How to Arrive at Decisions Without the Stress
By Amy Eliza Wong
If you are someone who stresses over your decisions, believing that making a wrong choice will start a domino effect that will topple your world, you need to give yourself a break.
The pressure of having to make the right decision can be crippling, but it’s only a figment of your imagination. All the “what-if” scenarios you conjure in your head are fear-based and unlikely to manifest. To rid yourself of the anxiety that accompanies decision-making, you need to embrace the belief that there’s no such thing as one right decision — there’s only a decision you’re making at the moment.
Fretting over decisions comes from believing that there’s an actual right and wrong decision.
But if you decide there’s an official playbook you’re supposed to follow in order to live the good life, that belief can lead you down a path of self-sabotage. You won’t be living your life, but one that you believe you’re supposed to live.
Know that you can never accurately predict your future. (How much of what you anticipated 10 years ago is true for you now?) Instead, trust your instincts. Any decision can be right or wrong.
The best course is to make your choice and then put your energy behind it.
Follow through in a way that will allow it to play out the way in which you’d hoped. Many times, when the course that you chose fails, it’s not because the decision you made was wrong, but because of the conflicted attention and energy, you gave it by doubting your choice. Doubts will keep you from full engagement.
Choosing purposefully will lead you on the right path.
Living Always on Purpose is the art of accepting what is and creating what will be by removing the perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors that get in the way of living your life powerfully, purposefully, and joyfully.
Apply these strategies to make purposeful decisions:
- Adopt the mindset of believing in the choices you make. Do you have a choice right now in which you could apply this perspective? Try approaching your decision-making process boldly by making a choice by following your instincts and without allowing any anxious deliberation.
- Consider how it feels. Take time to consider what becomes available to you in the absence of decision-making stress. What ideas appear? What’s now possible without the stress of worrying about “what’s right?”
- Follow through on your decision. What would it take to align fully with the decision you made? What will keep you focused on fully buying into your decision and keep the doubts from forcing their way in?
- Come up with an affirmation. Try coming up with a statement that encourages you when presented with the occasional choices that life inevitably presents. Mine is, “There’s no right path, only a path.” It never fails to bring needed relief and remind me that I’m always living on purpose. I can save myself the energy spent on deliberating and second-guessing, trusting my instincts, and acting.
Being on the right path is about fully aligning with the choices you make. And, if you find you don’t like the decision you’ve made, change it and try again. Life is an experiment!
Amy Eliza Wong is a certified executive coach who has devoted more than 20 years to the study and practice of helping others live and leads on purpose. She works with some of the biggest names in tech and offers transformational leadership development and internal communication strategies to executives and teams around the world. Her new book is Living on Purpose: Five Deliberate Choices to Realize Fulfillment and Joy (BrainTrust Ink, May 24, 2022). Learn more at her site here.
