How to Trust Yourself More in Tough Life Decisions

Trusting yourself should help strengthen your hand

Photo by Victoriano Izquierdo on Unsplash

How well do you trust yourself when it comes time to make the big calls in life? There’ll come a time when we all have to make those huge, potentially life-changing decisions.

Are you one of those people who don’t give themselves a chance to get it right? Or do you pressure yourself to get it right and end up blowing it? Every decision and the surrounding circumstances are different.

And because we don’t know everything about what lies ahead, you may not always get it right.

The dangers of getting it wrong

We’ve all made at least one terrible decision in life. And we’ve had to live with the consequences. You can think of sticking with a toxic workplace, persisting with a troubled romantic partner, or choosing the wrong investment. But that’s part of life.

The wrong choices cost us, though we learn from them. The right ones help us, puffing us up with pride and the confidence to go again.

Getting it right always isn’t even a realistic goal, to begin with. But what you want to do is trust yourself to make those big calls when the time comes. Here are a few tips to help you:

Give yourself time to think things through

Unless it’s a life-and-death situation that requires you to decide in a split second, you should consider giving things time. Don’t be pressured to act when you’re not in the right frame of mind.

Sometimes, you even want to get your mind off it for a few hours, days, or weeks.

When you give yourself enough time to think things through, you can enjoy the refreshing perspectives you shed on them. You’ll also learn more about the consequences of that decision.

You’ll learn more facts about it and the context around things.

The time away can also help you shed some biases about the situation. There’s no saying how those little biases could have influenced your decision wrongly or blown things out of proportion, misleading you with the wrong facts.

While giving yourself time to think things over, you also want to be wary of procrastination. Or all the many ways you can avoid facing the elephant in the room. At best, give yourself a time frame by which you want to come back to the decision.

That way, you give yourself time and space, but not too much, to keep you from falling into inertia and avoiding the decision altogether.

Allow yourself to make mistakes — and learn from those mistakes

There can be only two outcomes to any decision– right or wrong. Whatever the outcome, learn to live with it.

When you convince yourself either outcome is possible and just fine, you’ll start to trust your abilities to make those calls come what may. It’s time to embrace that acceptance even before you make those decisions.

We’ll all love to get every call right. It’s easy to pressure yourself into thinking you must get it right at all costs. Wishes and horses stuff! We’ll always get that odd decision wrong. And that’s okay.

To make the best decision, you must be willing to get it wrong.

When you allow yourself the freedom to make mistakes, you can give yourself more freedom to make those choices. Knowing you can learn from getting it wrong should that happen will take away that extra load from your shoulder.

And who knows, that reduced stress may be just the perfect counter-intuitive energy you need to trust yourself to make the best decision.

Know when emotion is taking over

As emotional beings, we tend to let our emotions get the best of us when we face big decisions.

Only emotions alone are not enough to help you get decisions right. You’ll need fair doses of logic, evidence, reason, and common sense.

Finding the right balance isn’t as easy as it appears. Depending on the situation, you may only need one or two. However, you always want to know when emotions are taking over the decision-making.

Not to say emotions are your worst ally when it comes time to decide. But you don’t want to leave crucial decisions to your changing emotions. When things change, you may be unable to reverse those decisions influenced by emotion.

When you keep your emotions in check and defer to other factors like reason and evidence, you can trust yourself better. At least you know those decisions are based on solid factors other than raw emotion.

Trusting yourself in any decision-making process is the best thing you can do. What’s the alternative?

Closing your eyes and picking a random path when you face a decision? Playing the ostrich? Or procrastinating because you can’t bring yourself to make those decisions?

Yes, you can still get the odd decision right even when you’re not confident in your decision-making process.

But the best is building enough trust in your abilities to help you make the best decision when you need to. We all face those moments, and you want to be ready.

That doesn’t come better than trusting yourself.