Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
Speaker 1: the podcast where we talk through some of the big
Speaker 1: life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
Speaker 1: mean for our psychology.
Speaker 2: Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
Speaker 2: the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
Speaker 2: the world, it is so great to have you here.
Speaker 2: Back for another episode as we, of course break down
Speaker 2: the psychology of our twenties. Today, we're talking about an
Speaker 2: all too common mental dilemma or barrier that we tend
Speaker 2: to face a lot in our twenties, and that is
Speaker 2: chronic indecisiveness, struggling or being unable to make a decision
Speaker 2: to save our lives, getting stuck in this rut of
Speaker 2: analysis of information, seeking of hypotheticals and pros and cons lists,
Speaker 2: and then eventually making a decision, taking action, and finding
Speaker 2: that we are constantly ruminating and thinking about the alternative
Speaker 2: and what might have been. It is exhausting, it is
Speaker 2: time consuming, it's unproductive, and most of all, it's really
Speaker 2: mentally frustrating to have to overthink every minute, little decision
Speaker 2: or detail of our lives. There are a lot of
Speaker 2: decisions that we feel compelled to make in our twenties,
Speaker 2: like what we want to do with our lives, what
Speaker 2: we want to do for work, what kind of person
Speaker 2: we want to be, what kind of person we want
Speaker 2: to date, Where we want to go to school, where
Speaker 2: to live, where to travel to whether to travel or
Speaker 2: to save money, to take that risk or play it safe.
Speaker 2: Those are some really hefty choices, ones that I think
Speaker 2: every one of us struggles not to overthink because it
Speaker 2: feels like each decision we make we always have to
Speaker 2: give up something else. There is this loss of what
Speaker 2: could have been that we're very afraid of, and so
Speaker 2: instead of this possibility of having to recognize what we
Speaker 2: had to give up by choosing a certain path, we
Speaker 2: stay stagnant. We get so caught up in the benefits
Speaker 2: that we might be missing out on that we never
Speaker 2: actually move forward. I think this decade is a wonderful
Speaker 2: decade of opportunity, no doubt about that. Our adult lives
Speaker 2: are really just beginning. There are so many doors that
Speaker 2: remain open to us. But it's also a decade where
Speaker 2: we feel like the stakes are really high because of
Speaker 2: how formative these years seem to be. We don't want
Speaker 2: to kind of be to rash in closing ourselves off
Speaker 2: or restricting ourselves to any opportunities, and in that way,
Speaker 2: we tend to borrow a lot of stress from the future,
Speaker 2: and we can tastrophize and imagine a life where we
Speaker 2: are unhappy until it feels like it's destiny. We also
Speaker 2: tend to waste a lot of time contemplating, and that
Speaker 2: time that we spend contemplating, we could be spending actually
Speaker 2: seeing a result and being decisive. So it makes a
Speaker 2: really kind of toxic cycle. Well, I think that it's
Speaker 2: time that we talk about it today. I want to
Speaker 2: get into all the nitty gritty. There's psychology, of course,
Speaker 2: of what makes us so indecisive at times, why we
Speaker 2: struggle to make not just big decisions but small decisions,
Speaker 2: daily decisions, some of us more than others, and what
Speaker 2: that contributes to in the long run, But also how
Speaker 2: to be active rather than passive in our lives. How
Speaker 2: do we let go of out indecision and accept all
Speaker 2: the possibilities for what could happen, all the different options,
Speaker 2: and still feel confident that we are kind of making
Speaker 2: the right one, still feel confident in ourselves and our intuition,
Speaker 2: even if it feels scary, How do we kind of
Speaker 2: break our of the procrastination and the contemplation cycle. And
Speaker 2: as someone who deals with this on a daily even
Speaker 2: when it comes to this podcast and questioning, you know
Speaker 2: what topics to do, what to write about, what studies
Speaker 2: to quote, what decisions I need to be making. Trust me,
Speaker 2: we are in the same boat. I have a lot
Speaker 2: to say about this, So let's get into it. Okay.
Speaker 2: So firstly, what is the actual problem with being indecisive?
Speaker 2: Why are we even talking about it?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: I think there are obviously a few problems with chronic indecisiveness. Firstly,
Speaker 2: you never really gain a sense of agency or mastery
Speaker 2: over your life, your choices, and your experiences. You leave
Speaker 2: them up to chance because you never feel ready to
Speaker 2: make a decision. Secondly, I think chronic indecisiveness allows us
Speaker 2: to be ruled by fear, and that fear means that
Speaker 2: we aren't always actually going to make the best choices.
