The 4 Hidden Roots of Indecision and How to Overcome Them

How fear, shame, and old stories quietly steal your ability to decide, and how to trust yourself again.

You've researched it, made the list, asked everyone you trust, and you still can't choose. If that's you, here's the first thing to know: you're not indecisive, and you're not doing this wrong.

In this episode, we trace the inability to make a decision back to where it actually begins, and it isn't a lack of information.

It's a quiet erosion of self-trust, built from old mistakes, the fear of repeating them, and the shame that whispers you can't be trusted to choose well.

You'll see why none of that is true, and why the so-called pattern of past failures is really a body of hard-won wisdom you've never given yourself credit for.


IN THIS EPISODE

• Why the inability to decide is a symptom, not a character flaw, and what it's actually pointing to
• The four hidden roots of indecision
• Why no amount of additional information will give you the certainty you crave, and where that certainty actually comes from
• A 60-second somatic practice to feel your body's answer to the decision you've been circling

TAKE THE QUIZ

Find out where your decision-making gets stuck, and your starting point for trusting yourself again. It takes about three minutes.

👉 [INTUITIVE DECISION-MAKING QUIZ LINK]

📲 Instagram: [@elena_lipson]

🎧 Follow An Intuitive Life wherever you listen, and if this episode met you where you are, leave a review so another woman can find it too.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

