← Ready For Love with Hilary Silver
Ready For Love with Hilary Silver
#123: Why You Can't Make Decisions (And What It's Really Saying About You)
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You make lists. You research every option. You ask everyone you know for their input. You sleep on it, think on it, maybe you even prey on it. You spiral on it and you still can't decide. You tell yourself you just need a little more time, that you're being thoughtful or careful or responsible. You just want to get it right. Maybe even you know that you're flip flopping and driving yourself crazy in the process. If this sounds like you. Or even someone you know, if you're someone who overthinks everything, who second guesses yourself, who goes back and forth until you're completely drained, who gets stuck what if ing every possible outcome, or just avoids making decisions altogether. This episode is for you. Because what you think is the real problem is not actually the real problem. You're not really struggling with the decision in front of you. The truth is, you're actually struggling with something much deeper than that. And that is what's actually keeping you stuck. So today we're going to get into what's really going on and how it's costing you more than you even realize. And I'm gonna give you three specific things, plus a new mantra for you to live by. By the end of this episode, you're going to see all of this in a completely different light. And you'll have everything that you need to help you become more decisive. Starting today. Hi, it's Hillary. Welcome to the Ready for Love podcast. Before we start, the best way to support my show is to subscribe to your podcast app and to the YouTube channel. It really helps get more eyes and ears on what I'm doing here. And I thank you in advance for your support. So maybe you've been thinking about leaving your job for years. You've gone through it in your mind a million times. You've had the conversation in your head. You've weighed the pros and cons, maybe even wrote it out on paper. You've imagined what it would feel like to finally make the move. And yet you're still here. You still haven't done anything. Because you're waiting. Waiting to feel ready. Waiting for the right moment, waiting for a sign. Waiting for some kind of certainty that I promise you is never coming. Or it's what to say or do with a friend whose friendship no longer feels friendly. You go back and forth about whether you should say something and have a conversation or just distance yourself slowly and back away. Or maybe you're even wondering if you're the problem. So you continue engaging and tolerating because you just don't know how to handle it. What's the right thing to do? If you're dating and you're trying to decide if someone is right for you, you're not entirely sure, so you're non committal. You're half in and half out. You ask your friends or your therapist or even your dad, what do they think? It's good, but could it be better with someone else? Are you settling? So you just half heartedly show up and either you get half hearted back or worse, you get dumped by someone that you weren't really into in the first place. That sucks. And of course the biggie, deciding whether to stay or go in a romantic relationship or a marriage. Maybe you're even hoping that your partner will do something egregious so it's an easier decision to make. Or even this. Unfortunately, I've seen this a lot. Cheating as a way to get out of a marriage. Because if the partner finds out, they will make the decision. Talk about burning it all down. It's definitely a way to end a marriage for sure. But in my opinion, it is not the right way to do it. I've seen people live in these limbo situations for years, even decades. So there are two ways to not actively decide. You do nothing and leave it to time, or fate or someone else to sort it out. Avoiding the decision altogether. But listen to me. Right now, doing nothing is doing something. My friends Avoiding a decision, leaving it to the other person, or leaving it to fate is a decision. It's a very passive one, but it is a decision. Letting circumstance or other people make the decision for you rather than making it for yourself. This is what I call passenger living. Living in the backseat while someone or something else steers your path. And before you know it, you end up at a destination that you never wanted or intended for yourself at all. Living a life that is not really yours. It's living by default. And this is how some women hit midlife and wonder how the hell did I get here? Something's missing, something feels off, something doesn't feel quite right. And then they question everything around them. Is this really my life? Is this as good as it gets? That's because you haven't actively made decisions on your own behalf. Visualize this. It's like being a ping pong ball being swept downstream in the current rather than a tree firmly rooted while the current rushes around you. You're not being self directed and self determining, steering yourself through life. You're not being self led. And then there's the second way People avoid deciding. And this one is a tough one to hear. It sounds similar, but it's actually a. A little bit different. And it's a powerful difference. Sabotage. Instead of just passively waiting for something to happen, you make something happen, but through the back door. So it's bombing the job interview for the position that you weren't sure you really wanted. It's picking a fight right before a difficult or big