The Madness of Indecisiveness
Dr. Gary Bell
Most of our daily decisions are not earth-shattering, but you can imagine how paralysis in the decision-making process would render us virtually incapacitated every day if we let it. We are called upon to be courageous, reliable, and trustworthy concerning the outcome of our decisions (i.e. – making decisions consistent with our core values and beliefs).
Indecisive people have not fully formed their character (individuality). They are afraid of responsibility and often transfer the power to their partner or consult with every human they believe will make their mind up for them. These people are crazy-makers and being in a relationship with an indecisive person can be enormously exhausting. The indecisive person is deeply insecure and hardly ever takes chances. Leaps of faith are nearly impossible because they do not trust themselves to choose. Depression and anxiety lead the way to negative predictions and living in limbo.
How do we choose between two or more options that seem equally appealing on the surface? Decision-making usually involves a mixture of intuition and rational thinking; critical factors, including personal biases and blind spots, are often unconscious, which makes decision-making hard to fully realize, or get a handle on.
However, there are steps to ensure that people make consistently excellent choices, including gathering as much information as possible, considering all the possible alternatives with their attendant benefits and costs, and taking the time to sleep on weightier decisions.
When faced with some decisions, you might be tempted to just flip a coin and let chance determine your fate. In most cases, we follow a certain strategy or series of strategies to arrive at a decision. For many of the relatively minor decisions that we make each and every day, flipping a coin wouldn’t be such a terrible approach. For some of the complex and important decisions, we are more likely to invest a lot of time, research, effort, and mental energy into coming to the right conclusion.
Tune in and learn about how to fight indecisiveness, make decisions, and define your life.
“The Blue Door or the Red Door?”, Courtesy of Letizia Bordoni, Unsplash.com, CC0 License; “Crossroads”, Courtesy of Javier Allegue Barros, Unsplash.com, CC0 License