Decisions are hard. I have been known to be somewhat indecisive in my time— a personality trait that my husband would argue is one of those “I love you in spite of…” features. Being a people-pleasing, recovering perfectionist, anxiety-laden, sleep-deprived working mother of two really makes for a perfect storm of mixed bag decisions. Which brings me to a value that I try to remind myself:
Why are you making this decision? Or not making this decision? Are you making decisions based on what your values are?
Circling back to the above personality traits that make it difficult to choose between plan A or plan B, people-pleasing is definitely the number one reason that I find this difficult. If I choose Plan A, will this person be happy? If I choose Plan B, will I lose an opportunity to connect with this other person? What about Plans C through M? Who might be affected by these? Add in anxiety and decisions will never be made.
Enter my countermeasures.
Whenever I am starting to feel the stress of making a choice, I ask myself the following questions:
- Will this decision hurt another person? Have I done anything wrong? (Canadians, we tend to over apologize— if you haven’t done anything wrong, you don’t need to apologize)
- Does it represent my core values: family, love, God, stability, and resilience?
- Do I need support in making this decision? Do my husband or kids need to be a part of this decision?
- In 5 years, 10 years, or 20 years, will this decision have made a difference in my life or in my family’s life?
- Does it feel right?
After this I have decided what to do, I don’t change my mind. I don’t sleep on it, or wait for anything else to happen— I follow through with what I promised myself I would do. Some may disagree with this but almost 100% of the time, if I give myself more time to argue with those 5 questions above I will make a choice that is not based on my values. You can always convince yourself out of something if you try hard enough (Chandler Bing “I try to go to the gym 3 times a week but I’ve missed the last 1200 times”).
The last step is to accept the outcome if you don’t make the right decision. The outcome isn’t what you hoped for but who knows whether the other decision would be a good outcome either. If you made the decision with love, can there really be a bad outcome?
