Your Life is Created in a Million Tiny Decisions and a Million Tiny Indecisions.
You’ve been thinking about doing something. It’s been brewing in your mind for a while now. Sometimes you have a burst of inspiration, and you imagine building and doing this thing, what it would look like and feel like, yet you’ve stopped yourself again and again from taking that next step.
One thing I’ve come to realize over the course of my life is that alongside the big movements that can shift our lives, it is the tiny little decisions and often indecisions (micro-hesitations), that play a major role in deciding the trajectory of our lives. Today I’m going to tackle these micro-hesitations.
What is a Micro-Hesitation?
Imagine you have decided to increase your fitness routine and in your mind commit to get to a fitness class 4 times a week. You are fully determined to do this. Then comes the morning of the first class, it starts at 9:30. You set your alarm to give yourself time to get ready for the class first thing in the morning but when it bellows, you’re still tired and you hit your snooze button… twice (micro-hesitation). You eventually wake up and run downstairs, still in your pjs, to get your kids off to school. You get them packed for their day, feed them breakfast, and shuffle them out the door in time to catch the bus. You decide to thoroughly clean up the kitchen (micro-hesitation) and are about to run up to your room to get ready for class, but then you see a pile of laundry… you cannot stand it sitting there in a messy pile, so you start to fold and put it away (micro-hesitation). You look at the phone and it’s 9:10am. You’re not dressed, and the studio is 15 mins away. You’ll never get there in time for the beginning of class (micro-hesitation). You’ve never been to the facility so the idea of walking in late to a place where you don’t know anyone is daunting (micro-hesitation), but you really wanted to start this new fitness routine. You think about it for a few mins (micro-hesitation), fighting within yourself as you move slowly (micro-hesitation) up to your room. Ugh, now you decide it really is too late (micro-hesitation). Bag it, you’ll try again tomorrow.
Your goals may be loftier than starting a new fitness routine, nevertheless, micro-hesitations can impede any aspiration you have set for yourself. For example, you’ve been dreaming of starting your own clothing line, fitness studio, writing a book, building a non-profit, launching a podcast, or a cooking channel on you-tube. You’ve dreamed and dreamed, you may have even made a few steps towards that dream (registered a domain name, designed a logo, written a mission statement), but you stop yourself short from taking the daily actions that will really launch you forward into doing the thing.
I look back at my life and think of all the ways I hesitated, and everything I lost as a result: Some small and some big. I rarely raised my hand in class, so I lost opportunities to contribute, challenge my mind, and build confidence in my own thinking. I hesitated to take job opportunities that could have helped launch various career paths because I feared I would not be good enough or wouldn’t be able to handle the workload. I hesitated to go to events or follow-up on opportunities to meet people that could have been helpful to my growth because of social anxiety. Growing up being taught not to have too many needs, wants or opinions (a cultural thing), I have often hesitated to speak my preferences or thoughts, and end up resigned or resentful, with things I don’t really want. I tell you now from the perspective of my later years: I have never regreted an opportunity I took, even if it turned out not to be the right one for me, but I have many regrets over the ones I let slip by.
Why Do We Hesitate?
Hesitation is not always bad.
It can be adaptive for survival; we should hesitate when we have an impulse to pet a sleeping tiger. We should hesitate to run out onto a busy road to save a cat.
It can be very helpful to have the ability to curb and re-evaluate our words and reactions to avoid saying or doing things that might be hurtful or harmful to ourselves or others.
It is often good practice to pause and think before acting; The pause can give us time to consider whether our intended action is purposeful, helpful, truthful, appropriate, necessary, and kind before we do anything. Hesitation can keep us and our relationships safe, and it can elevate our actions and interactions with mindfulness.
But not all hesitation is created equal, and because you are reading this blog, I know you can call up many times in your own life where hesitation has held you back. To get a handle on the stalling-your-dreams-kind-of-hesitation and overcome it, we need to understand it.
What Drives Hesitation?
Maybe you have gathered by now that so much of hesitation is powered by fear. In fact, definitions of hesitation describe it as pausing before saying or doing something, especially due to uncertainty or fear.
According to David Hayter (2020):
“It’s a survival mechanism installed to protect. While this is important for survival and can promote the good form of hesitation it can lead to us developing the belief that anything that is unfamiliar to us or risky is dangerous and thus prevent us from many forms of growth.”
Situations which are unfamiliar and uncertain or where we doubt our capacity, create fear. When we cannot guarantee an outcome, which face it, is always true (we cannot truly know if the business we want to start, the book we want to write, the podcast we want to launch will be successful), our fear that we might fail derails us. We all understand this to an extent.
Another less known contributor to hesitation is overthinking, and connected to that, having too many choices.
Having choice, autonomy, and control is an American ideal. It is what we have fought for: Freedom to choose. While choice is essential for our sense of liberty, too much choice has been found to have detrimental effects on happiness and wellbeing (more time and effort, increased dissatisfaction, anxiety, regret, and unrealistically high expectations (Schwartz, 2006)) and, more relevant to the discussion here, can overwhelm our ability to make decisions; a phenomenon known as “choice paralysis”.
Overthinking can be another big contributor to inaction. In his book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman describes two brain systems: “System 1” (The fast brain) is instinctive automatic and emotional and allows us to make fast decisions based on limited facts, while “System 2” (The slow brain) is more logical, rational, more deliberative, and considers many possibilities.
