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Stop Telling Yourself You Don’t Know

And Just Make The Decision

By Shelly FreemanPublished 2 years ago 3 min read
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Stop Telling Yourself You Don’t Know
Photo by OSPAN ALI on Unsplash

Do you ever find that you struggle to make decisions?

You agonise about every tiny detail of the decision, you panic and have sleepless nights, terrified that you may make the wrong decision. You end up just accepting defeat, deciding you don’t know, and you are just too confused, and then end up making no decision (which is actually a decision in itself), or leaving things so long the decision is taken out of your hands.

If this sounds like you, then I have one thing to say to you:

Stop telling yourself you don’t know!

Confusion is a useless feeling, and it has no place in your brain. You may think that confusion is something you can’t control and that it is a result of some deep-seated uncertainty, and the “fact” that you don’t know what to do, you just accept blindly that you are confused and will remain confused until some miraculous sign will show you the way — It won’t.

The reason this is all so pointless is that confusion implies that there is a correct answer and that you will get to it eventually. The truth is the longer you stay confused, the more confused you will become.

Staying confused is comfortable, it allows you to avoid making a decision, it allows you to avoid responsibility, to avoid feeling terrible if you later decide the decision you made was the wrong one. It is an indulgence.

However, you are also avoiding living your life, progressing, growing, the learning that comes with making mistakes, and the practice of managing your negative thoughts.

Confusion is just fear disguised, fear of messing up, fear of making the wrong choice, fear of beating yourself up later.

So what if you just decided now that whatever the consequences of your choice end up being, you won’t beat yourself up about it in the future. You can decide now, not to feel regret or unhappiness if the decision goes ‘wrong’.

Just like confusion, your feelings don’t just happen to you, they are a result of your thoughts, if you decide ahead of time what thoughts you want to think about the decision, you can decide on the feelings you will feel.

This takes away the power the current choice has, if it can’t cause you future unhappiness then it doesn’t matter what choice you make.

So how do you fix this?

Just make a decision!

Stop accepting ‘I don’t know’. It's no longer an option. Stop thinking ‘I am confused’. It’s no longer an option either.

Once you stop thinking ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I am confused’ you will no longer feel confused.

The two main things you need to remember are:

1. You don’t need to know anyone else’s thoughts or feelings about something to decide. You will never understand someone else’s brain so you can only make decisions based on your own thoughts, so quit trying to understand other people. Make the decision based on what your objective is. (This doesn’t mean you don’t take into consideration other people’s feelings if their feelings are part of your objective, but if you don’t know their thoughts and feelings and have no concrete way of knowing them, you can’t use them as an excuse not to decide).

2. There is no such thing as a right or wrong decision — How would you even know? Just because something seems right or wrong in the short term, doesn’t mean it will be in the long run. Whether the decision is right or wrong is only judged by your own mind, and you are in charge of your own thoughts.

Commit to not criticise yourself after the decision is made, accept that your happiness does not depend on this decision but on your thoughts, and just choose. Once you take the power away from the decision, most of the time you will know which way you really want to go.

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