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Why is it so hard for us to make some decisions?

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We all feel tormented at some point by a decision to make: stay in a relationship or not, quit your job, get married, have a child, etc.

At other times, we know what to do (stop drinking, go out more often and meet people, eat more healthy, establish more intimate relationships) but we do not make up our minds, that is, we do not commit ourselves to do it. Sometimes we realize that our way of being is harming us (we leave things for later or we work too much, we are not very affectionate or too demanding) but we don't know how to make the change.

Related article: "The 8 types of decisions"

The importance of making good decisions

This internal struggle and indecision is painful and exhausting. The worst thing is that it retards our growth and paralyzes us. The decision that we leave for later always comes back to bite us, one way or another.

I write this post based on the teachings of the great psychiatrist Dr. Irvin Yalom.

An example to understand how we make decisions

Let's take the example of a fictitious case that is useful for the whole post.

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Alexandra: "Leave my boyfriend or stay with him? "

Alejandra is a thirty-year-old girl who works in an advertising company. She has been with her boyfriend for several years, however she has doubts about whether to leave the relationship. She feels that things are not the same, and that they do not have important values ​​in commonher, she believes that they have become disrespectful to each other, furthermore mistrust has risen due to rumors that she has heard and she fears they are true.

She feels that she should take her future seriously and think if he is the man of her life, she fantasizes about meeting another man and has begun to behave cold. They have seen very little lately and the fights are too frequent. She is haunted by the decision she must make Stick with her boyfriend or leave him?.

Irvin D. Yalom explains the 4 reasons that explain the difficulty of making decisions

Yalom describes that there are 4 main reasons why it is difficult for us to make a decision. As you read, she ponders if any of these reasons apply to you. They can be several!

In our example, Alejandra may find it difficult to decide to break up with her boyfriend because that means that only she can make the decisions in her life, Only she can choose and no matter how much she wants, it is not possible to ask someone else to do them for her.

First reason: we do not decide because we are afraid of being responsible for our decisions.

When we are choosing, we realize that only we can decide and therefore, everything depends on us. Our life is our responsibility. This can serve to live a more authentic and fulfilled life, but it can also give us anxiety and lead us to paralyze, in this case, avoid making decisions.

When faced with a crucial decision it is normal to be afraid, we are directly deciding our destiny and therefore, as I will write in the second part of the post, sometimes we try to coerce other people to make the decision for us.

  • Have you stopped making a decision for fear of being wrong?

In our example, Alejandra can find it difficult to break up with her boyfriend because she gives up a lifetime of possibilities with himher, to all the fantasies she had and she feels nostalgic for the romantic and intimate memories that would be stained with pain once the door was closed.

Second reason: we don't want to give up other possibilities.

For every yes, there must be a no. Deciding always means leaving something else behind.

Making decisions can be painful because we are giving up everything else, and sometimes it just doesn't come back. Although it may seem rash to say so, the more limited our options are, the closer we get to the end of our life. Nobody wants to get close to the end of existence, so sometimes we unconsciously avoid making up our minds. When we are 18 we have a world of possibilities and options, when we reach 60 we have fewer crucial decisions to make. There are those who avoid making decisions to cling to the illusion that the possibilities are still limitless. We don't want to give up that world of options. Making a decision always involves an opportunity cost.

Aristotle gave the example of a hungry dog ​​who was presented with two equally exquisite dishes of food, unable to decide, he is still hungry and "starving."

It is so difficult for us to decide because on an unconscious level we refuse to accept the implications of quitting.. If we see it that way, in our life we ​​go from one renouncement to another, we renounce all other couples, We quit all other jobs, we quit all other vacation spots every time we decided to.

  • Have you stopped deciding something out of fear of what you are giving up?

In our example, Alejandra may have an unpleasant sense of guilt, where she cannot really understand why she feels this way about leaving her boyfriend. maybe you unconsciously feel that you have no right to make those kinds of decisions.

Third reason: we avoid making decisions so as not to feel guilt.

Yes, many times we feel guilt when making decisions and this can totally paralyze the process of will, in addition to cause tremendous anxiety. Even if we know that we have the right to choose who we are with, even if we know that something or someone does not suit us, sometimes we cannot help feeling guilt.

