Whether it’s choosing a career, who to date, to get married or divorced, move, or just picking what to eat for dinner — many women have a chronically hard time making decisions.

We flip, we flop.
We doubt, we fret.
We judge, we disapprove.

We may hate ourselves for our own indecision. And then, we start the whole cycle over again, losing weeks, months, and even years in indecision.

It’s one of the things keeping us small as women – and indecision is no more than a symptom of our disconnection with our power source, our turn on, and our truth.

Here Are 6 Reasons Women Get Stuck in Indecision:

1 – We procrastinate to avoid having to decide.

Putting it off, putting YOU off. “Maybe the timing will be better next year.” “Once I get to the bottom of my to-do list, I’ll take the time to explore this.” How many of us knew our relationship wasn’t working for years before we ended it? How many of us knew we were done at a job long before we got fired or quit?

What might have been possible if we had leapt sooner? Could life have been sweeter? More true to the women we truly are?

2 – We’re really comfortable with settling and suffering.

It’s easy to live a miserable life. It takes no courage to live a mediocre life. Do nothing, change nothing, and you will have a mediocre life. But a glorious life – a challenging and creative life – requires risk. There is profound discomfort in shifting. But there is nothing so powerful and courageous as a woman standing for herself, and pirouetting across a new dance floor. And you know what? You don’t have to have one dance lesson to pirouette.

You just have to have the urgency to grow a tiny bit more than the inertia to stay the same.

3 – We don’t give ourselves permission to choose what we really want.

Choosing what we really want is scary – it forces us to expand and grow, create and recreate. At a deep, basic level we have been trained to judge, refuse, and resist our truth. Sometimes, a huge desire will terrify us. If we have been single for a long time, and suddenly we wake up wanting to get married or have a baby – that can seem absolutely overwhelming. If we suddenly want to give up our high-powered career and write a novel – we could doubt our own sanity. We generally do not trust the veracity of what it is we desire.

We have been saturated in rampant lack of permission to want what we want. Rather than stay in the flowing waters of desire, we sink into the muck of ‘how’?

The biggest block between a woman and her desire is when she gets all of her thinking mired in ‘how’.

4 – We look for answers outside ourselves.

We feel like we have to get permission from Mommy or Daddy.  Or the stand-ins for those folks, like our partners or our boss. We run to “Honey, should I do this thing?” versus “Honey there is this amazing thing I am longing to do – can you help me figure out how?” We have absolutely no training in how to source ourselves and our nearest and dearest from the clarity of our desire.

It is time for us to enroll others in support of what it is we want, and to teach everyone in our world to conspire with us.

5 – We isolate.

If I ask a woman who continually compromises herself if I should continue to compromise myself, what portal do you think she will hold open? Women need other women who are committed to living their desires, to inspire us to live ours. We need women who are continually opening new doors for themselves, to inspire the opening of doors in ourselves.

We need community like we need oxygen.

6 – We try to think logically to “figure it out” instead of relying on our feelings.

Feelings are true. Feelings never lie. Feelings exist to promote and create growth. And yet all of us, as women, one time or another, have been told our feelings are wrong, or bad, or way too much. How can we begin to trust an aspect of ourselves that we have been warned against our whole lives? Of course, our ego has to jump in and start to criticize, diminish and devalue the way we feel.

We have been trained to deny our deepest truth since we first recognized we had one.

My book, Pussy: A Reclamation, includes 27 tools which will help you feel more empowered in your life and to make decisions with confidence. One of my favorites is what I call the "YES Move" -- you may feel ridiculous at first, but I guarantee it will change your mood and your perspective, fast. Next time you're experiencing discomfort or frustration with a certain situation, I want you to leap into the air, no matter where you are and what's going on, and shout YES! repeatedly with as much enthusiasm as you can muster. It’s a quick way of getting into agreement with and celebrating your life, and from there you can navigate any circumstance with more confidence, clarity, and joy. 

In the comments below I’d love to know — where are you in the indecision loop in your life right now? Or, if you’ve moved through your resistance and made a powerful choice — what helped you get there?