Speaker 2: We're just going to make the easiest one, the one
Speaker 2: that leaves us feeling safest. And I think indecisiveness also
Speaker 2: is huge time raiter, right, I think we become very
Speaker 2: conscious of all the things that we could be doing
Speaker 2: in the time that it takes for us to make
Speaker 2: a decision. Now, I often encounter this misconception that people
Speaker 2: who are indecisive are lazy, But I actually think that
Speaker 2: that is the furthest thing from the truth. When you
Speaker 2: are someone who struggles deciding between things, making decisions, making choices,
Speaker 2: actually what you're getting caught up in is the constant
Speaker 2: mental equations that you're doing, where you're considering every possible outcome,
Speaker 2: every possible scenario. I think a lot of the time,
Speaker 2: our indecisiveness comes down to this very unconscious fear of
Speaker 2: choosing wrong, a fear of making a mistake, of not
Speaker 2: being perfect, of disappointing others or disappointing ourselves. Now, this
Speaker 2: is some that psychologists do have a way of measuring.
Speaker 2: One of the most common question is is the Frost
Speaker 2: Indecisiveness Scale, and this essentially asks participants to great a
Speaker 2: series of statements between strongly disagree and strongly agree, and
Speaker 2: they include things such as like I try to put
Speaker 2: off making decisions, I have a hard time planning my
Speaker 2: free time. I often worry about making the wrong choice.
Speaker 2: And it seems that deciding on the most trivial things.
Speaker 2: Takes me a lot of time. These questions really get
Speaker 2: to the bottom of not just how indecisive we are,
Speaker 2: but why we are indecisive. Here's the scary thing. The
Speaker 2: higher that someone scores on this scale, the lower that
Speaker 2: they tend to score on measures of life satisfaction. Now,
Speaker 2: this is based on a study conducted in the Netherlands
Speaker 2: a few years back, whereby they wanted to see if
Speaker 2: there was any correlation between indecisiveness and our own for
Speaker 2: all well being, and there definitely were some people who
Speaker 2: were self reporting that they put off decisions that they
Speaker 2: were worried about making the wrong choice. They were also
Speaker 2: the same kinds of people who were more likely to say,
Speaker 2: if I could do my life over again, I would
Speaker 2: do it. The conditions of my life are not great.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of things that I want to
Speaker 2: change but I don't feel able to, which I think
Speaker 2: just shows the link between not feeling a sense of
Speaker 2: control over your life that actually contributes to you being
Speaker 2: indecisive because you don't feel like anything you do is
Speaker 2: going to make much of a difference. It comes down
Speaker 2: to something else as well. We are faced with hundreds,
Speaker 2: if not thousands of decisions every day. We have to
Speaker 2: think about what time to wake up in the morning,
Speaker 2: what we want to have for breakfast. We have to
Speaker 2: think about whether you know, how we're going to get
Speaker 2: to work, what we're going to listen to on our commute,
Speaker 2: whether we should call our friend or not, whether we
Speaker 2: should reply to that text, when we should reply to
Speaker 2: that text, what to have for lunch, what we're going
Speaker 2: to wear. The list is honestly endless, and some estimates
Speaker 2: suggest that in a single day you and I are
Speaker 2: making around thirty five thousand decisions. That honestly sounds ludicrous,
Speaker 2: that sounds so excessive, But when you break down just
Speaker 2: how much we have to decide on in our daily life,
Speaker 2: that makes a lot of sense. That is a lot
Speaker 2: of information to process and a lot of decision making
Speaker 2: for one small brain. And what it can lead to
Speaker 2: is decision fatigue, whereby the more decisions we feel we
Speaker 2: need to make, and the more important those decisions feel,
Speaker 2: the lower our quality of decision making. Is That occurs
Speaker 2: for quite obvious reasons. Right when we have a million
Speaker 2: things to think about, Eventually we have to start to
Speaker 2: cut some corners or we begin to behave impulsively because
Speaker 2: we don't quite have the necessary cognitive space to rationally
Speaker 2: and logically think everything through, or the other alternative is
Speaker 2: that we just don't make the decision at all. You know,
Speaker 2: Think about when you come home from a long day
Speaker 2: of work. You're exhausted, you're tired, you're sitting on the couch,
Speaker 2: and you have to decide whether you want to go
Speaker 2: for a run, whether you want to see your friend
Speaker 2: clean your room, or I don't know, go out for dinner.
Speaker 2: But suddenly, like two hours pass and you realize you've
Speaker 2: spent that whole time on your phone, sitting on the couch,
Speaker 2: and so you end up doing none of those things.
