Welcome to Mindset, mood and Movement, a systemic approach to human behavior, performance, and wellbeing. How psychological, emotional, and physical health are all connected. In this episode, I'll be sharing my knowledge and experience to help you overcome a challenge that you might be facing in life health. All work.

If you're stuck with a decision in life or business, there's a good chance that you're being indecisive. We all can and indecision has its place and yet indecision is not a place we want to stick with because of course we get stuck. So today I'm going to talk about this whole process of indecision, stuckness, and it's such a hot topic. It's invariably one of the key points people come to my coaching practice to, to resolve, to work on, to, to figure out because something is stuck and they're simply not moving forward. Being indecisive. Well, I want to, I want to name a couple of things here. There is a really big distinction between indecision. And patience. Now, patience is power. Patience is this place of giving something time, allowing things to flourish, maybe data to come in, understanding and learnings so that you can make a quality decision going forward. That's great. Indecision. It's a little like ping pong. You kind of bounce in between two things and you're not getting anywhere. One is based on fear. One is based on confidence. and I think you can guess which one is which. So indecision, and I would also say indecision in a way as a form of a maladaptive decision. So let's get into this. What is a decision? Now I've done a lot of work around decision science and linguistics and behavioral science and all sorts of cool stuff, which is how I do what I do. And I love to work with this, I love looking at the etymology of words because they tell us a lot. So the word decision. Decide has the same roots as homicide, which means to kill off, and when we make a real decision, we are killing off an option, or, for some of us, it's killing off multiple options. Now, if you've got two choices, three choices, four choices on the table of what you can do, or what you might try, you've got to kill off those other decisions to take the one. And for many of us, that feels frightening. It feels frightening because we might miss out on something. It could be because we make the wrong decision, which for some of us, that's laden with meaning about who we are. And there are other very tangible factors. We might lose money. We might waste a lot of time. We might become judged by others. All of this stuff needs understanding and disseminating. So when you're looking at getting out of a stuck position, getting out of indecision firstly is to realize you have to make a clear choice. And normally it's a singular choice. I need to Set up my business, or I need to go freelance, or I need to lead this relationship. Whatever. In the space that you are, you are, you're stuck in. We need clarity. Looking around, the fear is really important. So let's start with this. Whatever your in decision point is. Write down or name in your mind. What are your fears? So in business, I come across this so much and a lot of the time they are the same. I'm going to lose money. I'm going to lose time. I'm going to lose face. So once you name those things, we can start to talk to those problems. Because if you've done something in your life, which I guess you have, you'll probably be able to find an answer to those problems. Like, how can we mitigate the risk of financial loss? How can we budget the right amount of time in? or check that that's not some arbitrary idea you have in your mind and the loss of face or, you know, judgment from others. then how can we help your mindset shift so you don't outsource your worth and your, um, validity to another person? And by the way, most people aren't probably judging you. So looking at those three and renaming them can be so, so helpful. If it's personal, again, the core things boil down to this is fear. It's normally fear, fear of loss of something. Uh, I knew a client that had a, um, who was struggling in a relationship, uh, and they felt it had come to an end. And as sad as that is, that was the truth. So they choose to speak to their, their partner at the time and be really honest about where they felt they were. And interestingly, what happened was it didn't actually come to an end. It came to a change. But because they've been sitting on this indecision, should I stay or should I go? They were having a whole host of problems and suffering. And actually by name of the decision. It triggered a shift in their relationship. And I remember another client, it also was right for them to move on from that relationship. And that's okay too. Now, another issue that can really, really affect us is analysis paralysis. And by goodness me, if you are a analytic person, you're smart, you'll probably spend a lot of your time figuring stuff out, thinking, cognizing, using that, um, that logical brain of yours. We all do, and I do. I spend a lot of time in thinking. However, Analysis Paralysis, as it says, is overthinking. What I would say is if you are loop thinking on something and you're not solving your answers, it's because it's