Why Not Deciding Is More Painful Than Choosing and How to Trust Yourself Again

Issue 143. November 21, 2025 ✨ Higher Power Coaching & Consulting ✨

During the holidays, life tends to speed up while our internal world gets louder.

• Invitations pile up. 
• Work deadlines squeeze in. 
• Family expectations rise. 

And for many of us in recovery, this is exactly when decision-making can feel impossible.

Some decisions are huge. 

• Do I change careers?
• Do I stay in this relationship?
• Do I move?

Others are tiny. 

• What shirt do I wear? 
• What should I make for dinner?
• What email do I respond to first?

Yet the internal impact can be the same: We freeze. We stew. We spiral. We choose not to choose.

But here’s the truth I’ve learned again and again in recovery:

Not deciding is a decision. And it’s often the most painful one.

When we refuse to choose, we hand the reins of our lives over to chance, circumstance, or whoever happens to push the hardest. Staying stuck feels safer in the moment, especially during stressful seasons like the holidays, but the long-term cost is enormous. It breeds regret, anxiety, and a quiet erosion of self-trust.

Over time, I’ve also learned something else that changed my entire life:

There’s actually no such thing as a wrong decision.

There is only the decision you made and the information you had at the time.

Good decisions can lead to bad outcomes.
Bad decisions can lead to beautiful outcomes.
So the outcome can never tell you whether you made a good decision.
Your process can.

Let me explain.

The power of a decision-making process

Back when I first got into recovery, I made almost every decision alone. It was part self-protection and part control. I thought self-sufficiency made me strong. All it did was isolate me and keep me stuck in my head.

Eventually, I learned to reach out for help. It was unbelievably awkward at first. I’d ask tiny questions like

• Should I send this email?
• How would you respond to this message?
• What do you think I’m missing here?

I wasn’t asking those questions because I wanted someone else to tell me what to do. I was asking because hearing other perspectives helped me see things I simply couldn’t see on my own. People asked questions that opened doors in my thinking. They named things I hadn’t considered. That support gave me clarity, and clarity built courage.

The more often I reached out, the less afraid I became of others seeing my thought process. That alone improved my decision-making more than anything else.

And as I made decisions in healthier ways, something became obvious. My old way of doing things had landed me in two twelve-step programs (that’s why we call it “stinkin’ thinkin’). That was enough proof for me that my thinking needed a tune-up.

Decision fatigue and what to do about it

Sometimes the issue is not fear, but exhaustion. Decision fatigue is real. It drains your mental energy and makes even simple choices feel overwhelming.

There are two powerful ways to reduce it.

First, eliminate unnecessary decisions altogether.
Some people buy one type of sock so they never have to think about what socks to wear. If socks matter to you, choose another area of your life that doesn’t and eliminate choices there. Skip the choices that don’t shape anything important. Think of it as preserving your spoons* for what really matters.

Second, make decisions ahead of time.
Meal planning is the perfect example. If you want to be a healthier eater, deciding your meals once a week saves you from making that decision every. single. night. You already know what you’re going to eat. You already bought the ingredients. You might even meal prep part of it. One choice prevents seven exhausting ones.

Let good enough be good enough

Before recovery, perfectionism ran the show. I thought I was raising the bar. Really, I was raising the pressure. Work took forever because I refused to stop until it felt perfect. And guess what. It never felt perfect.

Now I aim for “good enough,” because good enough gets things done.

When I first started turning old podcast episodes into essays for Medium.com during the pandemic, I created a simple rule: I write for one hour a day Monday through Friday, and at the end of two weeks, the piece goes out into the world. No matter what. The deadline decides it’s done.

It turns out there is a name for people who operate this way. Satisficers. And satisficers are consistently happier than maximizers who torture themselves trying to choose the very best option. Maximizers get stuck in analysis, then second-guess themselves long after the decision is made. Satisficers move forward.

I used to be a maximizer to my core. It was a form of self-sabotage dressed up as excellence. I got a lot done, but I get far more done now because I refuse to ruminate endlessly. I do the thing. I learn from the thing. I move on.

When intuition helps and when it hurts

“Go with your gut” is great advice if your gut is well trained. Studies show that intuition only works reliably in areas where you have deep experience.

If you have a long history of unhealthy relationships, you probably shouldn‘t trust your gut with relationship decisions! (until you build new patterns, that is). Talk to your therapist. Ask for support from people you trust. Let your intuition grow through practice.

If you want to strengthen your intuition, try this:
Before making a decision, write down your thoughts and feelings. After the decision plays out, go back and compare. This helps you see when your gut was pointing you in the right direction and when fear was steering the wheel.

Perfectionism, fear, and the courage to fail

Perfectionism is rooted in fear. You’re afraid to do it wrong. Afraid to disappoint yourself. Afraid to be judged.

But perfection is impossible. It demands endless effort, little joy, and constant criticism of yourself. That is a straight path to paralysis.

Entrepreneurs know this well. Success requires failure. Not failure as a final identity, but failure as something you recover from quickly. I keep a reminder taped to my laptop for a reason.

Recovery from failure is one of the most valuable skills you’ll ever build. It teaches resilience, clarity, confidence, and humility. Without it, you never gain the experience needed to make better decisions in the future.

If you struggle with perfectionism, practice looking at your work as a whole rather than zooming in on every imperfection. Notice what went well. Notice what you learned. Notice what you would improve next time. The goal is not perfection. The goal is growth.

The regret that hurts the most

We hear all the time that mistakes help us learn, and it’s true. But the regret that cuts the deepest is the regret of inaction. People rarely regret what they did. They regret what they never allowed themselves to try.

So if you’re stuck trying to make the perfect decision, ask yourself this.
Which pain do you want? The pain of discipline, or the pain of regret?

Because you’ll suffer one of them.

A decision-making process that empowers you

Your outcome does not determine whether your decision was good.
Your process does.

Create a process you can trust. Maybe it includes asking for support. Maybe it includes limiting your research. Maybe it includes planning ahead. Maybe it includes checking your intuition. Maybe it includes making pro and con lists. Maybe it includes choosing good enough so you can move forward.

If you stick to your process, it was a good decision.
No matter how it turned out.

The holidays bring plenty of opportunities to overthink. They also bring opportunities to practice courage, trust yourself, and choose your life on purpose.

And every time you choose, you strengthen the part of you that knows you can.

^*  Spoon theory is a concept to explain when people have limited energy. It’s a metaphor to represent physical, mental, emotional, and psychic energy as a handful of spoons (e.g., “I don’t have any spoons left for that.”).