There's a decision in front of you right now. You know the one. It's been there for weeks, maybe months, and maybe if you're honest, longer than you even care to admit out loud. And it's not because you don't have enough information, because God knows we have more information that we know what to do with. We've we can research until we're blue in the face. We can make pros and cons list. You've probably done that yourself. You've talked through it with your bestie, with your therapist, maybe, with like a slightly unqualified stranger in a Facebook group. You've probably slept on it for a long time now. And it's still something you can't choose. So today I want to talk about that. Not the decision itself, the reason you can't make it, because I promise you, it is not the reason you think. Welcome back to an intuitive life. I'm Elena, and this is the podcast for women in the middle of their lives who are super, super done with outsourcing, their knowing, and ready to come back to their own energy PS to make decisions in a way that feels so aligned that it becomes second nature. So let's start with what this actually feels like because I know you've been carrying it for a long time, and the weight of it shows up in so many different areas of life. And it feels like standing at a fork in the road with your feet like bolted to the ground, right? Because every option becomes plausible, and then every option looks terrifying. And so if you make that first step, a wave of doubt starts to pull you back, and then you start to mentally move toward the other one and feel the same thing. So you're stuck there, and and then it starts to feel like a personality trait. Like I'm just someone who can't make a good decision, or I just don't know, I'm confused. When it's really just exhaustion wearing the costume or the pattern of confusion or the pattern of I just don't know, when I know you know, I know you know. I've worked with hundreds of women over the years, and when we peel back those layers of onions of other people's priorities, opinions of your own past mistakes, we're gonna get into that, you really do know. And because I think you really need to hear it from someone who is not gonna flinch, right? The inability to decide is not a character flaw, it's a muscle that hasn't been built. It doesn't mean that you're scattered or you just don't know what to do, it's a symptom. And like all symptoms, it's pointing at something underneath that is asking to be seen, to be understood, to be embraced. Yes, embraced. So let's kind of go underneath here. So when you cannot make a decision, and it's usually something important to you, it almost never means that you lack the answer. What it does mean, what I've seen with talking with so many women, coaching so many women, is that you don't trust yourself to hold and claim the answer. And when I trace that back with the women I work with, it lands in the same place nearly every time. It starts with a past mistake or what you decided to call a past mistake. Somewhere behind you in your past, there is a choice or maybe a series of choices you made that didn't go the way you hoped. Whether it's a job, a business, a relationship, a move, I've got one of those, a yes that you wish it would have been a no, a no that you wish you would have said yes to. And in the aftermath of all of that, especially in this middle part of your life, you have enough runway back to see that you didn't just file it away as an experience, you actually somewhere inside of you filed it away as evidence. Evidence that you can't be trusted to choose well. Now, this is very subconscious, so it's not like you can talk yourself through it because it's something deeply rooted where you're like, oh god, there's like a physical somatic reaction where you're trying to make a decision, it really feels like you're standing in front of a brick wall. And once you have one piece of evidence, your mind, your subconscious mind, which is very good at its job, goes looking for more and it starts building a case and it gathers up every decision that ever stung and lines them up in a row and says, Look, look at the pattern, you get this wrong, right? And that's all it is, it's a pattern that your mind, your subconscious mind, has put into a category that you then labeled, I am not someone who makes a good decision, maybe in just one area, or money, or a string of bad relationships, or the same kind of guy you keep choosing, or or just not being able to have a breakthrough in your business. It's any category, right? So now every new decision isn't just a decision, it's like you're on trial and you're the defendant, and no wonder you can't move because you have to like talk yourself through this entire judgment of your past, right? Who would move through that? It's a really difficult thing to do, and it happens so often in this midlife era because a lot of the decisions led to a place where you didn't think you would be or you thought you'd be somewhere else by now, and you've just got this like mountain of evidence. But underneath all of that, there are usually four things that I have found that are tangled together. And I want to just talk through each one because naming them is how you start to loosen them up and start to like shake it off a little bit. So the first one is fear, not fear of choosing wrong in some abstract way, but a fear of feeling that specific feeling again, that specific shame, that specific drop in your stomach when you realize the thing you chose wasn't right or it didn't pan out the way you thought, or an investment that you made didn't pay off. Your body remembers that drop in that feeling, and it's doing everything in its power to keep you from feeling it again. So staying undecided, actually as uncomfortable as it is, still feels safe because undecided can't be wrong yet. Let me say that again. Staying undecided, as icky as it feels, it also feels safe because undecided cannot be wrong yet. Which leads to the second one, it just which is shame. And shame's a huge one. Ooh, it's a big one. And this one is actually quiet. It's a little easier to miss because shame isn't I made a mistake, shame is I am the kind of person who makes mistakes. And that means so much. Like it's a whole different story, it's personal, it's identity level. And shame doesn't make you careful, it makes you frozen. Because now, if you're standing in the middle and there's these paths in front of you, every choice feels like it's about to confirm the worst thing you secretly believe about yourself. Okay, that I know that one lands for so many women because I I've the women I've coached over the last 20 years, especially in the last several years, through this sort of middle area of life, we all have like we just have it all filed away, and we don't have to hold on to them. So we're gonna talk through that. The third sort of reason why we stay stuck in this um paralysis of indecision is the story of past failure. And this is the case file I mentioned, like the row of decisions you've labeled as proof, and because this is the whole episode in like one sentence, that file of proof is not accurate at all. It is a perception, and it's usually not even your perception, it's somebody else's perception in your life and what they helped you or you made it mean about yourself. It's a