When you can’t decide what to do next in your life, you might feel completely stuck.
Maybe you know something needs to change, but you’re not coming to a clear answer about what that change should be.
Being stuck in indecision is painful. We always feel better if we decide, because once we decide, we can move forward again.
But here’s some good news: getting unstuck is actually a lot simpler than you might be thinking.
When You Can’t Decide, You Might Be Trying To Do Too Much at Once
Here’s what a lot of us don’t realize about being in a place of indecision: It’s not so much that we don’t know what to do, don’t know how to decide, or that we’re bad decision makers. It’s that we’re trying to decide too much at once.
When life is in a place of transition, our minds want certainty. We want the map in front of us laid out so we know to take step A, B, C, and D to get to this next chapter in our lives. And we want to know exactly what that next chapter is going to be.
Think about someone considering leaving their corporate job to start their own business. They’re suddenly thinking about everything at once: health insurance, billing, invoicing, collecting payments, finding work. All these things just feel way overwhelming.
They’re trying to decide who they’re going to be, what this next chapter is going to be, how it’s going to play out, and how they’re going to get there. We want the whole map in front of us before we take any step at all. And that is the problem.
When You Can’t Decide, Your Brain Is Working Against You
The reason why this is a problem is because we can’t think ourselves into a future that we haven’t lived yet.
When we’re trying to think through something, we’re pulling on all the experience that we already have. But if we’re stepping into something we’ve never done before, there’s no way that we can map it all out in one spot before we take a single step toward it.
So when we’re trying to decide everything and we’re trying to get this map laid out for us, we tend to stall. We stay stuck. We go round and round and round this thing. Should I do it? Should I not do it?
Here are some reasons why the brain lets us down at times like this.
Reason #1: You’re Making a Choice With Incomplete Information
When you’re in transition, you’re standing between what you know and what you don’t know; what is ending and what hasn’t started yet. And your brain hates that. Our brains want things they can measure, compare, and plan around.
But when we’re in these places, we don’t have any of that. So what happens is the mind fills up the spaces of what it’s lacking with what it always fills up the spaces with: fear and worry and doubt and anxiety. It goes through all these what-if scenarios because it’s trying to solve for every possible outcome.
For example, someone thinking of moving from their corporate job to being a freelancer might ask: What if I don’t get enough clients and I don’t make enough money? What if I can’t pay my rent? What if I end up having to go back to work for this company because I couldn’t make it work?
So many of these worries and anxieties come up because there are so many blank spaces that the brain doesn’t have the information to fill.
If you’ve been stuck, it’s not because you’re bad at decision-making or that somehow you’re not strong enough to make a decision and move forward. It’s because we’re trying to make a future-proof choice without having lived that future yet.
Reason #2: Your Brain Confuses Discomfort With Danger
Whenever we’re facing a big life transition—changing a job, changing a relationship, moving to a new location—our nervous system doesn’t see that as personal growth. It sees it as dangerous.
Studies in neuroscience have found that uncertainty activates the same regions of the brain that are involved in detecting threats to our personal safety. And then the body also reacts like something’s wrong.
The brain starts detecting this unknown thing and it starts feeding us fear, worry, and anxiety. We feel that in our physical selves as well.
We start to feel anxious and worried, which is going to make us feel like we should hold back, when in truth, the brain is simply responding to uncertainty and sending those messages to the body.
The Dangerous Shift: From Clarity to Relief
Once the stress response kicks in, most of us no longer put clarity as our top priority.
Going into this, we wanted clarity. We wanted to figure this out. We wanted to know what this next step would be.
But when the stress response kicks in, our priorities change. Now we just want relief. We want the stress to stop. We want the anxiety and worry and fear to go away.
At that point, the brain starts looking for a shortcut. And that shortcut could be any decision that promises to stop the pain.
This is the dangerous part. Whenever we’re facing a life transition and we’re in that place of indecision, it’s very painful. The priority no longer is clarity. The priority changes to relief and a stop to the pain.
This is when the pressure to just choose something, anything, becomes really strong.