conversation. And as I mentioned earlier, it's cheating on a partner that you don't have the courage to leave. And here's what I want you to really hear. This isn't random self destruction. This is. This is actually strategic. The subconscious and the psyche is brilliant at finding clever workarounds. If you engineer the outcome, circumstance makes the call and then you never have to own it. If you didn't get the job, oh well, I didn't have to turn it down. If they ended the relationship, you didn't have to be the bad guy. You got the outcome or the result without having to decide anything. It either just happened or it was so bad that someone else made the decision for you. Except it didn't just happen, okay? You made it happen. You just took the back door the sneaky way so that you'd have deniability and can avoid the discomfort of owning a choice, not deciding by waiting it out and sabotaging are doing the same thing. They are deniability strategies. You don't have to take ownership if you don't decide. You can't be wrong, you can't be blamed. You don't have to face the grief or the fear or the uncertainty of choosing one thing and losing another. The sabotage version is just more of an active form of the same avoidance. It's actually passive aggressive, a way for people to get their needs met, but without taking a risk and asserting themselves directly and overtly. Being passive aggressive gets a really bad rap because it feels so shitty to be on the receiving end of it. And it actually feels quite shitty delivering passive aggressive behavior. But it's not really done maliciously most of the time. The way I describe when someone's being passive aggressive is more about a lack of self confidence, courage, certainty, clarity and strength and self to be able to just actively assert what it is that you want and so you get your needs met, but you do it in a way without putting yourself out there in a way that is too scary. Did you know three out of four homes in the US have toxic chemicals in their tap water? Even when it looks clear, it can still contain Chlorine, lead forever chemicals and microplastics, which are all linked to fatigue, hormone disruption and even cancer. I'm really intentional about what I put in my body. So when I learned that, I got an Aqua Tru countertop water purifier. Its patented four stage reverse osmosis system removes 84 contaminants way beyond what standard fridge or pitcher filters can do. So my family and I get pure, healthy water I can actually trust and there's no plumbing or installation needed. Aqua Tru has been featured in Business Insider and Popular Science and was named best countertop water filter by good housekeeping. Join 98% of customers who say their drinking water is cleaner, safer and healthier. Go to aquatru.com now for 20% off using promo code ready. Aqua Tru even comes with a 30 day best tasting water guarantee. That's aquatru.com a q u a t r u.com with promo code ready. So let's take the shame out of this for just a minute because I've watched a lot of women do this and feel terrible about themselves for a very long time. This isn't a character flaw, being indecisive. This is actually your psyche and your subconscious being very resourceful, protecting you from something that just feels unbearable. The feeling of cutting ties and free falling and taking a leap or a risk and letting go of one thing before you've got the certainty of what comes next. So whether you're sitting in the backseat letting life drive or you're quietly blowing things up so that someone else has to take over and steer, it's the same move, different method, same result, which is no ownership, no accountability, and no decision. And this, which is really what we are talking about today, it's not owning your life as your own. You're sitting on the sidelines of your own life trying to decide if you should get in the game. But what happens, you guys, before you really know it is the game will be over and you will have never gotten the chance to play it. So it is very costly to be this way. It costs time, mental and emotional energy. It costs your dignity and your integrity and maybe even your reputation. It costs tremendous amounts of missed opportunities. And it can even cost you money. Yes, even money. I've seen men and women both give over everything in a divorce because of the guilt that they carry. But above all, and most importantly, it's costing you your belief that you can trust yourself to make decisions. And that lack of trust in yourself is exactly the root cause of all of this. That's what we're talking about here. This is what's really going on. We will never take the wheel and be the pilot if we don't trust ourselves to drive right. Why would we grab the wheel and sit in the driver's seat if we don't have a map or the skills to safely navigate the plane? We just won't. So why don't we trust ourselves? Let's get into where this comes from and stay with me, because then of course, I'm going to fix it for you. For some of us, this started a very long time ago. Maybe you grew up with a parent or parents who questioned everything you did. Are you sure you want to do that? Are you really sure you want to do that? Messages, subtle or not, that landed somewhere deep inside of you. Somebody else knows better than you. Your instincts can't be trusted. Look outward, not. Not inward for the answers. And then life added to it. Decisions that didn't work out as you expected folded into a story that you tell yourself. A bad investment choice became I'm bad with money or a guy turned