Speaker 2: That is an example of what happens when you face
Speaker 2: decision fatigue. You end up choosing the path of least
Speaker 2: resistance because there's been so much else in your mind,
Speaker 2: on your mind, bothering you, consuming your limited cognitive space,
Speaker 2: that you just end up doing the thing that is easiest,
Speaker 2: and that is mindlessly scrolling on your phone. Now, I
Speaker 2: will say not all indecisiveness is necessarily negative. There is
Speaker 2: definitely an important line between being decisive being someone who
Speaker 2: gets shit done, and being impulsive or being rash and
Speaker 2: not thinking things through. I think when it comes down
Speaker 2: to big decisions, it's important to have some caution. It's
Speaker 2: important to actually have a clear idea of what you
Speaker 2: want and why. And that is kind of the lucky
Speaker 2: balance that we need to strike, not getting too caught
Speaker 2: up in the what and the why, but actually making
Speaker 2: sure that we're conscious of what we actually desire. So
Speaker 2: there was a really interesting BBC article published a couple
Speaker 2: of years ago, and it made the argument that indecisiveness
Speaker 2: actually makes us smarter because we tend to engage in
Speaker 2: more complex decision making when it comes to our choices
Speaker 2: and what we want from them. We take a lot
Speaker 2: more time to pause, to think things through. We think
Speaker 2: about things from a different perspective. Right, It's kind of
Speaker 2: like you have this ball in your hand. Either you
Speaker 2: pick it up and throw it, or you take time
Speaker 2: to examine it, you look at it from all different
Speaker 2: angles before you end up throwing things away, before you
Speaker 2: end up just tossing it anywhere. I want to throw
Speaker 2: something else into the mix as well. So, according to
Speaker 2: a recent paper from two researchers out of Germany, what
Speaker 2: matters in our life satisfaction like that research paper was
Speaker 2: saying before you Know it said that if you're indecisive,
Speaker 2: you're not as happy. What they found was that it's
Speaker 2: not about being indecisive, it's actually about being ambivalent, and
Speaker 2: the two things often get confused when we overthink what
Speaker 2: the right choice might be, what's going to make us happier.
Speaker 2: That is an indicator that you're actually thinking about your future,
Speaker 2: You actually care, You care about doing the right thing.
Speaker 2: When you're ambivalent, though, and that's why you're not making decisions.
Speaker 2: That kind of demonstrates that you just, you know, you
Speaker 2: have this level of apathy whereby maybe there's something else
Speaker 2: going on in your life. You're unhappy, you're self sabotaging,
Speaker 2: maybe you're even depressed, which means that you actually don't
Speaker 2: have the energy or the motivation to care about what
Speaker 2: happens to you. And that is the worst kind of indecisiveness,
Speaker 2: indecisiveness that comes from not caring about your future. The
Speaker 2: indecisiveness that we typically think about, though, is indecisiveness about
Speaker 2: caring too much. And I think it's super fascinating because
Speaker 2: it face value. Society tends to see people who struggle
Speaker 2: making decisions as just being lazy, right, But really they
Speaker 2: can be anxious, they can be perfectionists, they can be
Speaker 2: struggling with this concept known as choice overload depression. There
Speaker 2: is so much more nuance to be had in this conversation.
Speaker 2: So what causes us to become chronically indecisive or chronic
Speaker 2: overthinkers when it comes to our options and our choices. Well,
Speaker 2: we're going to focus on four explanations, starting with the
Speaker 2: biggest one, which is the fear of failure or the
Speaker 2: fear of choosing wrong. A lot of us experience decision
Speaker 2: paralysis because we are very innately aware of the possibility
Speaker 2: of screwing up right when it comes to being life choices,
Speaker 2: even small ones. We cannot mentally handle the possibility of
Speaker 2: being wrong and then eventually regretting our decision. A lot
Speaker 2: of us fear regret, especially in our twenties, and we
Speaker 2: know that a fear of regret contributes to an action
Speaker 2: when we are trying to make a choice between option A, B,
Speaker 2: C D. What we're judging these choices by is the outcome.
Speaker 2: And all of this is based on hypotheticals. We don't
Speaker 2: actually know what's going to occur, right, So we are
Speaker 2: like subconsciously running this like mental pro con equation in
Speaker 2: the back of our mind to determine what we think
Speaker 2: will maximize the things that we want, whether that's happiness, wealth, pleasure,
Speaker 2: and minimize the things we don't want, like pain, disappointment.
Speaker 2: But we actually don't know how these things will turn out,
Speaker 2: and so we're faced with a lot of uncertainty. When
Speaker 2: we face uncertainty, we tend to catastrophize, which means that
Speaker 2: we focus excessively on how things could turn out poorly
Speaker 2: for us, rather than the likely chance that they will
Speaker 2: turn out all right and if they don't, will be okay.
Speaker 2: The reason that we focus on the possibility of things
Speaker 2: going wrong is because our brains naturally want to protect
Speaker 2: us from emotionally and physically, mentally psychologically painful experiences. And
Speaker 2: the way that it protects us from them is by
Speaker 2: avoiding them in the first place. And the way that
Speaker 2: it avoids them in the first place, I know, keep
Speaker 2: following me here, is by trying to predict the future.
