Indecision affects so many women, and specifically women who are feeling really overwhelmed and overloaded. We had an EFT group session last night around indecision, and I wanted to share some of the things that were coming up in that.
We have everyday decisions that we make every day in our life. We have to make decision about little things and the big things. Small decisions might be what we’re wearing, what we’re having for dinner, how we’re going to drive to school that day. Much bigger decisions might be buying houses and cars, going on holiday etc.
And often, the little decisions and the big decisions can take the same amount of mental load, and it can make us feel very exhausted. We might struggle with making decisions because we are worried that we are going to be criticized by somebody externally. We might have a fear that we’re going to get it wrong, that we’re going to make wrong decisions, and the consequences of those decisions. It might be that it’s not going to be the optimum/best outcome. It might mean that it’s maybe more expensive, so there’s a money issues also involved in that indecision. Maybe it’s health or lifestyle causing the indecision (right now we’re all trying to make ethical decisions, so I know myself I can spend hours in the supermarket trying to make the right decisions all the time).
The impact these decisions have, these ruminating thoughts that we all have … it can impact on a number of areas:
- Sleep – as the thoughts can keep us awake for long periods of time as we spend hours forecasting all the potential outcomes or hours being hard on ourselves or someone else for making the decisions
- Family life/relationships, because if we have so much mental load going on around these decisions, it can mean that we don’t have the mental space to them actually parent maybe in the way that we want to, or live in the way that we want to, because we constantly have all these decisions and potential outcomes ruminating in our head. I know myself, when I’ve got things going on in my head, I’m much more likely to turn around and snap at the children or snap back at my partner or at my mum or somebody else. Because I don’t have the mental space, the mental bandwidth to actually be able to communicate with them in the way that I want to.
- It can also make us quite ill and lead to mental health problems, specifically anxiety, because we get very anxious about making all the right decisions.
The time and the energy that we expend on making all these decisions can feel huge. It can have quite a big impact on our life.
So here’s some strategies that we used in our EFT session. We specifically used EFT, but there’s certain strategies that you can just use in terms of talking to yourself around this.
Most importantly – accepting that we aren’t perfect, no human will ever make all the perfect decisions. We are human, we are not expected to be perfect, we cannot be perfect. We are busy, we are leading busy busy lives as mums. We absolutely cannot be perfect nor should we expect ourselves to be.
Sometimes – it’s about guessing with all the information we have to hand what is the right decision and just accepting whatever the consequences are of that, even if it’s not absolutely perfect, accepting that every single day we are absolutely doing our best. All the mums that I work with, everybody who I work with, is 100% absolutely doing their best.
One way that I find really helpful is actually trying to sort of forecast and come to the realisation that some of the decisions aren’t important – and test it again…”Is this decision really important in a year?” And if it’s not important in a year, or five years, then just make a decision and just go with it, even if it’s not the most perfect decision, and just accept that sometimes somebody might criticise you, and sometimes it’s going to be more expensive, sometimes, it’ll maybe be the longer route, that sometimes it’s not the perfect decision.
It’s about really accepting that we can’t always make 100% the right decision at every single moment in time. But one of the things that we can do is that we can look at it as perfecting ourselves, because what we’re trying to do is that we’re trying to constantly learn. It’s that growth mindset, it’s a different mindset, and it’s about actually accepting that sometimes we don’t make the best decision, but actually that we can learn from all of those decisions that we’ve made.
Consider how you speak to your children or one of your friends, you would say, “It’s okay to make a mistake.” And, “What can you learn from that mistake?” And I think we’re not very good at doing that to ourselves. We are very hard on ourselves, especially as mums and especially in our current society, we have such high expectations of ourselves.
It’s important to lower those expectations, treating ourselves with a huge amount of compassion, and accepting that we are just constantly learning, we’re constantly evolving, and that we can’t get everything 100% right.
Because no human, no matter how perfect they seem, will get absolutely everything right.
I hope that’s helpful for you – to feel free to message me with any thoughts you might have about it. If you’re interested in knowing any more about how EFT can support you, I’m really happy to talk to you. There are some free EFT videos that you can access here.
Indecision is part of that mental overload that we have as mums – you might be interested in joining the Overcome the Overload community when it next opens or booking in for some one to one EFT or parent coaching.
Much love, Tricia xxx