Psychologist Otto Rank gives a fascinating explanation of why some people feel so much guilt when deciding: The will to do things (will and decision go totally hand in hand) is born in children as a counter-will. Adults often resist impulsive acts by children, and children develop the will to resist opposition. If children have parents who, unfortunately, crush the will and spontaneous expression of their children, they become burdened with guilt and experience the decision as something "bad" and forbidden. Therefore they grow up with a feeling that they do not have the right to choose or decide.

  • Have you stopped making a decision, even knowing that it is the right one, because of a feeling of guilt?

In our example, Alejandra may find it difficult to decide to break up with her boyfriend because if she does it now she means that she could have done it from the beginning, what's more, she maybe she should never have dated him, her intuition already told him that she was not the right person. That realization makes you feel guilty (existential) and therefore delay the decision not to feel it.

Fourth reason: we avoid making decisions so as not to think about everything we could have done.

Existential guilt is different from traditional guilt where one feels bad for having done something wrong against another person.

Existential guilt has to do with a transgression against oneself, it comes from repentance, from the realization that life has not been lived as one has wanted, that it has not taken advantage of the potential or all the opportunities that it has had. Existential guilt can paralyze us a lot, a big decision can make us reflect on everything that we have not done before, what we have sacrificed.

If we take responsibility for our lives and make the decision to change, the implication is that only we are responsible for the change and the mistakes made, and that we could have changed a long time ago. A 40-year-old mature person who decide to quit smoking After 20 years of having this habit, you realize that you may have quit smoking a long time ago. That is, if you can quit now, you could have quit two decades ago. That carries a lot of existential guilt. She may ask, “How could I not have stopped smoking earlier? Maybe it would have saved me illness, criticism, money. "

This phrase from Yalom can help us here: “One of the ways - perhaps the only way - to deal with guilt (be it the violation of other people or of oneself) is through atonement or repair. One cannot go back to the past. One can only repair the past by altering the future. "

  • Have you avoided making a decision not to look back?

In conclusion: Why is making a decision so difficult? For the resignation, anxiety and guilt that accompanies decisions.

In the second part of the post we will analyze the ways in which we avoid making decisions, some of them are unconscious.

How do we avoid deciding on a day-to-day basis?

Since decisions are difficult and painful to make, it is no surprise that we humans find many methods to avoid making decisions. The most obvious method of not making a decision is procrastination, that is, leaving things for later, but there are other much more subtle methods that consist of deceiving yourself into thinking that others make the decisions for us.

The most painful thing to choose is the process, not the decision itself, therefore, if one is blind to the process, it hurts less. Therefore we have several tricks to make the decision process easier. These tricks are not always the best but they save us anxiety.

How do we avoid painful resignation when deciding?

1. Making an alternative look less attractive.

In our example, Alejandra has to decide between two options: continue in an unsatisfactory relationship vs being single / feeling lonely.

Both alternatives are equally painful, so the dilemma is resolved if one of the two alternatives is more attractive, that's why she decides to go out with Francisco, a handsome and affectionate boy, in this way the decision is a lot easier: Staying in an unsatisfactory relationship vs being with her new love suitor and affectionate. This arrangement works because Alejandra is no longer paralyzed and she can decide, the negative of this situation is that she does not learn much from the experience. She doesn't help him process the fear of loneliness nor does she understand why it took her so long to leave her boyfriend if she wasn't happy. This is the classic case of “a nail takes out another nail”, it could be said that the nail helps to move but not to learn.

It may be that later Alejandra has problems with this new boyfriend and she finds herself in the dilemma again. Therefore, if the decision is difficult because one faces two very similar alternatives, one often uses a trick: fix the situation so that one resigns unless.

2. Making the non-chosen alternative look worse than it is.

In our example, Alejandra can begin to magnify the defects of her boyfriend in order to leave him or to magnify the effects of being alone (she remains "spinster", there are no longer boys worthwhile, etc.) to excuse herself and continue in the relationship. Some people, when they hear a "no" they tend to say "anyway I didn't want to", although it is taken as a joke, this mechanism is very similar, it is a way of feeling less pain.

