One of the most significant challenges entrepreneurs face is making the right decision in a given situation. Your business, life, and future are based on your own decisions. However, fear is the biggest enemy in making decisions. So, you really need to overcome your fear of making the wrong decisions.
As human beings, we are afraid of what will happen if we don’t choose the right thing for us. This is something that often presses us to avoid making a decision that will change our life, our family, our business, or our world.
Without decisions, you can’t make changes. Without making decisions, you can’t expect personal and business progress. You really need to make the right decisions and take action based on them. Only in such a way you can make progress.
Don’t allow your fear of making mistakes to stop you from success.
When making major life decisions, people often feel paralyzed by fear. Here, I’ll share six strategies to help you overcome your fear of making the wrong decision and start taking action in your business.
What is the fear of making the wrong decisions?
When a person is afraid of making a decision, it’s likely because of the potential downside of making the wrong choice. So what exactly is the fear of making the wrong choice? The fear of making a mistake is one thing, but making the wrong decision is not about avoiding mistakes. Instead, it’s about the fear of choosing the wrong thing or the wrong way to do something.
This can lead to indecisiveness, which can lead to procrastination, which can lead to making bad decisions, which can lead to regret. And if you’re afraid of regret, you’ll likely avoid making decisions altogether.
Decidophobia – the right word
The fear of making the wrong decisions is called decidophobia. Often, decidophobia can lead to confusion and a high level of dependence on others to choose when there is more than one choice that is the case in reality. Persons with decidophobia often lack control over the direction of their lives.
Problems such as low self-esteem can decrease a person’s confidence necessary to face different choices and make the right decisions.
People with decidophobia can be confused when making decisions and feel afraid to make the wrong decision. They are scared to do something that may not be right for them. They may think that it’s better to stick to what they are comfortable with. However, the truth is that there are many opportunities in the world to choose from. Don’t let the fear of making the wrong decision stop you from having fun. Don’t worry about it.
How fear affects the decision-making process
It’s no surprise to see how fear can affect our decisions. We all know about the power of fear and how it can make us feel helpless, scared, and vulnerable. But what’s not often considered is how fear can affect decision-making.
Fear prevents you from living your dream, keeping you away from following your dreams, pursuing your passion, and doing the things you want to do. Simply, fear holds you back.
When it comes to the decision-making process, fear will affect your decision to choose. Because of fear, it is much easier for you to choose not to make a decision.
✋ Warning
Fear is a really dangerous thing in your entrepreneurial life. For example, if you want to start a business you need to overcome the fear of starting a new business.
How to overcome your fear of making the wrong decisions?
Here are six tips that will help you overcome your fear of making the wrong decisions.
1. Make a lot of decisions daily
If you want to master the decision-making skills, you will need to make a lot of decisions. What do you think who will master this skill quickly, someone who will make one decision daily, or someone who will make ten decisions daily?
You can overcome your fear of being wrong with small steps each day. Take 10-15 minutes a day to decide something important in your life. For example, you choose between two career paths, getting out of bed early for exercise or deciding where to go for dinner tonight. Doing this every day can help you avoid the paralysis of indecision and become more confident in yourself and your decisions.
When you make many decisions each day, you’ll feel like you can overcome any fear of the unknown. You’ll start to realize that you can make the right decision even when you’re unsure. You’ll become a better decision-maker because you’ll learn to control and manage your own fear.
2. Start small and practice the decision-making process
If you start with your biggest goal in mind, you may end up getting discouraged and lose your momentum.
And, if you want to make good decisions, you need to start making decisions. The best way to overcome the fear of making the wrong decisions is to make small decisions. Making important and nonimportant decisions will help you make little progress toward your goals and see the bigger picture of the decision-making process.
The first step is to start small and test out the decision-making process on paper. This will help you get used to making decisions without thinking through every single detail.
✋ Warning
Implement these seven steps to achieve big dreams with incremental processes.
3. Take action after you make a decision to do something.
Why do you need decisions? Probably you want to achieve some goals that will enable you better conditions for yourself or your small business. If you don’t take action after you decide, you can’t know if your decision is a good decision. So, you can’t learn from them to overcome your fear of making the wrong decisions.
✋ Warning
What is the biggest difference between Kaizen and Innovation?
Take action. Don’t wait.
Once you decide what to do, you can move on to the next step of making your plan. If you have a goal, you need to plan to achieve that goal. This should include the steps that you will take to complete the goal.
4. Inform yourself if you want to increase your confidence when you make a decision
If you have a high confidence level when making decisions, you will overcome your fear of making the wrong decisions. So, you need information about each decision you are making. Should you buy real estate or rollover your 401k to gold IRA instead? Often, the information you have will shape your decision, so you will increase your confidence and reduce the probability of making the wrong decision.
In the same way, like the body needs water to operate, we need to be informed and have confidence in our choices. If you don’t know the answers to questions like “What will I need?” and “What are the risks?” you’re going to be less likely to make a decision that’s right for you.
5. Learn from your mistakes when you make a wrong decision
If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not making and implementing decisions. It’s true! Making mistakes is what makes us human. In a perfect world, we will not make any mistakes. But that’s not how the world works. Mistakes are an everyday part of the process. So, learn from them and avoid repeating them again. What are some of the ways you can learn from mistakes?
The good news is that the sooner you realize you’ve made a mistake, the better off you’ll be in terms of having an opportunity to learn from it and improve.
Look at the consequences and be flexible when you make a decision. The most important thing is to learn from your decisions and improve your next decision-making process. Simply, after the implementation of the decisions you’ve made, judge them. You need experience, and you will increase your experience if you make a bad decision and learn something from them.
6. Motivate yourself to make the right decision
If you make more right decisions, you will have more confidence and less fear of making the wrong decisions. You need to be motivated to make as many as possible right decisions. So, questioning yourself before you decide is helpful in this process. Use costs and benefits analysis to weigh the pros and cons of each decision. For example, think about the worst and best things that will happen if you decide and if you don’t make a decision. What will be the outputs of the change process? What do you need to do if things go wrong?
In order for you to make the right decision, you need to be motivated. You should drive yourself to make good decisions for yourself and the greater good of society. Think about what you will gain by making the right decision.
Are We in Control of Our Own Decisions?
The success of your small business, in large part, will be based on your own decision. But are you rational enough when you make important decisions about the future of your business? Look at this TED Talk from Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, where he used his own research findings to show how we’re not as rational as we thought when we make crucial decisions. It’s worth spending twenty minutes of your time because it will change you.
