4 Tips for Passive Decision-Makers

Decision-making is one of the scariest, paralysis inducing undertakings of a people-pleaser. It’s risky to state my own opinion, and it leaves me vulnerable to feeling the judgement, anger, or disappointment of others. If my goal is only to keep people around me happy, decision-making is the ripple in the water that rocks the boat.

Making decisions never came easily to me. There were too many variables to consider and too many options available from which to choose. On a hot summer night in Memphis about two years ago, Ryan and I, then newlyweds, met my family for dinner at a build-your-own-bowl Asian restaurant called Genghis Grill. I’d been there before but only once or twice. Ryan was well versed in the process and loved their food.

All six of us stood waiting in line to start piling our food choices in our red bowls. As we approached the first station, meats, I simply stood and stared at all the choices in front of me. Chicken, steak, crab, shrimp, ham, bacon, pork, and a few others too. My new husband moved along quickly to the vegetable station, dropping his selections onto his mile-high bowl.

Behind me, my family waited for me to choose, my brothers poking fun at my hesitancy.

I felt as if someone had walked up to me, invisible to the others, held a gun to my head and whispered, now choose.

I simply stared at it all laid out before me. It all boiled down to a fairly simple question: What did I want as the base for my dish?

My eyes darted from one meat to the other as I tried to strong-arm myself into just making a choice, as my brothers said from behind. Panic simmered too close to the surface. Keenly aware of the other people building up behind our party, my mind swam. Make a decision, Jennifer! Just choose something! My sweet husband came back to my spot, listened to me tell him I didn’t know what to do, and gently suggested I choose steak. “You like steak.”

This story is a bit of a trivial example of what runs through the mind of a people-pleaser in action. But it illustrates a few things I want to point out to you.

Don’t Feel Pressure to Choose Quickly

I walked up to the food selection area knowing a line of people waited behind me. Speed was important here. A decision must be made without much thought or preamble. Go with your gut. When we find ourselves feeling outside pressure to make a decision from a friend, a spouse, or a co-worker, it’s easy to stop listening to ourselves. Instead, we elevate their opinions over ours believing the lie that our thoughts aren’t as good because we might not be able to express them as eloquently or directly as our friend.

What I’m learning in this process of people-pleasing recovery is not having the words to express my opinion doesn’t mean I don’t have one at all. It simply means I need more time to put words to it. Some decisions require a fast turnaround, but not all of them do. For those decisions where you have more time to figure things out, take the time offered. Think it through. Pray and ask God to show you direction and wisdom.

Name What You Want Out Loud

I stood in front of the meat section for nearly five minutes, which is a long time when you’re waiting in a line for food and the people behind you are hungry and jumpy. There were so many considerations running through my mind all at once, I found myself suddenly mute. I couldn’t put words to what I wanted out of my dinner that evening, but this is the part that is so important.

I can recommend several fantastic books explaining the power of naming the unnamed things in our lives. The unnamed things hold immense power over us, until we actually put words to them. The simple, yet difficult, task of naming something within us weakens its hold on us, but even more powerful is saying out loud. Speak it over yourself. Speak it in prayer to the Father. Speak it to a trusted friend. Name what it is you truly want out of this decision you need to make and say it out loud.

Find the Quiet in Your Mind

I was stuck, staring at different selections of meat because anxiety crowded out all rational thoughts. The cacophony of thoughts rang like a church bell in my head, drowning out all but my indecision. It was loud and disorienting. It was embarrassing to be stuck in this place, unable to move or think.

The best place to find techniques for finding the quiet space in your mind is a trained professional, a counselor or therapist. Someone who has real credentials to help you work through this. But it also helps to have someone alongside you in the moment to bring your focus back to the decision in front of you. My husband was that person for me in this scenario. He came alongside me and, simply with his presence, helped to quiet the din in my head, letting me move forward.

Own Your Choice

If you looked closely at my story above, you’ll notice I never actually made a real decision about what to eat. I simply accepted what someone else said I would like. A common thought about passive decision-making is if I let this responsibility expire and fall into someone else’s lap, I’m not responsible for what they chose. We wait to make our decision until there is no more time left and the decision is made for us, but friends, choosing not to make a decision is still a choice. It might be a passive choice, but it’s still a decision. We just aren’t the ones in control of what gets chosen.

Making passive decisions simply passes the buck and burden of this decision to someone else. If you have to decide whether to live in one city or another, you might be sorting through the job opportunities available in one city versus the other. Or, you might be looking at the hiking trails, the night life, or local coffee shops. The point here is you are the only one who will make the best decision for you. Whomever you choose to pass this responsibility on to (see what I did there?), will have their own set of considerations to wade through. Often, their considerations aren’t the same as yours.

Big Picture Decisions

Now, imagine this decision-making thought process playing out on a bigger scale for a more important decision than what to eat for dinner. Imagine you have to decide which job to take, which person you see yourself marrying, if you want to have kids, if you can stand living far away from family, or if it’s time to allow your beliefs to change. Each of these is a huge decision for a person to navigate on their own, or even with a spouse or friend.

Decisions are hard, especially for the recovering people-pleasers of the world who feel the weight of other people’s happiness on their shoulders. The people I feel responsible for could be the people behind me in line at Target or at a traffic light. People I don’t even know. This is the paradox of people-pleasing. It doesn’t set limits on who I do and don’t have to please, which is why, for us, decisions can be so hard.

I hope these four tips can help you begin to move forward in your decision-making practice, as well as allow you to come home to your inherent worth in this world.