not a thought based problem. It's likely to be a... Subconscious based problem or an emotional problem and we want to get to that substrate. So for example, if you're going to let's say set up a business. I had a client Tara She was going to the well being sector that worked in different spaces for a while, but wanted to set up her own company and Tara was literally just stuck. You know, do I do this? Do I do that? Do I consult? And we worked through it. It's like, okay, you need to decide. You need to kill off those other options and choose one. Which ones are going to be? So we did the right processes to help her mind get clear, to name her fears and to take that courageous step of like, yeah, okay, I'm going to put X amount of money towards this. I'm going to give it two years. And I'm going to be okay if it fails. Oh my goodness. The pressure relieved and suddenly we've got someone in a creative, enthused and powerful state. So getting rid of the fear based shackles are vital. to get unstuck and to flourish. And actually Tara now is flying. Her business is going really well and it's such a great thing to see. But it all started from that awkward place of what if, what if, what if. So when we get out of that, then you can start to see. Also, we want to check that you're not using the perfectionism pattern. as a kind of a sneaky excuse for not doing something or getting somewhere. Uh, this has shown up in, I know a couple of clients I coached in the last couple of years, busy building the website, looking at brands, brand identity, all this kind of stuff. And there's a place for him. But what they weren't doing was what we call in business an MVP, a minimum viable product. What's the smallest amount of something they could do to figure out whether this Company. This, this venture they were interested in was worthwhile spending their time, money, and energy in. So if you're stuck in perfectionism, like, wait, it's gotta be right, it's gonna be this amazing thing. As opposed to, what if I tried, what if I threw a couple of thousand quid at them? What if I gave it six months and I, you know, set up one product or one service and road tested it? And see what the market said, nothing beats that real feedback. Nothing beats experience because it also comes out of analysis paralysis and comes into experiential live feedback worthy experience, which we can work with, you know, business wise or personally. So coming out of one's head out of the thought zone into the real zone, start to get to an experience will really give you the truth. of this choice and it doesn't mean it's going to be right. So I'm not going to say that you're going to make the right decision, but I would say generally most people's wrong decisions are when they make no decision. Because even if you make a decision doesn't work, let's say you've set up that business and your MVP tells you it's not a great idea. Now, you know, you don't have to waste any more time on it. You don't have to waste your energy thinking, Oh, I wish I'd have tried that. You tried it. It didn't work. Go do something else. You know, life is fluid. Life is moving all the time. It's not a stagnant place. And as we see, markets change, the world changes, you know, with the pandemic change, the culture, there's these huge amounts of change. Be at one with the flow. That also is a state of movement. That's a state of making choices going forward. So I hope those principles are triggering, kind of getting you thinking a little bit. So if you are stuck, you're being indecisive, look at your fears, name them. And then once you've named them, figure out what can I do about them. Look at things like, am I doubting my confidence? Yeah, that's just a trick of the mind. Most of us, we all feel unconfident at something, but actually what we really need is courage. We need courage. And courage doesn't mean you feel good, it normally means you feel scared but you do it anyway. So if you're going to apply that... And be open. Like, okay, I'm going to try this out. I'm going to give it this amount of time and energy. And at the end point of that trial period, I'll assess and that's okay too. Because if you don't move forward, you're going nowhere and going nowhere is a bad idea. So if you are stuck, I trust some of those points there will start to loosen your thinking, help your behavior and start to shift. you into something new. And as always, if you want to reach out, let me know, uh, the results of any of these points and maybe there's a success story. Do let me know. I always love to hear. So until the next one, take care. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe. And if a friend would benefit from hearing this, do send it on to them as well. If you would like to get in touch yourself, then you can go to my website. Which is Sal Jeffries dot com, spelt S A L J E F F E R I E S. Sal Jeffries dot com. Hit the get in touch link and there you can send me a direct message. If you'd like to go one step further and learn whether coaching can help you overcome a challenge or a block in your life, then do reach out and I offer a call where we can discuss how this may be able to help you. Until the next time, take care.