Speaker 2: We cannot predict the future, so instead we choose the
Speaker 2: option that makes us feel safe and more comfortable, and
Speaker 2: what ends up happening is that we get so worked
Speaker 2: up by what could possibly occur that we just don't
Speaker 2: make any decision at all. Not making a decision makes
Speaker 2: us feel less responsible if the worst case scenario were
Speaker 2: to happen. It's also why we kind of constantly seek
Speaker 2: reassurance from others. Right We ask our friends what they
Speaker 2: think we should do. We get our parents or even
Speaker 2: our partner to make our choices for us, whether that's
Speaker 2: like deciding on the restaurant for tonight, or the plans
Speaker 2: or the movie. All of this is a way of
Speaker 2: reducing or even eliminating our sense of personal responsibility and
Speaker 2: accountability that we believe might contribute to a greater sense
Speaker 2: of disappointment or regret if things aren't as good as
Speaker 2: we thought they would be, if the restaurant is a
Speaker 2: let down, if we actually end up screwing up our lives.
Speaker 2: At least we can kind of maintain a sense of like, well,
Speaker 2: at least it wasn't my fault. At least it wasn't
Speaker 2: all me. At Least these people helped me. In this
Speaker 2: day and age, we are also increasingly facing a bias
Speaker 2: known as choice overload. So it is both a blessing
Speaker 2: and a curse that this generation we have so much
Speaker 2: freedom to choose what we want with our lives, more
Speaker 2: than any generation before us. We have so much freedom
Speaker 2: to decide whether we want a work full time, whether
Speaker 2: we want to go back to UNI, pick up a trade,
Speaker 2: or travel or freelance, or pursue our creative interests, or
Speaker 2: work behind a bar. Like I think, especially the creation
Speaker 2: invention of the Internet, our eyes are a lot more
Speaker 2: open to the opportunity that this world provides. But researchers
Speaker 2: have begun to notice that when we have too many options,
Speaker 2: this actually has the opposite effect that we would assume.
Speaker 2: It doesn't necessarily make us feel more free. It actually
Speaker 2: makes us feel in a really strange, counterintuitive way, it
Speaker 2: makes us feel more restricted, because now now that we
Speaker 2: have more options, we start to perceive that we have
Speaker 2: a greater risk of choosing the wrong one, if that
Speaker 2: makes sense. So, if you only had two job offers
Speaker 2: to consider versus let's say six, there is like a
Speaker 2: fifty to fifty chance that you'll choose the right job
Speaker 2: in the first scenario, and in the second scenario, where
Speaker 2: there are like six different options, there's only a fifteen
Speaker 2: percent chance that you're going to choose the best case scenario. Obviously,
Speaker 2: there there are other factors that come into consideration, and
Speaker 2: things aren't always coming down to that kind of simplistic math,
Speaker 2: but that's how our brain sees it. Our brain sees
Speaker 2: all these things in front of us and goes, okay,
Speaker 2: more opportunities, that is more information to consider. There is
Speaker 2: more of a risk that we're going to choose the
Speaker 2: wrong one. Essentially, we also tend to feel like with
Speaker 2: each choice we kind of close more doors than we open,
Speaker 2: which is really scary, especially when we are so young
Speaker 2: and we want to feel really free and liberated and
Speaker 2: able to do what we want. So again, we put
Speaker 2: off making a decision to keep our options open, when
Speaker 2: in fact, what we're actually doing is closing ourselves off
Speaker 2: because we're never fully embracing those opportunities. We're just keeping
Speaker 2: them there in case we might decide one day that
Speaker 2: we want to do them. So it's really interesting because
Speaker 2: when we are in de sip and we are forced
Speaker 2: to make a decision, we actually tend to look at
Speaker 2: less information than people who are more decisive, because we
Speaker 2: understand intuitively that more information is going to make it
Speaker 2: a lot more difficult for us to choose just one thing.
Speaker 2: We don't want to get caught up in this choice overload.
Speaker 2: One researcher put it really well, So, for instance, you're
Speaker 2: an indecisive person and you're shopping for a car, and
Speaker 2: what you might do is willfully choose to not do
Speaker 2: as much research as you should so that you have
Speaker 2: fewer options, so that you have fewer things to consider.
Speaker 2: That is like one way of being strategic about our
Speaker 2: indecisiveness so that we don't overload ourselves. But the thing
Speaker 2: is is that in those situations, we don't make an
Speaker 2: informed decision, right, We just made an easier decision. We
Speaker 2: recognize that if we were to have all the information,
Speaker 2: to all the facts, there is no way that we're
Speaker 2: getting through all that. There is no way that we
Speaker 2: are not going to that we are going to make
Speaker 2: a choice and not have some kind of doubts about
Speaker 2: it because that's where our decision or procrastination comes in.
Speaker 2: It might not surprise you either that people with ADHD
Speaker 2: are more prone to this as well, because they already
Speaker 2: feel overwhelmed by a lot of information coming from their environment,
Speaker 2: So making choices like this becomes agony. I think across
Speaker 2: all neurotypes in decision and indecisiveness is also more pronounced
Speaker 2: if you are someone who just lacks a certain level
Speaker 2: of confidence in your own skills and abilities and your
Speaker 2: ability to make good choices. Now, our confidence really derives
Speaker 2: from our sense of self esteem, our resilient, competent, intelligent,
Speaker 2: we see ourselves as being, and therefore, to what degree
Speaker 2: we feel that we can trust our assessments of a
Speaker 2: decision or a choice. Our level of confidence in our
Speaker 2: decision making ability comes back to how we were raised.
