OptimistLab

How to Banish Indecision and Live More Powerfully: Part One

Why read this? This article will help you free yourself from frustrating, corrosive indecisiveness, and show you how to make decisions about your life from a place of power.

I’ll start by showing you the four steps you can take to eliminate indecision. In Part Two I’ll explain how the four steps work.

If you’ve ever encountered indecision (most, if not all of us, have) then you know how painful it can be. What you may not know is that when you are indecisive, you are actually working form a place of powerlessness.

Furthermore, indecision keeps you from moving forward; it sucks the very momentum out of your life. And, it’s just plain not fun, as anyone who’s experienced it can attest. So what can you do about it?

For starters, take a look at the following four steps:

1. Ask Yourself What You Really Want—sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how much indecision is caused by overlooking this simple step. Not sure? That’s ok, as you go through these steps, you’ll get closer and closer to your truth.

2. Gather Information—this means looking both internally (your feelings, intuition, etc.) and externally (research, other people’s opinions). While both can be useful, I urge you to pay particular attention to your internal sources of information; this is where you’ll find the most valuable information.

3. Take the Pressure Off—de-stress the decision making process by beginning to view every decision you make as simply an exercise in information gathering. Every new decision you make will help you to refine your knowledge base, which in turn will help you to more easily make decisions in the future. But remember, in order to refine, you must first decide.

4. Decide, Act, and Gather Some More—use what you know to make the most reasonable decision you can at this moment. In some cases, this may mean deciding to delay a decision. As you act on your particular decision, you will begin to gather more information. You’ll learn what’s working and not working, perhaps an entirely new possibility will reveal itself to you. This is what it means to refine your knowledge base. Act accordingly.

Next up: Part Two, where I’ll unpack some of theory behind this process.