stick with it.
For the record, the best plans are the ones we make in the evening for the following day. It’s when we have given thought to how we want to spend our time and plan out our days accordingly.
It’s when we make plans to eat a good lunch, do some exercise and finish that report because they are important tasks for us to accomplish.
The next day, if you wake up without a real confirmed plan, the excuses will start to come up as to why you can’t do something and you will begin overthinking and questioning things or our motivation feels blah and then we blow it.
This is why you need to plan your day in advance and stick with it!
FYI: You don’t need to make perfect decisions.
You just need to make decent decisions and stick with them.
Choose what you feel is the RIGHT THING TO DO AT THIS CURRENT POINT IN TIME (and yes that might change on any given day but what is right for you to do RIGHT NOW?)
Do your thinking at night. Execute your decisions the following day.
INDECISIVENESS – BEATING INDECISION
TIP # 4 – Know your values.
The best option is often obvious if you know your values.
Therefore take the time to examine your values and then list them in order of priority.
When you’re faced with a tough choice, take a look at your list of values and apply your values to your decision.
You’ll probably find that an answer is easier to find.
INDECISIVENESS – BEATING INDECISION
TIP # 5 – Give yourself a deadline. A good decision can often be made very quickly.
Avoid taking longer than you need to make a choice.
This is not something you need to drag out.
A deadline can be an effective way of making a decision quickly.
Give yourself a deadline of few minutes to a few days (just make a choice to make up your mind by a certain time).
Then pull the trigger and move on.
INDECISIVENESS – BEATING INDECISION
TIP # 6 – Know that if you’re indecisive, any option is probably acceptable.
When you’re torn between a couple of choices, there’s a good chance there’s probably isn’t a “best” option.
But that doesn’t mean making no choice is an even better option.
Just pick one and move on.
Flip a coin if necessary.
INDECISIVENESS – BEATING INDECISION
TIP # 7 – Consider the reason for your hesitation.
If you are constantly facing indecision ask yourself: Why are you hesitating?
What’s holding you back?
What are your concerns?
What are you afraid might happen?
Is there a way to mitigate this fear so it doesn’t impact your decision process?
INDECISIVENESS – BEATING INDECISION
TIP # 8 – Forget about trying to be perfect.
News alert: there is no such thing as perfection.
If you are sitting there waiting for things to be perfect, I’m sorry but you will be waiting a long time.
Perfection simply leads to procrastination and indecision.
If you have to worry about something, worry about doing slightly better every day and worry about not stepping outside your comfort zone enough.
As for perfection, yeah that will never happen for anyone in this world.
In the end, you need to know that indecisiveness puts your life on standby.
INDECISIVENESS – BEATING INDECISION
However you can dramatically enhance the quality of your life by learning to make better and quicker decisions.
Simply be clear on your purpose and values.
Avoid the need to be perfect in your decisions.
Make a wise choice, get to work and take action.
The only way to nip indecision in the bud is to actually nip it in the bud!
INDECISION QUOTES
Be decisive. A wrong decision is generally less disastrous than indecision. Bernhard Langer
There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. William James
Action cures fear. Indecision, postponement, on the other hand, fertilize fear. David Joseph Schwartz
Too often, the opportunity knocks, but by the time you push back the chain, push back the bolt, unhook the two locks and shut off the burglar alarm, it’s too late. Rita Coolidge
In a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing to do. The worst thing you can do is nothing. Theodore Roosevelt
Remember, the talking about the thing isn’t the thing. Doing the thing is the thing. Amy Poehler
Decision is a sharp knife that cuts clean and straight; indecision, a dull one that hacks and tears and leaves ragged edges behind it. Gordon Graham
OVERTHINKING QUOTES
My mother said the cure for thinking too much about yourself was helping somebody who was worse off than you. Sylvia Plath
I think and think and think, I’ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it. Jonathan Safran Foer
Overthinking, also, best known as creating problems that are never there. David Sikhosana
When you’ve had a life of overthinking, you have the same reaction time and time again. Shyness becomes habitual. When you’re put in an unfamiliar situation, all you want to do is retreat and hide by default. You watch but don’t participate. You listen but don’t respond. You read, but rarely comment. You take a photo, but you rarely post. You write, but you rarely publish. All of this is because your overthinking mind cannot stop thinking about how you will be perceived by the outside world. Joel Annesley
When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened. Winston Churchill
To think too much is a disease. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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I’m Frances Vidakovic – a mindset & action coach for quietly ambitious women who want to stop overthinking and finally take aligned action. I help women achieve their goals and follow through on what matters, without sacrificing their sanity or soul.