110 - Why You Feel STUCK When Making Decisions

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Summary

In this episode, we’re discussing analysis paralysis and the feeling of being stuck when making decisions. In this episode, I’m going to share with your WHY we do this to ourselves, where it comes from, and a simple, but effective mindset shift for HOW to overcome it! Enjoy!

Takeaways

• Feeling stuck when making decisions is often a result of making decisions too far into the future.

• Uncertainty stress is real and difficult to overcome.

• Instead of trying to predict the unpredictable, make the best decision for the present moment.

• Remember that you are not locked into your decisions and can always make new decisions in the future.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

01:09 Feeling Stuck in Decision-Making

04:10 Not Having All the Answers

05:27 Making the Best Decision for Right Now

06:47 Realizing You're Not Stuck in Your Decision

08:13 Considering New Information and Making the Best Decision for Right Now

10:03 Don't Get Paralyzed by Trying to Predict the Unpredictable

11:40 Conclusion

Resources

• Check out the Burnout-Proof Members Club for support in building your shut-down routine!

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Drop a comment below…

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TRANSCRIPT:

Ellyn Schinke (00:13.452)

Hey there, Achiever, and welcome back to the Burnout Proof Podcast, where we are all about helping you build the mindsets, the habits, the behaviors to burnout proof your life. My name's Ellen, and if you're a busy, overwhelmed, and Eagram -3 Achiever like me, who is sick and tired of letting work run your life, you're in the right place, my friend. Here on Burnout Proof, I'm committed to giving you simple, no BS tips, tricks, mindset shifts to help you work less, to help you live more,

to help you heal from your hustle and to help you take back your life from burnout. Let's do this, my friend. Ah, I'm so excited for today's episode because I feel like this thing that we're gonna talk about today used to happen to me all the time. And I see it happen to so many of my clients, so many of my friends all the time. And that is we get stuck when we're making decisions. Like, have you ever experienced that? Have you ever had that like legit?

analysis paralysis that can sometimes come with making a decision. I'm not talking about the, what am I going to order at a restaurant kind of thing, which admittedly sometimes we get stuck making those decisions too. I'm talking about the decisions, the big decisions. Should I take this job? Should I make the shift in my business? Should I launch this thing? Should I change my prices? Whatever it might be, these

big decisions sometimes can paralyze us, can make us feel absolutely stuck. And today I'm going to give you a tip for how to overcome that and to explain why we often feel such stuckness. And it's simpler than you might think. But I do want to let you know that this upcoming quarter inside of the Burnout Proof Members Club, we are talking about some juicy, juicy stuff. We just talked about routines.

last quarter. So if you need help with your routines, that support and that content is still there. But we have got some really, really juicy stuff coming up inside of the Burnout Proof Members Club that's actually very, very similar to the topics that we're going to be talking about today. So if that is something you need, head on over to CoachEllen .com. And let's work together. Let's dive in, join our crew, join the community. But with that, let's get into today, why you feel stuck when you're making decisions. And here's the reason. Here's the reason why you feel stuck.

Ellyn Schinke (02:36.076)

You're making decisions too far into the future.

That is why you're getting stuck when you're making decisions. You're making decisions for too far into the future and you're getting paralyzed as a result of that by the what if questions. I think of a friend recently that I helped navigate through a decision of whether or not she should leave her company who had kind of this toxic culture and it was a really, really hard environment for her to work in. And she kept getting stuck. She said she was mentally ping ponging back and forth. Should

Should I take this new job offer that I got that may not be the best career move, but is frankly probably good for my sanity or should I stay with my job? And I feel like I get questions like that a lot from clients, from friends, even occasionally from family. I get questions like that a lot. And it's hard for me because I'm a coach. I am not like some sort of like life guru whose advice is magical and is gonna fix everything. So sometimes I feel a lot of pressure when I get those.

those questions because like, who am I to tell you what to do? Like, yes, I love my friends. I know them very well. Yes, I love my clients. I know them very well. But like, that's a lot of pressure to put on me. So what I'll often turn it back to them and what I've realized more and more is the reason so many of us are getting stuck is we feel like whatever decision we make, we're going to be locked into for the rest of our life, for the rest of our career, for the rest of our business, whatever it might be. But the fact of the matter is,

you are not going to have all the answers. All the what if questions that you have like, well, what if this launch flops or what if I raise my prices and I lose all my clients? Like what if, you know, I go to this, this new job and it's the exact same shit again.

Ellyn Schinke (04:28.524)

you're not going to have the answers to all of those questions. I know that that's scary. Uncertainty stress is real. Uncertainty stress is a real thing and it's one of the most pervasive and hardest forms of stress to overcome. It's real. And a lot of us, we want to snuggle up to certainty. We love certainty, but the fact of the matter is we're not going to have all the answers. We don't know where we're going to be two years from now, five years from now.

sometimes let alone in one year. I don't know what my business is going to look like a year from now. I don't know what my friendships, my romantic life is going to look like from a year from now. Hell, I don't know what it's going to look like a month from now, especially with the romantic relationships when, who knows? But we don't know. And I know that that not knowing is scary, but I think that not knowing is part of the reason we get stuck is because we can't predict the future. But what if,

instead of trying to make the best decision for two years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, which is what so many of us are doing, what if we make the best decision we can for right now?

