What Gets in the Way of Confident Decision Making?
Elon Musk’s dumpster fire Twitter takeover is unfolding into a future business school case study. He’s doubling down on a leadership style that puts the bottom line over human decency–he’s the antithesis of all the positive leadership qualities we cultivate and cheerlead at Penney Leadership. For many of those employees given the choice to either commit to a work culture of “long hours at high intensity” where “only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade” or leave with three months of severance pay, it was a no-brainer.
Wouldn’t it be nice if all decisions were that easy?
I was recently struggling to make a time-sensitive decision. My head was spinning with the pressure of not wanting to let anyone down, and feeling like I’d inevitably disappoint someone no matter what decision I made. I felt stuck in the pit of analysis paralysis with no idea how to find a lifeline of decisiveness.
Listen to logic?
I remembered the best decisions aren’t based on pleasing others, and I could learn something either way. So it wasn’t about making the “right” choice, but rather, determining which one was right for me right now and confidently moving forward with it.
That still didn’t help me make the decision.
Admittedly, I am the queen of over-analyzing. I even find ways to complicate a classic pros/cons list. Back in high school, I created a spreadsheet to help me with the agonizing college decision, assigning weighted values to each factor. You know how I ultimately made that decision? I thought about how I FELT when I spent time at each campus.
That got me to wonder, how do I FEEL the right decision, especially when I can’t “try it on” like visiting a college campus?
I heard the voice of one of my favorites, Glennon Doyle, saying “Drop into your body, and trust your inner knowing.” To be honest, I’ve never understood what this kind of “woo woo” advice means.
And then I heard my mom’s voice telling me to trust my intuition—my “gut.” A lightbulb went off and I decided to mentally role-play one of the choices to see how it would feel.
By sitting quietly and non-judgmentally to the thoughts that popped into my head, one word emerged: fear.
In that moment I realized what ultimately gets in the way of making confident decisions is fear.
Fear of:
Being judged
Failure
“I’m not enough”
“I’m too much”
The unknown
How this decision will impact others
Missing out (oh hey, FOMO!)
Making the “wrong” choice (aka decision regret)
Do any of these sound familiar? It turns out fear is more complicated than we realize. When struggling with a decision, it helps to identify which type(s) of fear might be getting in the way of your decisiveness.
Not all fears are alike
There are actually two types of fear, and to understand them, we turn to the Hebrew Bible. In Playing Big Tara Mohr defines the two with real-life examples, and offers strategies for handling both types:
👉 “Pachad is the overreactive, irrational fear that stems from worries about what could happen, about the worst-case scenarios we imagine…It shows up as the fear that you’ll horribly embarrass yourself, that the plane is about to crash, that you’ll say something stupid…”
We all know it well: It’s the pesky inner critic reminding you that you could fail and look like a fool if you leap outside your comfort zone and fall flat on your face.
👉 But there’s a less commonly talked about second type of fear: Yirah.
Mohr describes the way it shows up in the context of decision-making: “It’s the feeling that overcomes us when we inhabit a larger space than we are used to.”
You know you’re facing this type of fear when you notice an element of awe as you consider stepping into something bigger than you’ve done before. You’re afraid but you’re also energized.
➡️ These 2 different types of fear even feel different:
“Pachad comes with a physical sense of contraction and tenseness, while yirah brings more of a spacious, fluid feeling into the body” (Mohr).
What do most of those fears listed above have in common? All but one of them is a pachad fear—your inner critic trying to keep you small, because it’s where you’re least likely to face potential shame.
Shame on Me: How Shame Shapes Leaders and Sabotages Success reminds us that our indecisiveness is often driven by our common desire to avoid shame (“How will others perceive me?” or “Will I regret this decision later?”).
If we recognize the shame-game is at play, it’s easier to ensure our difficult decisions are driven by what we want—not what we want to avoid.
Sometimes it helps to just dive into the “what if” fear rather than to push it away. Ask yourself “What’s the worst that can happen?” –then be sure to ask: “How likely is it that ‘worst case’ will actually happen?” Remind your inner critic that you appreciate their concern, but you’ve got this.
Revisiting the list of decision fears, which one is yirah?
Fear of the unknown...
You know you’re about to step into a space that will change you and there’s no going back.
If you’re feeling yirah, you probably already have your decision—you just need to accept it, even though it’s scary and overwhelming and exciting all at the same time. So what do you do with this fear?
I went back to listening to what my body was telling me: I felt a weird feeling in my stomach, but I also felt a warm sense of relief. I realized it wasn’t the tightening kind of fear where I’m telling myself all the reasons why I’m going to fail.
The last time I’d felt this kind of yirah was when I was embarking on my first ever yoga retreat—by myself. As I tried on my new decision, my body felt just like it did while walking to dinner at the retreat without my phone, a book, or a friend, wondering what I had gotten myself into.
And then I remembered: that’s why I signed up for the yoga retreat in the first place. Experiences like this remind me that I actually discover unexpected types of comfort, strength, and growing within the moments of discomfort and vulnerability.
Next time you’re facing yirah, think back to a time you successfully faced it before. Remind yourself how that scary but awe-filled experience helped you become a better version of yourself. Trust that you can do the same again with this current decision.
In the end, did you make a decision? Great! Mission accomplished.
Sometimes the decision you make gets you the desired outcome; sometimes it gets you to a place you never dreamed of for yourself, and sometimes you fall completely short of your intended outcome. No matter what, it will be a success if you can look at it as an experiment where you grow and learn!
