How to take the stress out of decision making

Even at the best of times making decisions can feel overwhelming and stressful, especially when we are working on our own or don’t have anyone to bounce our ideas and fears off.

What happens if we don’t make the right decision? What if we get it wrong? This repercussion fear can often lead us to feeling paralysed and, ironically, making no decision at all is often the worst choice to make as we end up stagnating and our work merely limps along.

Career and confidence coach, Kate Bishop helps us understand the decision-making process and the tools we can adopt to feel more confident in the decisions we make.

Understanding the stress reaction

When tackling our decision paralysis and fears, it’s incredibly helpful to understand what is truly going on with our thoughts so that we can manage them in a positive and proactive way. In order to do this we need to get to know our stress reaction so that we can then respond and tame that stress monster rather than spiralling with it.

When we experience stress it is because our amygdala (a small part of our brain) has sensed a threat. It is constantly scanning our environment for threats. As soon as it picks up on one it sends cortisol and adrenalin coursing through our bodies, which in turn causes our blood to leave non-vital bodily organs. Instead it rushes to our arms ready to fight off that threat, to our legs to run away from that threat, and causes our muscles to tense so we can remain stock still and hope that the threat won’t see or sense us.

Yes, when we get stressed we experience that fight, flight or freeze response. Now this is a fantastic reaction when we are faced with something very dangerous but it doesn’t serve us that well when we are trying to logically think through challenges or find a positive way forward.

The best decision-making mode