Ep. 164: The Habit of Second Guessing (and how to break it)

In this episode of the Maybe I Can Podcast, I talk about something I know many of us struggle with — second guessing ourselves after a decision has already been made.

I share personal stories about decisions that carried enormous emotional weight in my life — from financial choices in my marriage, to putting my beloved dog Yogi to sleep, to a painful decision involving my late husband that I questioned for a long time afterward.

Second guessing doesn’t mean we’re weak or bad at making decisions. Often, it’s a learned response — especially for women who have carried emotional responsibility for others. We anticipate reactions. We try to prevent fallout. We crave certainty.

If you’ve been replaying a decision in your mind lately, this conversation is for you.

Remember — you made the best decision you could with the information you had at the time.

Maybe you can trust yourself more than you think.

Transcript

Framing Second Guessing

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome back to the Maybe I Can podcast. I'm your host, Debbie Weiss, and thank you so much for joining me today. Whether you are a regular listener, a new listener, an occasional listener, whoever you are, I am certainly grateful that you landed on this show. And today we are going to talk about second-guessing ourselves. I don't know about you, but this is something that I tend to do quite often. Not all decisions, but only certain decisions. And we're going to dive into why that happens, what does that mean? What can we do about it? And how we can kind of reframe that and stop second guessing ourselves because there really is no need. All right, so first let's talk about what does second guessing yourself feel like, sound like. To me, I'm replaying either a conversation that I had with another person that led me to a decision, a conversation that I had with myself, you know, going through all of the points that led to me having that decision, wondering if I've handled something right, questioning myself after the decision is made. Oh boy, happens so much. I want you to know this is not a flaw. You are not alone. And it doesn't mean that you're bad with decision. It's really about how do we eliminate this? Because I think that it's a difficult thing to eliminate. But if we understand why it happens and what we can do when it happens, then we're further on down the line. When we second guess ourselves, it usually doesn't mean that we're bad at decision making. It just means that for one reason or another, we've had to be careful with our decision. And why is that? When we second guess ourselves, it's like a protection response. It's a learned behavior, something that we've done time and time again over our lives. And so it just comes naturally to us. I think it happens when a decision that we make affects other people, or when we've made a bad decision and the mistakes feel like they've been costly, or this is like a high-ticket decision where you feel the pressure of making the wrong decision. I can think of so many times where I make a decision and I'm thinking, who would this impact? You know, my family members, my team members, my customers, my listeners, like all of the people, whoever that audience is in your life, and it feels so weighty. And I think that it's especially common, second-guessing ourselves, and this is a broad generalization, but I would say for women who've had to carry emotional responsibilities, caregivers, right, who are always having to make decisions that affect their career or their loved one, or people who are just managing uncertainty. Second guessing yourself, it's not a weakness, it's kind of like this adaptation that we've learned. I think about it like muscle memory, right? When you learn to throw a ball, let's just say, you learn it over and over again. You learn to throw a ball one way, you practice over and over and over again until you don't have to think about it anymore. It could also be like with driving a car, you know, whatever that is, where you just have ingrained these actions into your mind so that you just don't think about it. And going back to the baseball analogy, what if you've learned to throw a ball overhand and you're a pitcher and now you want to learn to sidearm throw? Well, what's gonna happen? You might practice it, but when you're not thinking, and you let's say want to be sidearming it, but your body throws it overhead. If that makes sense. I don't know why this analogy popped into my head, but I don't know if that resonates with you. But it's like anything that we teach our body to do. And usually, I mean, it's a good thing, right? Because then it just becomes something natural. And I think that that's what happens with second guessing ourselves. If we've done it over and over and over again, every time we make a decision, or we make a decision that we feel carries importance or great weight or mistakes could be costly, what do we do? We start to second guess ourselves. Usually it happens after it's over. And I think it's because we've trained ourselves. Because when we've had a lot of responsibility in our lives in the past, we've learned to like get in for reactions or anticipate reactions from other people. And we want to minimize the fallout. Oh my gosh, you know, it just makes me think about, and I'm not going to repeat the whole story because if you're a regular listener of you've read my books, you know this story. It's about me and my poor money decisions that I've made in the past. And why did I make them? I made those decisions because I was trying to minimize the reaction specifically of my husband at the time. Because anytime that I would say to my husband, a little backstory, I'm a widow, and my husband suffered from anxiety and depression, and I was the money handler. And so when I knew that the money was tight and we shouldn't be spending the way we were, which was without thinking. My husband, before the last few years of his life, he was the kitchen guy. He loved food shopping and cooking, and I didn't like and don't like any of those things. And so he loved to go to so many different supermarkets every week because each supermarket had something different that he liked that he couldn't find at the other one. But what wound up happening was is that my goodness, those food bills really were adding up. And when money got tight, if I were to mention to him, hey, could you please start paying attention and thinking about a budget when it came to food shopping, he would shut down because then his anxiety would kick in. And he would go so far the other way that it created an uncomfortable atmosphere in my home and at work because we worked together. So I didn't want that reaction. So I made decisions trying not to have him react. And, you know, some of those decisions were okay, and some of them maybe weren't. And I have, and I don't anymore, but I understand why I did those things, but I did second guess those decisions. Now it doesn't mean that the decision was wrong, it just means that the decision mattered. And I think that afterwards, when we do it afterwards, it's like a coping strategy