#45 You’re not indecisive, you have poor boundaries

How difficult is it for you to make choices? I’ve always known I’m bad with decision making, but it’s been disguised as me just being ‘an easy person’ or ‘an overthinker’ rather than anything more sinister.

Passing the phone back to someone else because ‘I can never pick a restaurant for food, but I’m honestly happy with anything you choose’, ‘I can’t pick a movie, but I’m easy’, ‘I don’t have a favourite genre of music’, ‘or city to live in’, ‘or career’, ‘or colour’ the list just goes on.

While in most cases the biggest downside is having a terrible starter at dinner or sitting through someone’s terrible music choice, I’ve started to realise that this pattern of behaviour stems from darker roots and leads to potentially dangerous consequences.

I’ve started to think how much of my ‘easy’ nature is true, and how much of it is a fear of judgement from others, disappointing them with my choices, making them endure the consequences of bad choices I’ve made, or even worse a deep fear of abandonment as they realise who I really am. And in avoiding all these, I’ve realised I actually have no clue who I ‘really’ am.

Never training my decision-making muscles, always going along for the ride, internalising fears and responsibilities for others means that I’m just as terrified of making choices for myself when I’m completely alone. When I’m the main person who will suffer any consequences.

It’s the same ways of thinking that remove your boundaries as you sacrifice yourself to please others that make you completely lose yourself in the process. And it’s so much harder to figure out who the hell you’ve become or once were before all this.

I now want better boundaries. I want to be able to recognise my needs and verbalise them, to be (a lot) less concerned with what others think of those choices, to trust that others can take reasonable care of their internal state and to start thinking more of my own.

I’ve no idea how to do it, but I’ll keep you updated if I figure anything out and you’re interested (tips are welcome too) :)

If you’re smart you should be able to be happy. — Naval Ravikant, with Readwise