out not to be what you thought became I have a bad picker. See what I'm talking about? It's all evidence to support this belief that you can't trust yourself to make decisions and that you can't trust yourself at the wheel. So now every time a decision comes up, you're not just weighing the options in front of you. It's not just about that. That decision. You're carrying the weight of this story about yourself and it's getting in the way of a simple, clean decision. The most successful people make decisions quickly and change their minds slowly. Let me say that again. The most successful people among us make decisions quickly and change their minds slowly. And they can do this because they trust themselves, Period. It's not because they are smarter. And it's not a personality trait like being risk averse. It's. It's none of those things. It's the ability to trust yourself. And that is a good thing because it's not just something that you're born with. It's something you can actually learn. It's a skill you can acquire. So people who trust themselves do these three things. First, they know themselves really well. They know who they are. They know what they actually need and want versus what they think they should want and need. They know their values. They know what a yes they feels like in their body and what a no feels like. They know how they're going to react or feel in certain situations. So it's a deep sense of self knowledge and it's built through paying attention to yourself instead of dismissing yourself or outsourcing that job to everyone else around you. Second, they listen to themselves and they act on it. Here's the thing about instincts. Most of you have them. You always have. You saw the red and the yellow flags all along and even felt the hesitation. You knew something was off all along. You did, didn't you? You just overrode it. You wanted that outcome so badly enough that you ran into the fire anyway. That doesn't mean that your instincts were broken. It just means that you didn't listen. They were there. They are still there too. And every time you actually listen and act on what you already know, even in the small ways, you start building evidence in the direction towards self trust. It's doing the hard thing or the unpopular thing because it's what's best for you, always getting your own back. That is really how you learn that you are someone you can trust. You are someone to be trusted. You can trust you to always be there and do what's best for you and then sticking to it, not wavering or caving. Hold the line and really follow through for you. And the third thing people do, who make decisions quickly, they know they will be okay no matter what. This is the whole thing. Decisive. People aren't betting on a perfect outcome. Perfect outcomes don't exist. We all know that. They're betting on themselves. They trust if this outcome that they're after goes sideways, they'll figure it out. They'll learn something or they'll get through it. And when that is your foundation, when your security comes from a belief in yourself rather than. Rather than the certainty of the external outcome. Suddenly deciding isn't so terrifying anymore. I know this sounds like a lot, but it actually doesn't have to be so hard. That voice in your head that says, are you sure? Are you really sure? That voice was never yours. It was implanted into your mind. It belonged to someone else. And it's been taking up way too much space inside your head. It's actually been at the wheel driving all of this indecision. So it's literally a decision to stop believing all of that bullshit right now. Listen. Yes, you are sure. Yes, you are really sure. You can always figure it out. It is going to be okay. You're going to be okay. And we're also just going to let go of the past right now. Anything that didn't work out from a past decision was designed to bring you to this very moment. It has all been part of the process for you to realize what you need to learn. So just stop beating yourself up right now. This is literally a decision. Just stop. At the time that you made those choices in the past, you did the best that you could with the information that you had at the time. You made the decision with who you were back then at that time. And that includes the knowledge and the insight and the degree of healing that you had at that time. Your past is not your prediction and you are not the same person today who made those decisions. You are still punishing yourself for today. So here is your new mantra. Repeat this after me. I'm making this decision right now with all that I know and who I am right now. And as of this very moment, this is the best decision for me. No matter what happens, I'll be okay and I'll figure it out. I will be even better for it because I. I made the decision for myself. I love this. I'm going to say it again. This is your new way of thinking. I am making this decision right now with all that I know and who I am right now. This is the best decision for me in this moment. And no matter what happens, I will be okay and I will figure it out and I will be even better for it because I made the decision for myself. I just love this topic so much today. If this episode resonated with you, go watch my next video where I go even deeper on how the outcome is always internal and how that mindset will help you win no matter what happens. I'll link it in the description and in the show notes. Thanks for listening everyone. Make sure you're subscribed so you never miss an episode and I'll see you next time.