Speaker 2: As most things in psychology tend to do, there's always
Speaker 2: some kind of behavioral psychological mental origin in childhood. So
Speaker 2: if you were raised in a family in which you
Speaker 2: had maybe overbearing parents, that's one example, especially an authoritarian father.
Speaker 2: That's what one study suggests that it's not just about
Speaker 2: an overbearing mother, but an overbearing father in particular, if
Speaker 2: you were raised in that environment and you never had
Speaker 2: the opportunity to make decisions, or you were raised in
Speaker 2: an environment where any small failure was really intensely criticized,
Speaker 2: you don't feel strong enough in your ability to trust
Speaker 2: yourself and the choices that you're making. So in those
Speaker 2: situations when your hand is kind of forced, you genuinely
Speaker 2: are paralyzed. You have this constant mental back and forth,
Speaker 2: not because you don't know what you want, but because
Speaker 2: you don't trust what you want. I don't trust that
Speaker 2: this might not lead to some kind of consequence that
Speaker 2: you can't foresee. You're not used to making decisions for yourself.
Speaker 2: You feel like if you are to mess up, you're
Speaker 2: going to be criticized, people are going to judge you,
Speaker 2: So you spend more time thinking things through. So family
Speaker 2: is another explanation, but another component of our indecisiveness that
Speaker 2: I find particularly interesting. I think this relates to me
Speaker 2: a lot is the interactions between indecisiveness, perfectionism, and anxiety. Now,
Speaker 2: perfectionism is a very broad personality trait. It essentially describes
Speaker 2: people who are overly concerned with striving for flawlessness, and
Speaker 2: they're very critical of themselves when they don't meet the
Speaker 2: kind of unrealistic standards or goals that they set for themselves.
Speaker 2: When they fail to meet their own expectations or maybe
Speaker 2: those of others, but normally they are self imposed expectations,
Speaker 2: this just means they place a lot more pressure on
Speaker 2: themselves to do better next time, to not make that
Speaker 2: mistake again, to make sure that we are hitting our targets.
Speaker 2: Every time we're making the perfect decisions, we cannot screw up,
Speaker 2: and so it makes them incredibly hyper vigilant to the
Speaker 2: possibility of mistakes. Perfectionism makes it so hard to make
Speaker 2: decisions because, like we said before, you just don't know
Speaker 2: what's going to happen sometimes, and it's this trait that
Speaker 2: is a lot higher in people who display anxious traits
Speaker 2: or who have anxiety. Anxiety really exacerbates our perfectionism because
Speaker 2: there is this innate tendency within both to really overthink
Speaker 2: or ruminate on what could go wrong and what has
Speaker 2: gone wrong in the past. So that makes it really
Speaker 2: hard to not be focused on what could go wrong
Speaker 2: in the future. So as a result, our perfectionism means
Speaker 2: that it takes a lot of time to work through
Speaker 2: small choices, small decisions, because they take on a whole
Speaker 2: new degree of importance. If everything has to be perfect,
Speaker 2: if everything has to go according to plan and be flawless,
Speaker 2: then we're not taking any chances here. We're taking all
Speaker 2: the time we can get to make sure that we
Speaker 2: know exactly what we're doing and that this is the
Speaker 2: right thing. For us, because again we can't cope with
Speaker 2: the idea of misstepping, so we delay any kind of
Speaker 2: action or movement towards our goals. We become again just
Speaker 2: so paralyzed. In the contemplation stage, we think that if
Speaker 2: we stay there long enough, eventually we're going to be
Speaker 2: able to see some kind of have some epiphany about
Speaker 2: what we should do, that the future will reveal itself
Speaker 2: to us, will know exactly what the perfect plan is,
Speaker 2: what exactly what's going to like optimize everything in our lives.
Speaker 2: If we go to this school, then we're going to
Speaker 2: get this job, and we're going to live in this
Speaker 2: city and make this much money and meet this person
Speaker 2: that is never going to be clear. A lot of
Speaker 2: decision making kind of comes down to chance. A lot
Speaker 2: of the outcomes of our decision comes down to chance.
Speaker 2: And chance is not something we can control, which means
Speaker 2: that it's not something that really lends itself to creating
Speaker 2: like the perfect life, to making ourselves feel flawless and perfect,
Speaker 2: to allowing ourselves to meet our high standards, not to
Speaker 2: kind of be a dead horse. But I think perfectionism
Speaker 2: is also a real breeding ground for unrealistic expectations right.
