6 Tips to Overcome Your Fear of Making the Wrong Decisions

6 Tips to Overcome Your Fear of Making the Wrong Decisions

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 fear what will happen if we don’t choose the right thing for us. This is something that often encourages us to avoid making decisions that will change our life, our family, our business, or our world.

The Importance of Decision-Making

Without making decisions, you can’t make changes. Without making decisions, you can’t expect personal and business progress.

You need to make the right decisions and act based on them. Only in such a way you can make progress. But remember that sometimes at the beginning of your decision-making process, you will not know what is right and what is the wrong decision.

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 effect 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, procrastination, bad decisions, and regret. And if you’re afraid of regret, you’ll likely avoid making decisions altogether.

Related: Real-life Organizational Decision-Making Examples

Decidophobia – the right word

The fear of making the wrong decisions is called decidophobia – an irrational fear of decision-making. 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, which is 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.

decidophofia fear of making wrong decision

Symptoms of Decidophobia

Decidophobia is not some psychological disorder. Still, it can be a significant issue affecting an entrepreneur’s and manager’s daily lives, especially regarding decision-making. So, the question is, what are the symptoms of decidophobia:

1. Anxiety and distress.

The most common symptom of decidophobia is a sense of intense anxiety or distress that arises when you are faced with the need to make an important decision with a high possible impact on yourself or your small business. In such a way, they will see the outcomes of decisions like perceived threat instead of possibility for business and personal growth. Such a situation can bring from mild unease to full-blown panic attacks.

Remember, high levels of anxiety and distress will negatively impact your body and overall health.

2. Getaway or avoidance behavior.

I have seen some entrepreneurs with decidophobia how they try to avoid situations when they need to make decisions. This could mean bypassing certain decisions related to your business, simply delegating the responsibilities to their team members to not feel guilty, or even avoiding social interactions that can be uncomfortable for them.

3. Physical symptoms.

The anxiety associated with decidophobia and constantly worry about the outcomes can also manifest as physical symptoms, such as sweating, rapid heart rate, trembling, nausea, or difficulty breathing. Sometimes, decisions in business are not easy, and the consequences can be negative or positive, so you must know that starting and running a business normally causes anxiety.

4. Intrusive thoughts.

I have one client with decidophobia, and he always finds themselves constantly worrying about the possible outcomes of his decisions. We have talked every day about decisions he needs to make, but worrying about outcomes brings him intrusive thoughts that can be difficult to control and have started to impact his mental health conditions. So, we started with the decision-making about easier things first, so when he saw the positive outcomes, we were ready to continue with other decisions.

Symptoms of Decidophobia

Going back to many cases when I worked with clients where they needed to make big decisions for their companies, one thing is a common denominator: it is better to make a decision than to delay decision-making. Even if the outcomes are not as expected, don’t allow you to get a panic attack. Making decisions will help you know what needs to be done to achieve the outcomes you want to achieve.

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.

How Fear Affects the Decision-making Process

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 must overcome the fear of starting a new business.

How Can You Overcome Your Fear of Making the Wrong Decision?

Here are six tips to help you overcome your fear of making the wrong decisions.

1. Make a lot of decisions daily

Make a lot of decisions daily

If you want to master decision-making skills, you must make many decisions. What do you think about 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 daily to decide something important in your life that will make you feel empowered. 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 daily can help you avoid the paralysis of indecision and become more confident in yourself and your decisions.

When you make many decisions daily, 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

Start small and practice the decision-making process

If you start with your biggest goal in mind, you may get discouraged and lose 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 decide to do something.

Take action after you decide to do something

Why do you need decisions? You probably want to achieve some goals that will enable you to create 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 good. So, you can’t learn from them to overcome your fear of making the wrong decisions.

✋ Warning

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

Inform yourself before making decisions

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, as our body needs water to function properly, we must be informed and have a high level of confidence in our decisions. If you don’t know the answers to questions like “What will I need?” and “What are the risks?” you’ll be less likely to make the right decision for you.

5. Learn from your mistakes when you make a wrong decision

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. You’ll have 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 implementing 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 it.

6. Motivate yourself to make the right decision

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.

RelatedUncovering the Psychologists’ Theories of Motivation: What Drives Human Behavior?

Use Decision-Making Quadrant

To eliminate the fear of making decisions within my clients, I have developed a decision-making quadrant to help them make the right decisions.

Decision Making Quadrant to Overcome Fear
  • Low analysis and low impact consequences. This quadrant tells you that you can make a decision without any fear because it will have a low impact on your business. These decisions are great for practice, experimenting, and learning.
  • High analysis and low impact consequences. So, if you are in this situation, you can easily come into the trap of “analysis paralysis,” so don’t waste your time on complex analysis for low-impact decisions. If you are feeling stuck with a large amount of data, first look at the impact the outcome will have on your business. So, don’t use this quadrant for practice. Move your decision process to the first quadrant.
  • Low analysis and high impact. Suppose your decision-making process allows you to decide without analysis when the outcomes can greatly impact your business. In that case, there is a space for mistakes that can be devastating. Your fear is normal in such a situation and something desirable and preferable. You can not practice your decision-making, but you must move from this quadrant to the fourth (high analysis and high impact) quadrant when you find yourself in this situation. Use your fear to help you make informed decisions.
  • High analysis and high impact. Suppose you feel anxious because your decisions can greatly impact your business. In that case, you can overcome this situation by a high level of analysis regarding different alternative solutions you can select with your decision. In such a way, you will always make informed decisions because your final decision will be based on data analysis.

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.