Episode Transcript
If you can’t seem to be able to make decisions easily, I share with you a reason why that might be. I observed this now in too many of my students, friends and even myself in the past to not share this with you. This realization might just be what you were looking for so making decisions feels easy again.
Why does it feel so hard to make decisions? If this is something you regularly ask yourself then this episode is perfect for you. If you struggle with making smaller or bigger decisions in your life, then I want to share a reason with you today why that is and what you can do about it. Making decisions is an everyday activity. Every day presents us with choices and we make decisions of which of the choices we choose.
And I’m sure that you can think of a time in your life when making a decision felt easy to you. Or when you did not even think about it too much. That shows you that this phase is temporary and that it can be changed. It does not mean that you are an indecisive person. That you have to keep struggling with decision-making for the rest of your life. That is absolutely not the case. There is hope, ok?
And hey, maybe you are not even aware that you are not making decisions easily in your life. So how can that look like when you don’t? How could you find out if you do struggle with not making timely decisions?
※ DO YOU EVEN KNOW IF YOU MAKE DECISIONS EASILY? ※
I invite you to reflect on the last few months or years in your life. Then ask yourself these questions to identify possible symptoms:
- Do you have a few decisions to make in your life that you wanted to make already 6 months or even 12 months ago? This could be in your professional life, in your family life. This could be about your home, hobbies, holidays, or relationships. It could be about anything.
- Are you trying to make a decision and move something forward in your life but something always happens? Which means you have to delay the decision? That “something” that is happening is you holding yourself back from making the decision.
- When you think about a decision you would like to make in your life right now do you feel dread about making it? Do you get a knot in your tummy or your throat even thinking about it? And is that feeling holding you back from making the decision?
- Do you feel that a lot of decisions are taken away from you by your circumstances or other people in your life? As if you can’t make a lot of your decisions because stuff just happens to you?
If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, you probably want to listen to the rest of this episode. It does not mean that you have a problem. But hearing what I have to share can open your eyes to the fact of what happens when you don’t make a decision. And realize the reason why it might feel hard to make it, too.
※ THE CONSEQUENCES OF NOT MAKING DECISIONS ※
The trouble is that we hurt ourselves the most when we can’t make decisions. Every day, week, or month we carry around with us an unmade decision that costs us time and energy. The energy we spend on mulling it over and over and over. The feelings of worry, frustration, and fear of indecisiveness are being brought up again and again and impact your emotional and physical health.
You keep yourself stuck by not making a decision. You are in limbo and you are not moving forward. It would even be better to make the decision to not do something and to stay where you are, instead of not making a decision at all. Even if you decide not to go for it, you are able to leave this decision behind and move on with your life. Does this make sense to you?
Quite often we let ourselves be ruled by our outside circumstances or other people instead of making the decision ourselves. And don’t get me wrong. You should not start making decisions on the spot from now on forwards. That is not what I am saying. You always want to take the time to listen to your inner voice, your gut, and your intuition and that sometimes can take a few days. But in this case, I talk about decisions that you don’t seem to make for months or even years.
※ DON’T GIVE YOUR POWER AWAY AND LET OTHERS DECIDE FOR YOU ※
Please don’t wait for something outside of you to make the decision for you. Yes, it means the decision is finally made and you feel some short-term relief for having it off your books, but what is the likelihood that you are happy with the decision if someone or something else made it for you? Pretty low. You won’t get a lot of satisfaction out of this scenario as you have no control over the outcome. You gave your power away. Your power to decide what to do next in your life.
This is what I was referring to in my earlier question where I asked if decisions in your life seem to be made by something or someone else in your life. If you don’t make the decision, then the rest of the world will make it for you. If this is an occurrence that resonates with you, you now know why this keeps happening. Because you are not stepping up and making your own decisions in life.
※ THE REASON WHY YOU CAN’T MAKE DECISIONS EASILY ※
The reason that I want to share with you today results from my observation of my students, friends and other people I meet. It’s a pattern that I started to observe quite recently and felt inspired to share with you as it might help you to get out of this indecisive phase.