Speaker 2: As annoying as it is, you can't get it right
Speaker 2: every time. Every movie you choose to watch isn't going
Speaker 2: to be your favorite, Every restaurant isn't going to be amazing.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you do wish that you could go back, but
Speaker 2: sadly you can't, and you have to make the most
Speaker 2: of what you have. That's especially hard for perfectionists because perfectionism,
Speaker 2: of course, it doesn't leave any room for that kind
Speaker 2: of self compassion. It doesn't leave any room for valuing
Speaker 2: what we want, for valuing our mistakes, because that is
Speaker 2: not on the agenda, right, that does not match the
Speaker 2: overall mission of getting everything right the first time. So
Speaker 2: we've kind of got a good lay of the land
Speaker 2: around what causes our chronic indecisiveness. And that's all great,
Speaker 2: you know, that's all fine and lovely. But knowing that,
Speaker 2: what do we do about it? If we're just sick
Speaker 2: of getting stuck in the analysis, paralysis, of wasting our time,
Speaker 2: of feeling judged because we get stuck and we're stuck overthinking,
Speaker 2: we can't truly confront our fears. We need to make
Speaker 2: the perfect choice, what do we do about it? What
Speaker 2: do we do about it so that we can accept
Speaker 2: failure as being part of this process, except that it's
Speaker 2: not going to be the correct decision every time, but
Speaker 2: still move forward and still actually do something. Well. I'm
Speaker 2: going to talk about all of that and more after
Speaker 2: this shortbreak, so stay with us. Curing or overcoming our
Speaker 2: indecisiveness is not as simple as most people would think.
Speaker 2: It's not about giving ourselves time limits. It's not about
Speaker 2: going over the options and making pro con lists. It's
Speaker 2: not about choosing randomly, and it's not about just swallowing
Speaker 2: your fear and hoping that it goes away. That might
Speaker 2: work for some people, and congratulations if it does, you
Speaker 2: have done my work for me. But I think that
Speaker 2: when we use those band aid fixes of being impulsive
Speaker 2: or just trying to force ourselves into something that feels unnatural,
Speaker 2: we're inevitably going to revert back to our previous pattern
Speaker 2: and habit of procrastination and contemplation. So what we actually
Speaker 2: are required to do is identify why it is that
Speaker 2: you feel stuck, why it is that you lack confidence,
Speaker 2: why does that you feel failure, that you are a perfectionist,
Speaker 2: that you are anxious or ambivalent, and start from there
Speaker 2: address the root cause before you can kind of address
Speaker 2: the problem. Right. So the biggest contributor, as we discussed,
Speaker 2: is fear of failure and perfectionism. We can't cope with
Speaker 2: the possibility of things not turning out how we like
Speaker 2: or experiencing regret. In order to overcome this, we need
Speaker 2: to focus on being good, not perfect, and we call
Speaker 2: this the eighty twenty rule. So the eighty twenty rule
Speaker 2: is actually something that I learned from my previous workplace.
Speaker 2: Shout out to them when I was a consultant back
Speaker 2: in the day. And essentially, the premise is that in
Speaker 2: anything that you do, it doesn't need to be one
Speaker 2: hundred percent amazing, It only needs to be eighty percent amazing,
Speaker 2: and you have twenty percent like room for error, twenty
Speaker 2: percent like space to not be perfect. This stops us
Speaker 2: from obsessing over the minor small details, and we focus
Speaker 2: on the things that are going to be most important,
Speaker 2: and we focus on just getting that eighty percent right
Speaker 2: so that we don't get stuck on the final twenty
Speaker 2: percent and end up kind of losing all the work
Speaker 2: that we've done before that. Right, Like, if for example,
Speaker 2: you have an essay that you're trying to get done,
Speaker 2: and you're getting incredibly indecisive about like what topic am
Speaker 2: I going to choose? What am I going to write
Speaker 2: it on? Is this right? Is this good research? Is
Speaker 2: this going to get me? An A? You're spending so
Speaker 2: much time focusing on everything being correct that you're actually
Speaker 2: sacrificing one hundred percent of the project. Right. But if
Speaker 2: you said, Okay, I'm just going to start and I'm
Speaker 2: just going to focus on getting it about like eighty
Speaker 2: percent there, eighty percent happy with it, you realize that
Speaker 2: that remaining twenty percent isn't actually that big of a deal,
Speaker 2: and so it stops your brain from getting stuck in
Speaker 2: the loop. It takes the pressure off. You know, your
Speaker 2: new one hundred is eighty and that twenty percent is
Speaker 2: a nice buffer. I also saw some amazing advice that
Speaker 2: said getting ten things done at eighty five percent or
Speaker 2: eighty percent so good but not perfect is going to
Speaker 2: do a lot more for your life than getting five
Speaker 2: things done one hundred percent perfectly and stressing out over
Speaker 2: the other five things that you didn't do. I think
Speaker 2: in that situation, right, it really goes to show that
Speaker 2: we spend a lot more time actually worrying about the
Speaker 2: stuff that we didn't do than the stuff that we
Speaker 2: did do, And when we think about that in the
Speaker 2: context of our decisions, we spend a lot more time
Speaker 2: worrying about regret than actually experiencing regret. I think it's
Speaker 2: also important to delineate between the big decisions and the
Speaker 2: small ones and focus on what is important. Devote your
Speaker 2: time to that, rather than getting held up and all
Speaker 2: the small stuff and getting stuck in a rut of
Speaker 2: decision fatigue. Think about the decisions you need to make
Speaker 2: as if they are on a scale. You have your littles,
Speaker 2: you have your mediums, you have your massives. The littles
Speaker 2: are the daily choices that won't really impact you for
Speaker 2: more than like, maximum twenty four hours. You can make
Speaker 2: most of them pretty impulsively or quickly, and most of
Speaker 2: the time they won't matter. What you choose to eat,
Speaker 2: what you choose to wear, what you do in the evening.