to try and understand why we made that decision. Really, honestly, quite fascinating and something that I never really thought about. But second guessing, it's almost an echo of that old feeling of responsibility. I want to share with you a recent decision that I've been second guessing. So again, if you're a listener, you already know that, a regular listener, but I had a dog, a multi-poo, named Yogi, who was my partner, my comfort, my best friend. So many of our pets are like that. But particularly after my husband died three years ago, Yogi has really been my partner. We sleep together. He comes to work with me. I talk to him, even though he was having trouble hearing. And on January 24th, I had to make the decision to put him to sleep. And it was not an easy decision. Sometimes when our pets are ill, it's very obvious, and you're doing something to put them out of pain. And certainly that was the reason for this decision. But it wasn't like he was suffering intensely. He actually ran to the door to get in the car as we were going off to the vet that day. And afterward, oh my goodness, did I second guess myself? It was such a hard decision, and there is no perfect answer. And how many times am I going to second guess what I did? Felt responsible. I had all this information, but I didn't have certainty. And second guessing, I was really second guessing the timing of everything and wondered if I acted too soon, or maybe I waited too long. It didn't mean I made the wrong choice. Just means I cared. Another story. Prior to my husband dying two months before he passed away, I had to make the decision to basically have him involuntarily committed into a mental hospital. And that wound up to be a horrible experience for him, for me, uh afterwards, I second guessed it for quite some time because it was a horrible thing, and if I had known that he was going to die so soon afterwards, I never would have done it. So for the longest time, I second guessed myself. I was angry with myself for putting him through that. Oh my goodness, I beat myself up. But you know what? I was doing it, I was second guessing because I loved him so much. And I felt that I did him wrong. But I have to remind myself, and you do too, I did the best I could with the information that I had at the time. If I had known that he was going to pass away a month after he came home, I never would have made that decision. But I didn't have a crystal ball, and it didn't seem like that was what was going to happen at the time. And so I have to give myself grace. And you do too. Second guessing your decision, especially after it happens. What happens? Well, it's exhausting. It's mentally exhausting to replay these decisions over and over again. And it makes us not trust ourselves. Because we're constantly second guessing everything that we decide. And maybe there was some kind of joy around a decision that you made. But then if you start second guessing it, there goes the joy right out the window. The drain isn't the decision itself. The drain is really the second guessing. What we do to ourselves after it's over, instead of just making the choice and just letting that decision stand. What we actually need to do is rebuild our self-trust. We've got to learn to trust ourselves. It helps to catch ourselves that after a decision is made. We have to remind ourselves we made the best decision we could with all of the information that we had. And stopping that second guessing. Why? Because this is our muscle memory. Not trusting ourselves, second guessing is what we have learned. It's a learned behavior. And now we have to learn to unlearn that behavior, to stop the second guessing. Now it's not going to happen automatically. It's a work in progress like everything. It all comes down to something I talk about all the time because I think that most things that I talk about all start with awareness. And by listening to this podcast, just by listening to the topic, even if nothing I say in this episode is relatable to you, just the whole idea of second guessing and examining. Because we don't usually examine it, at least I don't or didn't, because I wasn't aware. I wasn't aware at what cost, what it was doing to me mentally, emotionally, physically, like just talking about some of these decisions and the second guessing, I can feel the stress in my chest just by everything that I'm saying. We don't want that. We've got to learn to trust ourselves. Self-trust is built by how we treat ourselves after we make that decision. So I want you to pay attention. Pay attention to your thoughts. Pay attention to your self-talk. Pay attention to the second guessing. After you make a decision, you've made the decision. Sit with it, trust it, and move on. Every decision we make is gonna be right, right? Of course. We're perfect. Nobody is. But be kind to yourself. I want you to think to yourself, where recently have you replayed a decision that you've made? And are you looking for someone outside of yourself to approve that decision? If so, remind yourself it's not necessary. You trust yourself and you trust yourself with the decisions that you made. What would it feel like to do just that? To trust yourself. And let a decision just stand. Remember, second guessing doesn't mean that you're broken or you're not a good decision maker. It just means that this is a habit that you formed, just like me, over time, and we need to work on relearning it. Second guessing was learned. It made sense. But remember, responsibility, because so many decision making is a responsibility. We want certainty. We I think we all crave certainty, but probably not as exciting. So remember, be compassionate with yourself and be aware. Be aware every time that you start second guessing yourself after a decision. Dop yourself, remind yourself, you trust yourself, and move on to the next decision. Now, before I wrap up, I want to share one quick thing. I just want you to know that in addition to this podcast, I also speak at conferences, organizations, community events, often about the same themes that I talk about here on the podcast and that I talk about in my books. My two signature keynotes, the sprinkle effect, small shifts that lead to big impact, and rewrite your story from burnout to reinvention are designed for women who are ready for meaningful change. And I also offer interactive workshops on a range of related topics that can be customized to fit the needs of your group. So if you're part of a woman's organization, a workplace ERG, healthcare or education group, caregiver organization, or a community that brings in speakers, or if you know someone who is, I truly love the opportunity to bring this conversation to an event near you. You can learn more about my speaking and my workshops and pretty much everything else about me on my website, which is debirwiss.com. You've always got to remember the R because otherwise you wind up on a realtor in California, and that's that. So let's bring it back to our topic. Learning to trust yourself. Again, it doesn't happen before the decision. It happens afterwards. Go out there, make it a great week, and remember, maybe you can. See you next week.