Luann Udell / Durable Goods

The next time you are in the throes of making a difficult decision, try this:

Ask yourself if you have to decide NOW.

Sounds silly, I know. But several times in the last year, I've felt I HAD to make a decision about something. Wrapped myself up tight around it. Thought about it all day and went to bed with it at night.

Finally, I wrote about it in my journal. And realized... I just didn't have to decide right then.

What I'm found was, when I simply can't made a decision, it's usually because there's either no compelling reason to chose one way over another, OR because I simply don't have enough information. If the situation isn't life-threatening or time-sensitive (and usually they aren't, they just seem IMPORTANT for some reason), then it's perfectly okay to postpone the decision.

I immediately felt a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. The situation resolved itself, temporarily. I'm faced again with that same decision, but I have more information now, and the situation seems more clear.

I began to pay more attention to opportunities NOT to decide something. Turned out there were a few of them! It's important to not simply stop thinking about them--that won't work. You must decide you do not need to decide RIGHT NOW. Promise yourself you will come back to it later, when you have more information or a better sense of where your indecision is coming from. Sometimes, the situation just resolves itself.

I started to go into my usual excruciating detail, but decided not to.

This does NOT mean you are excused from taking action to make the changes in your life that will bring you closer to your dreams and goals. You're not off the hook there!

But sometimes, it's okay to pull a Scarlett (O'Hara) and think about it tomorrow.