As in the example of the dog that was starving by not knowing how to choose which food to eat because both looked just as attractive, we have a hard time making decisions when they both seem almost equivalents. From an unconscious level, we magnify the differences between two similar options to make the decision less painful.

How do we avoid anxiety and guilt?

1. Delegating the decision to someone else.

Alejandra could start acting cold, indifferent and distant, her boyfriend will notice the change, she will try to do something but if she reaches a point of frustration and discouragement where his attitude remains the same, he will most likely be "forced" to leave her, without However she will claim "my boyfriend cut me off" and she will fool herself into thinking that she was not his decision.

Human beings are ambivalent about freedom, an attractive idea that offers us options but He also scares us because he confronts us with the fact that we are solely responsible for our happiness. ORshe can't avoid a decision by leaving it to someone else to make the decision for us. Other examples of this trick:

  • Do not set an alarm to go for a walk, blame your friend who was going to walk with you, who did not wake you up.
  • Yelling at the boss, arriving on time, not finishing projects or underperforming, because, unconsciously, you want to be fired from work.
  • Delegating the decision to something else.

Alejandra could decide to convince herself to stay with her boyfriend and get engaged because she is forced by the rules of society (they say she should be committed to her age) or she might ask for an arbitrary signal to follow or end up.

Since ancient times, humanity transfers decisions to external situations. How many times have we left the decision to fate or a coin? I remember when I was little, when I could not decide between a package of cookies or chips at the house of a friend, she asked him to take them from behind her and exchange them, while I chose the right hand or left. The decision was not mine, I just chose right or left. Therefore, we delegate the decision something else. For example:

  • Waiting until the last minute to buy tickets for a concert we don't want to go to, blaming it on the fact that there are no more tickets available.

On the other hand, the rules, although they are convenient for the human being, in some cases indirectly help not to take responsibility for the decisions but also to reduce anxiety. For example:

  • A teacher who, having left extra homework for underperforming children in the past, refuses to give an extra job to a student who dislikes him, because "the rules" do not allow it, so if he misses the class, it was because he followed the guidelines.

In conclusion, to avoid deciding we leave things for later and avoid the feeling of resignation by distorting the alternatives or pretending that something or someone else is deciding for us.

Important reflections

  • To avoid falling into these traps we must remember that we cannot not decide. This is impossible. Avoiding deciding is equally a decision.
  • We can make decisions actively or passively. If we make decisions actively, it means that we are realizing that it is our decision and responsibility, and even facing fear, we take the step and choose. Making decisions actively increases our resources and personal power. If we make decisions passively, we may be delegating them to someone, something else, or lowering the alternative. By making decisions passively, we are in danger of suffer low self-esteem, self-criticism or self-loathing. The important thing is not the decision we make, but rather that we make it actively.
  • When we are facing a stormy decision process, it is useful to ask ourselves what is the meaning of this decision? If we make a decision but we cannot stick with it, for example, if Alejandra decides to leave her relationship but continues to be in contact with her ex-boyfriend, calling him or answering her calls, etc. you have to face the fact that you have made another decision, which has its own meaning and benefit. So we focus not on the refusal to decide, but on the decision that WAS made, the decision to keep in touch with him. All decisions have their benefit. What is the meaning that Alejandra gives by staying in contact with him? Not suffering loneliness, avoiding anxiety, not hurting her ego, saving her ex-boyfriend from her loneliness, etc. Then Alejandra can make an active decision and work on her life, her dependence, her insecurity, her anxiety or fear of her abandonment.

It is difficult to make decisions, it is scary, it is human to try to avoid making them. When we are haunted by a decision, let's deal with the situation head on and hold ourselves accountable for our decision to increase our personal power, coherence and maintain our self-esteem and worth own self.

Let's make decisions actively. It helps a lot if we can understand why the decision is so difficult, what the hidden meaning or fear is and decide to work on that. Almost all of us have an idea of ​​what we are afraid of, there are many resources to deal with this: being more aware of ourselves, looking for those loved ones who listen and support, follow a philosophy that is coherent and real for us, attend courses, read books and / or start a process of personal change (individual, group or coaching).

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