When we hesitate, which could be an automatic reaction born from fear or uncertainty (system 1), we trigger System 2; now we are at risk of going down a rabbit hole of doubt, deliberating options, weighing potential consequences, overthinking, becoming overwhelmed and eventually stopping ourselves from moving forward.
Of course, the answer isn’t just to act without thinking, it’s important to make informed, well-considered choices, but we must ultimately make a decision and follow through with it if we are to progress at all.
How do we Unlock Ourselves From the Hesitation Trap?
Step 1: Become Mindful:
Mindfulness is a good starting point for any behavior change; increase internal awareness around what you are actually doing and what’s driving that behavior.
Where are micro-moments of hesitation keeping you from your goals?
Tune in. Figure out what exactly is giving you pause? Is there some legitimate doubt based on lack of necessary knowledge and information, skills development, or other important preparation? Or, is this about insecurity, uncertainty, and fear?
Sometimes, even when we know what we have to do, being exhausted can masquerade as doubt (Reina, 2016):
“Fear and exhaustion can masquerade as doubt. So can being overwhelmed…do you simply need take a break and step away to regain focus? When you're overextended and exhausted, you can lose perspective.”
We might just be tired, and when we are tired, we might just need to give ourselves permission to take a break, rest, reset, and reinvigorate, before we launch ahead.
Step 2: Know you Know:
Fear makes you doubt. Fear, however, is an emotion with multiple triggers, it is not a factual indicator of whether or not you are ready.
Often, the problem is not that we don’t know; The problem is we stop ourselves from doing what we do know. Sometimes we believe if we are afraid or having doubts, it is a sign we are not ready. It is not. Hesitation is not a sign of not knowing enough or being prepared enough. We can hesitate even if we are completely capable; We hesitate when we doubt we are capable. Fear only tells us we are invested, and we care.
All I can say to this is everything you need to do and will do in life requires learning and growth. We don’t come into this world knowing all we need to know, but we are born with the capacity to learn and adapt. Think about all the things in life you HAVE learned to do? If you are a mom, I am fairly sure no-one taught you how to raise your children. But you are figuring it out. If you are managing parenting, the hardest most complicated thing there is in life, if you are figuring that out, you can learn anything.
Life is a constant challenge; absolute certainty is rare and absolute knowledge is impossible. You will almost always not know everything you need to know. You start, however, when you know enough, when you’ve prepared enough, and then you learn and figure the rest out along the way.
Step 3: Take Motivation off the Mantle.
We are not built to want to do things that are hard, but that does not mean we cannot do hard things. Somehow, we’ve put motivation on a mantle, believing if we don’t feel inspired, passionate, or driven, then maybe we are not on the right path.
Listen, our big dream, our vision, our life purpose, our big “why” should and will be what motivates and inspires us but break any of it down into the day-to-day tasks that need to get done…maybe not so inspiring. The expectation that work shouldn’t feel like…well, work…has led us astray.
We are wired to seek comfort. Lack of motivation is not a sign we are on the wrong path. Sometimes we just need to take that first step regardless of motivation, and once we build momentum, motivation will follow.
Motivation may also be clouded by fear; our brains are built to protect us and we are never going to want to do the scary uncertain thing. The only way to get past fear and uncertainty, is through it.
Step 4: Just Take a Step. Then another.
You’ve been thinking about doing this thing. You’ve done some research and preparatory work and you feel pretty good about the direction you want to go. How do you get there? First, narrow your focus.
Limit the options. You’ve probably researched a dozen directions in which to proceed and received advice of a dozen more options. Use your gut, trust your internal knowledge, narrow your focus on to a few areas. Give yourself a time period to evaluate, and a deadline to pick the next steps.
You don’t have to be absolutely right. You don’t have to be 100% sure. Consider the power of good enough. We cannot often predict an outcome nor can we control an outcome, our only power is to do our best in the moment. It is helpful here to remind yourself that certainty is a fantasy but change and adaptability is a skill you have been honing since birth. You can always re-evaluate your direction if it doesn’t turn out to be the correct one.
There is only one certainty; standing still won’t get you there.
We must bypass our fear of the unknown. People who are successful are the ones willing to risk taking the next step. They do it right away. They don’t wait.
Plan one small thing to do each day that will actually move you closer to your goal.
Then actually do it.
If you find hesitation (doubt, fear, rationalization) pushing against you, try out the “5-second rule” from Mel Robbins: count 5-4-3-2-1 and then just do the action you planned to do. You can try this if you set your alarm to wake up and find yourself reaching for the snooze button, or when you are tempted to pick up you phone while trying to finish a blog. The strategy here works to disrupt your “hesitation habit” and moves you into action BEFORE your “slow brain” kicks into gear and starts to tell you all the reasons why you aren’t ready.
A FINAL CONSIDERATION:
Consider this: staying in that in-between zone between dreaming and not doing, between yes and no, is stressful. It’s a no-man’s land of neither here nor there. It prevents you from fully investing in your life, and I agree with how Hayter puts it:
“…[is] associated with a decrease in the feeling of aliveness that we have and head[s] towards actually contracting our worlds inwards.”
We disappear in a million little hesitations, indecision by indecision, even while we are alive. Is that a risk you are really willing to take?
REFERENCES:
Hayter, David (2020) https://www.androgenman.com/mindset/2020/8/13/the-effects-of-hesitation-and-silence
Kahnemann, Daniel (2011) Thinking Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
Reina, Michelle (2016) https://www.inc.com/michelle-reina/1-minute-exercise-to-eliminate-hesitation.html
Schwartz, Barry (2006) https://hbr.org/2006/06/more-isnt-always-better