Like one thing I had to realize in making the decision to, for example, go full time in my business this year is if God forbid it fails and it fails miserably and I don't make enough money and I can't pay my bills. Like if I go down that rabbit hole of epic failure and all the consequences that I'm so scared of.

If that happens, I can always get another job. I can always, you know, I could probably in my same day job company, go back to full time with them, raise my hours back up with them.

Ellyn Schinke (06:21.068)

could do that. Just because I'm making this decision for now doesn't mean six months or a year from now, if my situation changes, that I can't go back. Hell, I could go back to science. Not that I want to, but I could. There are options. And yeah, they might be options that we don't want to take, but we're not stuck in the decision we're making either. I think that's one of the things.

that makes us feel so paralyzed and so stuck when we're making decisions is we feel like whatever decision we make, we're going to be stuck in it for like the rest of our lives. And we're not like, yeah, go date that person because they could be great for you, but they also may not be. And you're not stuck with them. You know, if they, if they aren't great for you, you're not stuck with them. You could leave that relationship and move on to something else. We always have choices.

yeah, cool, we might not want to start over. Yeah, cool, we might not want to take those steps back or what might seemingly be steps back. But if we realize that we have so many more options and that we're not stuck in any path that we decide to pursue, it makes making the decision so much easier. With this friend of mine that I was talking through this career decision, I asked her, I was like, what decision feels best right now? Nevermind your career trajectory and where you're going to be two or five or 10 years from now.

what decision feels like the best thing for you right now? And the decision she came up with was leaving, going to this other position. You know, who cares if it's not the best quote unquote career move, but like it feels like the best thing for me to do right now. And so that was the decision she made. And then her company threw a monkey wrench into things by offering her like an offer that she literally couldn't refuse. And so then she had this new option in front of her and she got stuck again. And I asked her the same thing. What, what feels like the best option right now?

If they make all of these changes to your role and to your position, do you feel like it's going to fix how you feel?

Ellyn Schinke (08:21.228)

Each time we're given a new piece of information, a new piece of data, it might change the game. It might change the situation.

And then again, we've just got to ask ourselves, what's the best decision for right now? I'm not saying be impulsive. I'm not saying, you know, act without thinking it through. I am exceptionally, I'm actually kind of a pessimist, but I'm very much a realist. I actually think the realist label resonates with me way more than the pessimist label does, but I am constantly, you know, playing out the worst case scenario because I want to make sure I'm prepared. I want to make sure I'm being responsible.

You know, it took me a year and a half to leave graduate school, which is really funny because when I was having that conversation with one of my friends, they basically implied I was making an impulsive decision. Oh friend, I was not. I was not making an impulsive decision. I put a year and a half of thought and you know, what could go wrong and is this the right decision into that? But ultimately, the more I stalled, the more I realized the best decision for me was to leave.

to go do something else because I could always go back to my PhD. I could always go back to science. You know, just because you make a decision doesn't mean you're locked into that decision.

But that is, I think, the reason why so many of us feel stuck is we're trying to make a decision for too far into the future. We're trying to predict too many unpredictable variables. We're trying to know the answers before we could possibly know the answers. So if you are getting stuck in your decision making, if you are trying to make a decision too far into the future, then that would be my recommendation to you.

Ellyn Schinke (10:03.084)

is instead of getting so stuck in the analysis paralysis of trying to predict the unpredictable, ask yourself, what is the best decision for right now?

And don't let yourself be so paralyzed and locked into that decision. Realize you can always change your mind. You can always make another decision six months from now, 12 months from now. Everything is figure outable. Everything is fixable. We can always make a new decision to write things and to course correct and to get us back on track. So if you feel stuck making decisions, that is what I want you to keep in mind. So with that, before you go, I just wanted to thank you once again.

for listening, for spending some time with me today. As you know, the whole reason I do this is because I wanna share the insights, the ahas, the conversations that I'm having, the things that I'm learning with you to help any of your M3 achievers like me, like you, take back our power, take back our lives from burnout, to work less, to live more, to heal from our hustle. So if this episode resonated with you today, please, please let me know. You know, tag me on Instagram, shoot me a DM, take a screenshot.

I would love to hear, and if you haven't already, please, please, please head on over to wherever you're listening to your podcast, Spotify, Apple, wherever. Tag us, leave a rating and review. It's at the top on Spotify. It's at the bottom on Apple podcasts. And let us know what you think, because if this is helping you, those ratings and reviews help us so much to get the word out to other Enneagram three achievers like you who might need to hear the things that we're talking about. So with that, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for being a part of this community.

and I will talk to you next time, my friend. Bye.