The Art of Effortless Decision Making

Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

So many of us spend a ton of time and energy stuck in indecision—the stress and delays that come with this are quite incredible.

One of the things I’m proud of about myself is my ability to make decisions quite effortlessly. This isn’t to brag—there are costs to that sometimes, and it took me a while to develop this kind of trust in myself. But overall, it’s something I think has served me really well as a leader and entrepreneur.

Besides practice, a couple of mindset shifts have been important to this process of learning effortless decision-making.

I’m going to talk about those mindset shifts, how to practice, and how I make decisions in this article. But first, I’ll talk about what gets in the way.

What Gets Us Stuck in Indecision (and the Cost)

Indecision costs us dearly. When we’re stuck in indecision, we lose a lot of time questioning our decisions, asking others for their opinions, or avoiding thinking about the decision. It also costs us a lot of stress. It delays projects and also makes us feel guilty because we keep putting things off.

It’s usually more costly to avoid deciding than it is to take decisive action and be wrong sometimes.

Marcus Tullius Cicero, the Roman statesman, philosopher, and scholar, once said, “More is lost by indecision than wrong decision. Indecision is the thief of opportunity. It will steal you blind.”

So what gets us stuck in indecision? Usually, it’s fear.

We fear making the “wrong” decision because we worry that it will make us look bad, that we’ll be judged, that it won’t give us the validation we seek from others, or that we'll regret making the mistake and be critical toward ourselves. We get stuck because of fear, and so we put it off rather than letting ourselves deal with the fear.

What Effortless Decision-Making Looks Like

Imagine if we could make decisions and take action without all the fear. I’m not saying we could be completely free of fear, but I’m asking you to imagine what decision-making would look like without fear.

Without fear of doing something wrong and getting judged, you would simply make decisions based on the best info you have and on your gut. You would choose from the heart, rather than getting caught up in overthinking. You might make mistakes, but you would learn from them and make adjustments.

It’s so much simpler this way—simply choose from the heart. Trust. Take action. And clean up any messes that get made if things don’t work out as you had hoped.

Fear does come up, of course. And you simply deal with the fear, with breath and love. It doesn’t have to be a blocker.

Sometimes a decision is a big one, and the consequences could be pretty costly. In those cases, you might give it more thought, sit with the uncertainty for a bit, do some research, ask the opinions of others, and then breathe and choose from the heart. And be nimble in dealing with the outcome. This is where the trust comes in—you learn to trust that you can deal with anything that arises.

The Mindset Shifts

You can see from what I’ve just shared that there are some mindset approaches that are helpful. The three shifts I recommend include:

1. Choose from the heart instead of overthinking. When we get caught up in thinking, it’s because we think we can solve the uncertainty by thinking it through. While thinking can be helpful, it will rarely cut through indecision when fear takes over. A different approach is simply to choose from the heart—ask yourself what your heart wants in this situation. For example, “do I want to write a blog post or go work out?” There’s no right answer. I can think for a long time and not come up with the answer. Choosing from the heart is trusting that it’s OK to actually want what you want.

2. Trust instead of wasting brain cycles. I’ve seen people spend so many brain cycles thinking things through and then deciding—only to worry that their decision isn’t the right one. They make a decision and then think about it some more. What if we could free ourselves from so much thinking, worry, and rethinking by just trusting ourselves?

3. Learn instead of trying to get it “right.” A lot of the time, we get stuck in indecision because we want to make the right decision, but that’s not very helpful because you can’t know what the right decision is. In fact, there might not be a right decision. What if, instead, we could see it as a learning process in which we try things out and see how that goes? This learning approach frees us from having to get it right and allows for it to be a more empowered process.

You can see from these shifts in mindset that decision-making becomes more relaxed, less tight, and more trusting. Effortless, almost.

How to Practice

So how do we practice these shifts and this effortless approach?

I wouldn’t recommend starting with super tough decisions, such as whether to leave your current job or not. Practice with the easy day-to-day stuff to start with, until you develop more and more trust in yourself.

So things such as the following: What should I work on next? How should I reply to this person’s email? Do I want a veggie burger or a lentil salad? Do I want to say yes to this invitation or not? Do I want to take on the clutter in my garage?

With each of these decisions, notice if you get caught up in overthinking, and see if you can practice choosing from the heart. Notice if you start to doubt your choice, and see if you can practice trusting your choice. Notice if you’re worried about whether you made the right decision, and see if you can practice looking at it as a learning process instead.

Ask yourself if you can make these decisions more effortless; see what you can discover through this kind of practice.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Epoch Health welcomes professional discussion and friendly debate. To submit an opinion piece, please follow these guidelines and submit through our form here.