When You Can’t Decide Everything, Stop Trying To
The truth is you don’t need to decide everything right now. You don’t need to know the whole path. You don’t need big sweeping decisions. Don’t need a 10-year plan, a one-year plan, or even a six-month plan. All you have to have is one real-world piece of feedback.
Clarity doesn’t come from thinking harder. It comes from movement, from testing the waters, and seeing what you discover.
Think about it like this. If you’re thinking about changing careers, don’t start by trying to name your brand new dream job. That’s too big. Instead, start small.
Maybe you have a conversation with someone who’s doing what you’re thinking you might want to do. See what they say about it and see how that lands with you.
Maybe you take a class. You learn something that you would need to be able to do this other thing you’re thinking about and just see how that strikes you.
You could spend a weekend volunteering in a space that feels connected to what you’re wanting to do or what you’re missing in your life.
In any of these situations, if you’re not sure what to do next—whether to stay or go or take a next step—all you have to do is run a small experiment.
When You Can’t Decide: The Power of Small Experiments
For someone who was working for a corporation and thinking about wanting to do their own thing, they might take a small task on the side and start doing some freelance work at night and on the weekends just to see how it might go. That gives them the chance to test the waters of doing their own business.
You can do the same thing. Make one little tiny experiment. Change one little tiny variable. Maybe you work from a different place for a week. You take a short trip alone and notice how you respond.
When you take these little small moves, what you get is feedback. You step into the unknown just a little bit and you gather information. That’s information your brain loves that it can then use to plan the next little step, the next little experiment.
Because your brain does so much better at handling these little tiny steps than it does trying to figure everything out at once when it has no idea.
You take this little step, gather some data, and your brain can say, You know what? I kind of like this. This is kind of cool. I would like to do some more of this. In that way, we gradually lead ourselves into whatever the next step is that we want to take.
At that point, we’re not asking the brain to come up with our next step based on theories or guesses or imaginings. We’re giving ourselves lived data that we can then use to determine the next step after that.
Once you have some of that lived data, then your decisions stop feeling like leaps of faith and more like steps you can actually trust.
Research shows that small steps like this can help reduce decision anxiety because they give your nervous system something solid to work with. It’s no longer guessing. It’s actually observing.
And that is your way out of the indecision spiral.
When You Can’t Decide: Getting Distance From Your Own Life
The other thing that’s cool about doing these little experiments is that it tends to help us separate just a little from our own lives.
When we’re in the middle of these transitions, we’re worried, anxious, fearful, and overwhelmed. If you step back a little bit and say, “Okay, I’m feeling pulled toward this. Let me just take one little small step toward that and let me see what happens.”
If you go into it with the attitude that you’re just gathering data, it tends to help you separate just a little bit from your own life, so it’s not tearing up your emotions so much.
Have you ever taken a vacation and noticed that you can see things so much clearer when you’re away for that week?
When we can separate ourselves just a little bit from our own lives. We can say, “You know what? I’m just going to run this experiment. I’m just going to try this. See what happens.”
Collect the data. Write down what happened, what you did, what your test was, what the outcome was, and what the data is. All of this separates you just enough to help clarify your thinking so that the decision about your next little test comes easily.
Your Action Step for This Week
If you’re caught in an indecision spiral right now, here’s something small you can try this week: Instead of asking yourself, “What is the right choice?” Ask yourself this instead: “What’s one small thing I can test?”
You might have a conversation you’ve been avoiding, Take a class doing something that’s been calling to you, or spend an afternoon doing something you’ve said you don’t have the time to do. Just see what happens. What stirs up? How do you feel? What so you think?
Do you feel a little lighter, a little more curious? Do you feel calmer? Or did something tighten up or shrink inside you? Those are your clues. Each one gives you a tiny bit of information about what’s true for you right now.
That is how you start moving forward again. Not by finding certainty about everything you’re going to do for the next five years, but by simply noticing the signals that your life is already sending and making little experiments to see what you find.
You don’t have to decide it all right now. Pause, listen, observe, and then take one tiny step.
Featured image by Freepik.