decision fatigue

On burnout, self-trust, and learning to choose anyway

I recently had to make a big financial decision about fixing my car. I had the estimates. I had all the information laid out in front of me. I even had a second opinion. I weighed my options and chose what felt right to me in the moment.

And then the second I got home, I started questioning it almost immediately.

I feel like this is a no-brainer, but decision making can be difficult for people who have experienced burnout. Sometimes the thought of making a decision simply exhausts you. Other times, it can leave you feeling paralyzed, mostly due to fear of making the wrong choice.

I’ve been in plenty of situations with former bosses and partners who told me over, and over, that my judgement was flawed. I don’t say this to position myself as a victim, only to offer some context. When your choices are constantly criticized, it slowly over time, chips away at your ability to trust yourself.

Eventually you start to feel an immense pressure to make the “perfect” decision. And when you’ve been told enough times that your judgement is flawed, you unfortunately start to believe it.

I remember when I left my career back in 2021. It took a lot for me to make that decision. I weighed the pros and cons for what felt like years. I was worried that I was going to make the wrong choice by leaving. I didn’t have all the answers in front of me and I definitely didn’t know how my future was going to unfold.

But I took the leap anyway.

Since then I’ve been less stressed and more like my happy-go-lucky self. However, I still don’t have everything figured out, and I don’t think I’m supposed to. Life tends to take us down paths where we learn what we are meant to learn, regardless of which decision we make.

A friend of mine recently left their “big wig” job to take a promotion elsewhere. Watching them make that leap felt incredibly brave to me, especially at a time when our industry (entertainment / music) has been rocky to say the least. They might get to their new job and absolutely love it. Or they might arrive and realize it wasn’t what they hoped for.

Either way, the decision still moves them forward.

That’s the strange thing about choices. We spend so much time trying to make the perfect one, when in reality, there are very few decisions in life that are truly irreversible. Most of the time, we’re just gathering information about who we are and what we want.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the world also feels very heavy right now. People are exhausted and it’s no wonder that even small decisions can feel like a major uphill battle.

When your nervous system is depleted, making choices can start to feel almost dangerous. Avoidance therefore feels safer. Sometimes that means procrastinating on the decision. Other times it means handing the decision over to someone else so you don’t have to carry the responsibility.

But autonomy builds confidence. And confidence isn’t built by getting every decision right. It’s built by surviving the ones that didn’t go perfectly.

It’s realizing you can handle the aftermath.

Maybe the goal isn’t about making perfect decisions. Maybe it’s simply to make them at all, and to learn to trust ourselves a little more each time.

I’m still unpacking the difference between fear and intuition, but I’m practicing by choosing anyway.

And for what it’s worth, the car runs perfectly now..