story that you wrote or was written for you in a moment of pain, and then you just never went back to revise it, which is why I love doing parts work so much and somatic work because that shit lives in your body on a cellular level, and it's so much more simple to shake it off than we think. So we keep holding on and holding on and holding on, right? So when you look at your so-called pattern of bad decisions, we get to reframe it. We can we can reframe this as wisdom versus evidence against you, right? Because you are you are only counting the outcomes you didn't like, right? We don't take the time so much to count what you learned. You're counting who you or you're not counting, I should say, who you became because of those mistakes. I would not mistakes like quote unquote mistakes. They're not really mistakes, they're all lessons, right? You either win or you learn. That's how I see it. You are not counting the discernment, which is huge for women in midlife, discernment based on experience in your body that you only have because you lived through the very thing that you're using as evidence against yourself, which is just ridonkulous, right? We know, like we would never tell a toddler who's learning how to walk who fell, like that's it. I guess you're done. You just can't walk anymore. You're like, no, falling is part of it, it's part of the proprioception in our body, it's part of our body's wisdom learning. It's it's deep. This is deep, and we never stop doing that. Like, we think just when we're a toddler, we learn to walk, that's it. Like, we have so many lessons as we go. And now in this middle life, when we and if you've listened to past episodes, I talk quite a bit. The idea that Carl Young talked about of individuation, which is like a whole new version of yourself emerging based on all that you've learned, right? You didn't know what you didn't know, what you didn't know then. And that relationship, like between you and that part of yourself that feels like you just will never get it right, taught you where that line is, like where the line is between mistakes and opportunities, mistakes and wisdom, right? That move that you made that was quote unquote wrong taught you what what it what home actually means to you, what relationships actually mean to you, what money means to you, right? And none of that is failure, that is earned intuition, like that is tuition paid. You paid it, you earned something real for yourself, and then you talked yourself into believing you walked away with nothing but proof of your own judgment. I see this quite a bit around money mistakes, so much around money mistakes, around business debt, around investments that didn't pay off, hiring a coach or a mentor that where they do you didn't get what you thought you wanted. But what you did, and I listen, I I've talked about this before. I spent $5,000 on a VIP day once. And it was if you want to know more, just comment because I will tell you the whole story. I think I shared it in a very specific episode. I can't remember which one, but I'll link it when I get there. I had the most ridiculous experience, like it was like as if she was teaching me a class about myself, telling me I should be a health coach, telling me that the women she works with use their kids as an excuse. Like it was listen, there was some wisdom in there, whatever. But like the biggest lesson I got that day was how I would never host a VIP day. She did something that probably her mentor taught her to do, or like it just it was such a great investment of my money because I learned so much that day. I will tell you, I learned so much that day, but I remember it took me a while to like turn that into like the the goodness that I feel now because I had the courage to invest that much in myself. I I believed in my vision really deeply. And then the experience was just like, oh no, this is not it. This is not what a coach, this is not what a mentor, it's not what a coach like how how this experience should have been for me. So I took so much wisdom from that. It took me a minute though, okay, just to be honest. But you gathered a body of wisdom from your version of whatever you thought you did that was wrong or right. The exact same of set, the exact same set of experiences is not a case against you, it's a resume of all the things you've learned, right? Because I don't know if you've heard this, but I've heard like when when when um when investors look to invest in companies or founders or CEOs, they look for people who've had experience, like who failed a shit ton of times and then got back up and got back up because you're building and building and building yourself and learning so much, right? So whereas someone who hasn't had that experience has another set of circumstances which are amazing, which are really great too. But it's just it's not sometimes as valuable as someone who's like been there, done that. So, this is what I mean when I say the inability to decide is a trust problem, not an information problem. Because you're not missing data, you're missing the part where you gave yourself credit for everything that the data taught you. So let's go a little deeper into why more information will never fix this. Like you cannot learn more to fix this, right? So I hope this like really lands for you and saves you more years of doubting yourself and lack of self-trust. Because the certainty that you are waiting for, the certainty that you are waiting for will never come from research. It was never going to. Because intuition, and this is where my jam comes in, intuition lives in a different dimension than data. Information can tell you what has already happened to other people, what the average says, what worked for someone else. But the knowing of whether it's right for you in your one specific life that lives somewhere, this particular type of knowing lives somewhere that data cannot reach or touch. So you can gather facts forever because it feels like you're doing something, and you'll still arrive at the same fork in the road with those options in front of you, feet bolted to the ground, because the thing you actually need was never going to show up in a spreadsheet or a Google search or in an AI window. Okay. Your intuition is not a luxury feature for when you're successful or when you prove it. It's a natural capacity that you were born with. And because of how our world is, you are slowly taught to distrust that part of yourself. Especially if someone called it woo, or if someone called it not enough information, or if someone just taught you about yourself that you don't know what you're doing. Because people, people will do that to kids, they'll do that to teenagers, they'll do that to young people. Whereas you know, you know, like you know, like you know, especially now if you're in the middle years of your life, girl, you you know, like you know, right? But you you might have been taught to override it with logic. Logic is not bad, it's amazing, but it's not the only thing. You were taught to second guess that part of yourself, right? To ask everyone else what they thought or what they would do before you let yourself feel what you would do. And by that time, you're so convoluted with everyone else's ideas, you can't even hear yourself think, right? And every time you overwrote