Speaker 2: You can overthink them if you'd like, and you can
Speaker 2: catastrophize each little one, but A you just create more
Speaker 2: stress for yourself and you don't deserve that, and B
Speaker 2: you probably won't even end up enjoying whatever it is
Speaker 2: that you choose because you're constantly comparing it to something
Speaker 2: potentially better. So by focusing on the bigger stuff, we
Speaker 2: free up a lot of cognitive space that is probably
Speaker 2: better devoted to the things that are actually going to matter.
Speaker 2: It's also important to remember that every outcome normally turns
Speaker 2: out to be okay, because usually we end up happy
Speaker 2: with what we have and we do our best with
Speaker 2: our circumstances regardless of what got us there. It's not
Speaker 2: if you're caring this much about these small decisions that
Speaker 2: is great, because that's not going to like not to
Speaker 2: be cash about it, but that's not going to disappear.
Speaker 2: You're not ambivalent, you're not apathetic. You do care, and
Speaker 2: that level of care is going to carry with you
Speaker 2: regardless of whether the decisions you're making now turn out great, amazing, fabulous,
Speaker 2: or not so great. There's no way of knowing if
Speaker 2: it would have turned out differently. You just have to
Speaker 2: focus on the moment you're in and how you can
Speaker 2: make your current circumstances better. Right now, you have all
Speaker 2: of the necessary skills to get yourself out of a
Speaker 2: situation you don't want to be in, and if you
Speaker 2: made the wrong choice, your decisions aren't permanent. They can
Speaker 2: be undone. The only decisions you can't undo are the
Speaker 2: ones that you didn't make, are the ones that you
Speaker 2: spent being indecisive about to the point where life just
Speaker 2: kind of made the decision for you. You know, you
Speaker 2: can change courses at UNI, you can switch jobs, you
Speaker 2: can move back to your own hometown, you can return
Speaker 2: early from a trip, whatever it is. But at eighty
Speaker 2: ninety one hundred years old, you can't come back to
Speaker 2: where you are right now and make these choices. You
Speaker 2: can't come back and tell yourself just do it. It's
Speaker 2: not going to matter. Just do the damn thing. You
Speaker 2: can't reverse the regrets that you have around your inaction,
Speaker 2: so it makes more sense to just do the thing,
Speaker 2: even if you're not sure. And I also think it's
Speaker 2: important to shift your mindset from seeing mistakes as a
Speaker 2: failure to being part of the plan. Mistakes are a
Speaker 2: necessary ingredient. They're part of the process. We learn more
Speaker 2: from the times things didn't go our way than the
Speaker 2: times they did, because these situations provide a space for
Speaker 2: reflection and redirection. If everything goes perfectly according to plan,
Speaker 2: one hundred percent, take tiktick. We never fail. We also
Speaker 2: never grow because growth comes from discomfort. It comes from learning,
Speaker 2: pushing past fear, and realizing that even if things don't
Speaker 2: turn out completely okay, you're gonna be totally fine. You're
Speaker 2: gonna be okay. Something else that really works for me
Speaker 2: is to actually let my fear get as big as
Speaker 2: it wants. I let myself catastrophize, even if it seems
Speaker 2: a little bit counterintuitive, hear me out. The reason I
Speaker 2: do this is because when you stare at the worst
Speaker 2: case scenario, when you look at it head on, when
Speaker 2: you make it as big and scary as you possibly can,
Speaker 2: it's never actually that bad. There is always a way out.
Speaker 2: You realize that actually the thing that you're overthinking, in
Speaker 2: the grand scheme of things, it's not life ending. It's
Speaker 2: really not that important. It's not going to destroy you.
Speaker 2: It's all coming down to the fact that our brain
Speaker 2: likes to focus on what is scary and what it
Speaker 2: thinks is dangerous to protect us, even if that thing
Speaker 2: is not as important in reality. Okay, I have two
Speaker 2: final tips for you. The the first one is to
Speaker 2: choose your advice selectively. I think sometimes we use excessive
Speaker 2: advice seeking as a way to put off making a decision.
