confidence

What it’s costing you, and how to get out of it

Last week I broke up with my boyfriend of 6 months.

For weeks prior to that I hemed-and-hawed, obsessing over the details…is this what I want? Is now the right time? What should I say? How should I say it? How will he react?

When we spent time together I made things awkward by hiding my feelings and pretending everything was okay when I knew it wasn’t. When I was alone I replayed the same questions on an endless loop in my head.

I couldn’t sleep, I was too tired to go to the gym, and I was consoling myself with food.

I was exhausted.

I was thinking the thoughts in my head but avoiding making a decision, and being in that loop made an already uncomfortable situation even worse.

Decision Debt is the mental, physical, and emotional cost of avoiding a decision we know needs to be made. Whether it’s a relationship, work, or other life circumstance, our unmade-decisions keep us spinning, cost us energy, and – most importantly – produce no results.

Why We Leave Decisions Unmade

I let indecision sabotage my time and energy because making no decision felt safer than making the wrong decision, even though I was miserable in the meantime.

Inaction is based on scarcity and fear – scarcity that there is only ONE right decision, and fear that we might make the wrong one.

But that’s primal brain thinking.

Our primal brain has 3 objectives: avoid pain, seek pleasure, and use the least amount of energy. It convinces us that staying miserable in the cave is still safer than exploring outside of it.

From the view of my primal brain, my impending break up was a life-or-death decision that there was no coming back from. I didn’t trust that I knew what I wanted or that I knew how to make it happen.

Fortunately, we also have a a prefrontal cortex…the logical part of our brain that knows how to step back and consider information and data. It removes the layers of drama and is a much more solid place to make decisions from.

In my logical brain I knew I couldn’t continue with the current relationship because pretending I was happy left me feeling frustrated and resentful. I was afraid of hurting my boyfriend by speaking up, but staying quiet was hurting both of us, it was just a slower process.

How To Escape Decision Debt

Unmade decisions require energy and produce no results.

Making a decision moves you forward.

When you find yourself stuck in an indecision loop, try these 4 steps:

Instead of running a problem over and over in your head, write it down. Getting it out of your head and onto a page helps to engage the prefrontal cortex and makes the problem easier to see.
Ask yourself “If I know I’ll be happy either way, what would I choose?” In my case, if I knew I would be happy whether I was with my boyfriend, or without him, what would I choose? Don’t overthink it, go with the first answer that comes to you.
After you have your answer, write down your why’s. You have to like your reasons. Liking your reasons for your decision gives you confidence, which you’ll need for the next step. (Note: THERE ARE NO ‘SHOULD’S’ ALLOWED IN THE DECISION MAKING PROCESS. If I hear you using the word ‘should’ to make a decision I will come find you and shake you by the shoulder’s until you delete that word from your vocabulary)
Have your own back. You’ve decided what’s best for you (only YOU know what that is), and you like your reasons. If you have those two things, no one else can talk you down.

And here’s the best part – even if the decision you make doesn’t produce the results you wanted, or expected, at first – YOU’RE STILL MOVING FORWARD BY MAKING A DECISION.

Last week I did finally make the decision to tell my boyfriend I wasn’t happy and I wanted to break up.

We had a good, productive conversation, and he said some things that really made me think.

Plot twist, after a few more conversations I decided to give our relationship another try. (The reason for my change of heart isn’t important, let’s just say it has something to do with my habit of shutting down in a relationship when I feel like someone is getting “too close”. But that’s a story for another day!).

I used the same decision-making process for staying that I used for leaving: I wrote out my thoughts (I had much more to consider after the conversation with my boyfriend and some soul-searching), I liked my reasons, and I had my own back for those reasons.

None of us has a crystal ball. We can only make our decisions based on a hypothesis of what we think the result might be (logical brain), and what we believe what will be best for us.

I’m not saying we should only think from our logical brain, but it bears trying out when we can’t seem to make a decision otherwise.

As cliche as it sounds, we won’t know we’re taking the right action until we take it.

We can spend our energy spinning in indecision for days, weeks, months, or even years. Or we can decide to take the first, best action, and begin moving forward.

It might be the right step on the first try, or we might use that first result and decide to pivot. Either result is infinitely better than hiding in indecision.

The more you make conscious, deliberate decisions, the easier they are to make.

Confidence breeds confidence.

Stop living in Decision Debt, and start making the choices that move you forward.

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