it, wait, whether it was when you were a little girl or a teenager or in your 20s or now, because you might still be doing it. That's who I'm working with, right? You you've got a lot of ambition, you've got a lot on your plate, you've got a lot of like this the stakes are higher, even, right? That's why it's even harder now. So that muscle got quieter, maybe not in all areas of your life, but in like the ones that the decisions are heavier. But it's not gone, it's just quieted down. It's waiting for you to ask its opinion again. And the really good news is that a capacity you were taught to distress can be untaught. You can come back to it with more proof. I have worked with women who call themselves the most indecisive people alive, learn to make a clean, clean decision in an afternoon. Not because they got more information, but because they finally stopped treating their own inner yes as the least reliable voice in the room. So I have a small practice that you can do right now. So before you go, let's do one small thing together. This won't make the whole decision for you, but it will show you that the answer is closer than you think. So bring a decision to mind. Like one that's been circling. If you need to pause, do that. But I probably something's bubbling up right now. Might be a decision you have to make in the near future. And just hold it loosely and take a breath. Relax your shoulders. Just like we're just gonna chill. You can just you can rewind for all you middle-aged ladies. You can rewind, you can pause and rewind, okay? So now, as you bring this decision to mind and you're standing at that fork in the road, instead of asking, what should I do? Which sends you straight back into the case file of proof of what you can't do and didn't do, I want you to ask your body a different question. So take another nice deep breath. You can put your hand on your heart or your belly, whatever feels good, and ask which option makes me feel more like myself? Don't think about it, don't overthink it, feel for it. Picture the first option fully, like it's already chosen and done. And notice what happens in your chest, in your shoulders, in your belly. Does something open and feel expansive, or does something brace and tighten? Now the other option, same thing. Already chosen, already open, already done. Do you feel an opening in your chest or your belly? Or do you feel a bracing or a constriction? Now, that is not your imagination, that's your body, which has been keeping the score this whole time, telling you what it's already knows, and you don't have to act on it today. I just want you to notice that you got an answer, and it came from you, and it came fast, like right there, right? That's the capacity I'm talking about. It's still in there, it always was. Now, when I'm working with someone one-on-one, there are some other elements that we do address first and foremost because a lot of times the first physical reaction, even though it's a bracing or a fear, it's because of what you've been looping and looping and looping. So we do some somatic work to release that first to kind of get a clean slate, and then we start going into the different options. We really define them and then we do those questionings again. But this is a quick check-in, like a pulse check-in for yourself that you can do anytime. And I sometimes if someone's like really, really like hasn't used their intuition mindfully in a long time, we start really small. Like, should I have an apple or an orange? Should I have a salad or a burger? Like, because you want to get back into developing that yes and that no in your body. You really want to start to connect with that. That's gonna be such a huge piece for you. But if you've got some like physical-based trauma, that's where I use the somatic work and some of the parts work and really going back in and making sure that we clear some of that out first and on a regular basis so that you really can get to a very quick yes or no with your body. Okay, take a deep breath. You can rewind and do that again. So if something in this episode put a name to what you've been feeling, I made something for you. It's called the intuitive decision making quiz. It takes about a minute to do. It'll show you exactly where your decision making gets stuck and what type of decision maker you are. There's five types of decision makers, and each one needs a different set of pieces of information and things to be true about themselves in order to make that decision. And that's the part that keeps getting stuck unless you honor and embrace the type of decision maker you are. For example, I'm an embodied decision maker, so I feel things very quickly in my body. There's another kind of decision maker, which is an analytical decision maker who does need more information in order to trust that intuitive nudge. And that those are not right or wrong. That's just the decision-making style that you have, right? And your outcome will give you your starting point for coming back to trust with yourself. And there's a lot of based on your outcome, I will give you exact tips on what to do next with your decision that you're working on. You can find that link in the show notes or go straight to my um Instagram account at Elena underscore lipson. It's the first link at the top. So take it today, take it now. Literally, take 60 seconds while this is still warm in your body, and then watch your inbox because I'll meet you there with the next steps. And just to wrap this up, you are not indecisive. You simply stop trusting the one person who has been with you through every single decision you've ever made, and somehow came out on the other side every time. It's you, girl. It's you. Okay. I hope you enjoyed this. If you got something out of this, I would highly request and would love if you would rate and review and leave a comment, let me know what you thought. Um, if you have any questions, feel free to do that. There's a little blue heart in the show notes. You can click that and it texts me directly to my phone, not to some assistant or chat GBT or any the Claude or whatever. It goes right to me. And I'm happy to chat with you. Um, if you're interested in doing some deeper somatic parts, intuitive work around the next chapter. Maybe you're struggling with a decision, maybe you're stepping into a new chapter of your life and you need some guidance on how to organize that for yourself, that you can step into it intuitively with this deep, deep trust and knowing that you have everything that you need to move forward, that you release some somatic blocks that you might have. And they're not even blocks, they're really just opportunities to like embrace those parts of you that sometimes we again have shame around, have fear around, or we're or we're taught to. And the more you can embrace, embrace, embrace that part of yourself, the more wisdom that part of yourself will bloom into your life, your body, and your business. So if you want to know more about one on one coaching, you can message me. You can click that little blue heart in the show notes, you can head over to Elena underscore lipson on Instagram or email me. There should be an email at the bottom of the show notes as well. All right, have an amazing rest of your week, and I will see you on the next episode of an intuitive life.