Speaker 2: When we do this, we get stuck in the information
Speaker 2: gathering stage, where we mistakenly believe that the more we know,
Speaker 2: the better and easier the decision will be. That is
Speaker 2: unfortunately incorrect, as we not already, because it creates choice overload,
Speaker 2: information overload. It means that there is just too many factors,
Speaker 2: too many things to add to the pro con list.
Speaker 2: So choose your trusted people, and I would say choose
Speaker 2: two of them, whether that is a parent and your
Speaker 2: best friend, a partner, a mentor, and then of course
Speaker 2: you have yourself. There's three people there who get to
Speaker 2: have a say in what you're going to decide. Then
Speaker 2: make a decision based on averages. If you know your
Speaker 2: best friend and your boyfriend both think that you should
Speaker 2: do the thing, you should obviously do it. You don't
Speaker 2: need to seek any further advice, and if you feel
Speaker 2: the need to, I think that's real revealing. It's so
Speaker 2: fascinating because when other people tell us what we should do,
Speaker 2: it often makes us more aware of what we really want.
Speaker 2: It's like when you're trying to decide what you want
Speaker 2: for dinner, right and you ask your friend do you
Speaker 2: want tie food or do you want pizza? I can't
Speaker 2: really choose. You sell them like I just I don't care.
Speaker 2: You choose, It's all up to you. And then they
Speaker 2: say pizza and you're like, damn it, I really want
Speaker 2: to tie food. And that is how you reveal your preference.
Speaker 2: The same goes for some of our bigger choices. Right
Speaker 2: when someone else has a strong opinion about what you
Speaker 2: should do, sometimes it causes an equally strong reaction in
Speaker 2: us that reveals our preferences. Done there, you go, you
Speaker 2: know what you need to do now. And finally, this
Speaker 2: is not like a practical thing, but go easy on yourself.
Speaker 2: I just want to remind you you are one small
Speaker 2: person and in the grand scheme of things, it might
Speaker 2: feel comforting. Maybe it doesn't, But you know what, your
Speaker 2: choices are not going to end the world. They're not
Speaker 2: going to destroy lives. Most of the time, anything that
Speaker 2: you do can be reversed. Anything that you do you
Speaker 2: can fix, you can add on to. It's not the end.
Speaker 2: Don't feel like you are locked into any one decision.
Speaker 2: Don't let your decisions take on more gravity and severity
Speaker 2: than they deserve. If it's not going to matter in
Speaker 2: five years. Do not spend more than five seconds thinking
Speaker 2: about it. In fact, sometimes the decisions that we're not
Speaker 2: too sure of actually bring about even better scenarios than
Speaker 2: we ever could have imagined in the first place, because
Speaker 2: we can't predict the future, and if we tried, we
Speaker 2: normally end up with the future that we didn't even
Speaker 2: think of in the first place. So take the pressure off.
Speaker 2: It's all going to be okay. I saw someone say
Speaker 2: this the other day. But there is no one best choice.
Speaker 2: There is no one decision that is going to completely
Speaker 2: change your life. You can make the best of the outcome.
Speaker 2: You can make the best of what happens. It's actually
Speaker 2: not about the decision. It's about the conscious daily choices
Speaker 2: that you make to just keep going with your life,
Speaker 2: to keep yourself well, to keep yourself focused, to keep
Speaker 2: yourself on a path. You know, it doesn't really come
Speaker 2: down to the big decisions. It comes down to the
Speaker 2: small daily choices, the littles. Like I said before, that
Speaker 2: you can make quite quickly. So you've got this believe
Speaker 2: in your capacity to make good choices. Remember that if
Speaker 2: you don't, it's not the end of the world. You
Speaker 2: have a chance to do it over. You have a
Speaker 2: chance to reverse decisions, change your mind, undo them, So
Speaker 2: go gentle on yourself. I really hope that you enjoyed
Speaker 2: this episode. I hope you learned something. I hope that
Speaker 2: it was comforting. And if there is someone else in
Speaker 2: your life who needs to hear this, please feel free
Speaker 2: to share it with them and leave a five star
Speaker 2: review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you're listening right now,
Speaker 2: make sure you're following along for future episodes. If you
Speaker 2: enjoyed this episode, please let me know. I would love
Speaker 2: to hear from you. I actually feel really indecisive when
Speaker 2: I make this show. Sometimes I really worry about the
Speaker 2: episodes I put out and like if anybody's going to
Speaker 2: relate to them, if anybody even cares. Like I always think, oh,
Speaker 2: what if people see this episode and they're like, well,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to listen to that because it doesn't
Speaker 2: apply to me, and then they never listen again. That
Speaker 2: is an example of how I catastrophize my small, tiny choices. So,
Speaker 2: like I said, I'm in the same boat. I would
Speaker 2: love to hear from you if you enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 2: If you can put my own sense of self doubt,
Speaker 2: to rest, and until next week, be kind, be gentle
Speaker 2: to yourself, and we will see you soon.