The reason why people can’t seem to make decisions is because they are stuck in the fight and flight part of their nervous system. They are literally stuck in stress. They spend most of their waking hours being stressed and their brains are in high-beta brain wave patterns. This goes hand in hand: when your sympathetic nervous system, the fight-and-flight nervous system is constantly activated, your brain spends most of its time in high-beta brain wave patterns.
And what does that mean for us? What does it mean to be stuck in high-beta brain wave patterns? It means that your brain is not working right. The neurons in your brain fire incoherently and your brain starts to compartmentalize. And that means that the different parts of your brain don’t communicate well anymore.
※ YOUR BRAIN AND BODY ARE INCOHERENT ※
And all of that can be the reason why you have difficulty making decisions. When we are in high-beta brain wave patterns we are not good at communicating – and not just to others but as well to ourselves. So no surprise that we don’t feel like we can make a decision.
If the brain doesn’t work well anymore, we are not able to make the best decision for ourselves, so it’s better to make none. Makes sense, too, right? Different parts of your brain stop communicating with other parts, so you don’t have access to the full capacity of your brain or be able to see the full picture.
And all of that is holding you back from making decisions. And it’s probably even a good thing that we can’t seem to make a decision in that state because it’s not going to be the best decision anyway as your brain is not coherent. It’s out of order and you don’t want to make a decision that is out of order.
※ YOU CAN’T MAKE DECISIONS IF YOU ARE NOT COHERENT ※
But what if you are stuck in the fight-and-flight nervous system and in the high-beta brain wave patterns every day? You are never in the right place to make the right decision for yourself. But then we get the other problems we mentioned earlier:
- Wasting our time and energy by not making the decision
- Being stuck in indecisiveness
- And letting everyone or everything else in our life make the decisions for us.
- So what is the solution? How do we get ourselves out of this?
※ RETURN BACK TO BALANCE ※
We want to regulate our nervous system back into balance so it spends time in the recovery and restoration part of the nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system. We want to lower our brain wave patterns on a regular basis so the brain can start working coherently and as one unit.
I know, I know. This sounds like quite a lot when you have no clue how to do this. If you truly want to learn how to do this easily in your life, this is one part you learn in Energy Academy. I teach you how to balance your brain and your nervous system and give you the tools to do this on the spot when you become aware of your imbalance.
※ MY NUMBER 1 TOOL TO MOVE BACK INTO BALANCE ※
But the one tool that I can share with you now that can help you to do all of these things intuitively over time is meditation. Meditating has been my number 1 tool that helped me to get unstuck from being stuck in constant stress and being burned out. Because that’s where you end up when you are in constant stress – being burned out.
Meditating helps you lower your brain waves and move back from the fight-and-flight nervous system into the recovery and restore the nervous system. And the more you regularly meditate and practice the easier it gets for you even outside of your meditation. The solution is to meditate regularly and get yourself and your brain and body back into balance.
Then you will realize that you are much better connected and able to make decisions again. The more you are connected and balanced, the easier it is to listen to your intuition, to see the bigger picture and just make a decision calmly and confidently. I can tell you from my own experience that it works.
※ MEDITATE REGULARLY TO MAKE BETTER DECISIONS IN YOUR LIFE AGAIN ※
Making decisions is not a big deal for me anymore. Sure there are exceptions. And they are part of life. But now I am so well connected to who I am and what I want, that I can make much better decisions for myself and quicker let go of things that don’t serve me which means easier saying No to things.
If you have meditated before, great start again. If you say: Linda, I never meditated before and I have no clue how to start, I have the right resources for you. I have a powerful but short course for you: Purposefully Meditating. In the teaching part of the course, I tell you everything you need to know to get started with meditating. All the ins and outs and worries are taken away from you. And then you have 3 powerful meditations included that will help you with exactly your problem of being unconnected and stressed.
