Cindy Kunath-Brock

I never realized that the main cause of my frustration was indecision.  I’d been feeling very frazzled lately, and I was just not certain what the cause was.  Initially, I found myself a little confused when making small decisions such as where to eat for lunch.  However, the situation seemed to escalate to the point where I was completely stuck when it come to deciding anything.  In addition, I had no idea why – especially when Ihad never been like this before.

According to Steve Pavlina, author of the book, “Personal Development for Smart People,” on the path of personal growth, there are two scenarios we all encounter:  linear growth and growth forks.

“Linear growth is when you can see the next steps ahead of you fairly clearly. Figuring out where you should go next isn’t that hard. Implementation is the biggest challenge here. This doesn’t necessarily mean you can see ten steps ahead, but the next step in front of you is at least visible. Once you complete that step, the next step will soon present itself,” Steve states.

With linear growth, the next steps are clearly out in front of you, allowing you to focus on making changes instead of second-guessing your decisions.  You can see where you’re headed (yet there may be a few bumps along the way).

Steve says when it comes to growth forks, “you see two or more mutually exclusive paths ahead of you, and it’s tricky to decide which path to take. Your challenge here lies in choosing the “correct” path. Implementing your decision may still be hard, but the up-front decision is the major limiting step.”  These can be very frustrating – so much that it can stall your growth for days, months, weeks, or even years.

It’s more common for people having indecision to be facing a growth fork.  This is because selecting the wrong path can sometimes have disastrous results.  Thus, the inclination is to stay where you are to avoid what may/may not happen.  This can be the opposite of the phrase, “The grass is sometimes greener on the other side of the hill.”  You never find out if the grass is greener because you never climb the hill.

The key to overcoming indecision for me is to stay in the present moment.  Don’t think about the future or the past: just think about now.  In my case, even a decision about lunch was overwhelming.  I had to learn to think about what I wanted to eat today, right this minute.  I blocked out tomorrow and almost pretended that tomorrow would never come.  So, what decision could I  make right now if there was never going to be another decision to make?

For me, I found that the pressure of making a decision started to melt away.  At first, the small decisions were easy.  Then, the more I lived in the “now,” the easier the bigger decisions became.  In addition, for the bigger decisions, thinking about “now” caused me to stop and evaluate the situation and keep from going to the other side of the spectrum where I might end up making rash decisions without any forethought.

If you have trouble making decisions, focus on what you want right now and make your decision based upon that.