Learning to trust yourself enough to make decisions and eradicate the overwhelm.
Everyday, you’re faced with hundreds of decisions to make, mostly on your own. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to learn to trust yourself enough to make all these decisions without the overwhelm ?
Yes some of these are easy choices. Yet sometimes, having to make a decision can be so overwhelming you just want to curl up in bed and hope to avoid the situation long enough for it to eventually go away. You may even look to others to decide for you, so you don’t have to take responsibility of the outcomes of your decision.
Does any of this sound familiar?
“But I don’t know what I want,”
“I don’t trust myself enough to make good decisions,”
“What if I make the wrong choice?”
The good news is that no one knows you better than you! Your partner, best friend, or family may know many things about you, but ultimately, no one else understands your internal thoughts and feelings better than yourself. You are the best person to make the right decision for yourself.
Learn how to Trust Yourself to Make Decisions in 3 simple steps !
Step 1 – Be honest with yourself
Be honest with yourself. Remind yourself that no matter what opinion you have, there will be at least one person who disagrees with you, and another person who agrees with you 100%. We are all allowed to have own preferences and opinions. These differences do not determine anyone’s worthiness. Your preference of choosing vanilla over chocolate ice cream should not matter, as the end goal is to enjoy the ice cream as a refreshing treat. This logic applies to bigger decisions too!
To get better at being honest with yourself, and taking action based on what you want, start small.
Become more honest in your daily life decisions (e.g., choosing a certain style of clothing, choosing what to order from a restaurant). This allows you to get to know what brings you joy and what your preferences are in a safe, manageable way.
Step 2 – Commit to the choice
Sometimes your decisions don’t lead to your desired outcomes.
For example, your decision to try a new dish that turned out to be unsuited to your taste-buds.
or
Your decision to let a friend know what they did wrong, was not well-received.
That does not mean you’re not good at making decisions – these things happen, and the outcomes are sometimes beyond our control.
Don’t let a few negative experiences stop you from ever making decisions. Instead, reframe these experiences as good for learning, and as a way to know yourself better and to allow you to make even better decisions in the future.
Step 3 – Accept you will get it ‘wrong’ sometimes, and that’s okay.
Mistakes and mishaps do NOT determine your worth. We carry beliefs and biases from our past life experiences that can influence our decision-making. These beliefs and biases can stem from childhood experiences or rules that we learned from our family. Some of these may be translated well when you delve into the bigger world, but some may not. Maybe you learnt that making mistakes is unforgivable or someone told you if you fail at school you will fail in life.
In reality, no one gets it right the first time – every time ! It really is okay when we make mistakes. When you fully accept that you can be wrong sometimes, without it affecting your worth as a person, it’s a lot easier to learn from the mistake and move forward. Why ? Because these mistakes are no longer defining your worth.
Do you feel like you need to improve your self-trust and decision-making?
Do you get stuck reliving past decisions and feeling guilt or regret?
At Sage & Sound, we can guide you to develop your self-trust through identifying your values, beliefs, and biases, developing strategies to overcome your limiting biases, and help you to improve your decision-making skills.
For some more helpful tips around decision making – check out this blog post by Lana Hall : How to make Good Decisions : Proven tips from a Psychologist
and be sure to follow the team on our socials accounts for more regular updates, tips & knowledge bombs 🙂
https://www.instagram.com/sage.and.sound/
