Fear prevents a decision from being made and/or acted upon
One doesn’t hear this kind of admission in words upfront, but it is usually pretty hard to miss in action. You can usually tell early on whether there is significant personal fear driving the decision situation. Fear is a natural, powerful emotion – one that you feel when you face actual danger, pain, or an unpleasant situation.
This is not the same as simply being unable to choose among decision alternatives or not being sufficiently comfortable with the decision you have tentatively made. This situation response is truly based on one’s personal fear, and that fear is effectively preventing any decision from being made or implemented. Fear as an emotion is real, regardless of whether or not it may be objectively well-founded.
Fear-driven indecision appears to be of two main types. The first is a rational fear of decision outcomes that may be quite nasty in nature. These we can usually deal with in one way or another. The second is an irrational fear that originates within a person’s psyche. As a decision coach, I cannot and should not deal with these, since they generally require specialized training and experience of a therapeutic nature to address properly.
There is however a bit of a fine line here. Decision-making that is irrational generally refers to emotion-driven and psychologically-driven processes. Decision-making making that is nonrational is usually understood to be driven by one’s intuitive mind processes. A decision coach should be able to deal with nonrational intuitive fears in most cases, but not with emotion-driven irrational fears. I hope that this isn’t too confusing.
A nonrational fear of decision-making may be soundly based
Nonrational fears may flow from one’s feelings or “gut-feelings” that originate in what I call “heart-and-mind” processes. These involve our subconscious-intuitive mind, wherever this may be located. We cannot directly control our subconscious-intuitive mind processes. They in effect “do their own thing”. They generate “hunches” and similar feelings that are based on our life experiences and internal mental makeup.
Google AI offers a quite helpful definition of “intuition”:
“Unconscious processing: It is a fast mental shortcut where your brain matches current experiences with past memories and patterns.
Gut feelings: People often call it a "gut instinct" because physical sensations can occur in the body before your conscious mind catches up.
Not magic: It relies on real data processed quietly beneath your awareness rather than supernatural powers.
Pattern recognition: Your brain sifts through cumulative life lessons to spot familiar cues instantly.
Speed: It operates faster than analytical thought, helping you make quick choices or sense danger early.
The body's role: Nervous system signals can trigger physical feelings in places like your stomach or chest during an intuitive moment.”
Being “afraid to decide” may be evidence of intuitive insights
Our intuition can provide some extremely valuable inputs to our decision-making. These may often surface as what we describe as “fear” but they are actually not fear in its raw “animal” sense. Fear in a decision situation may be some kind of intuitive warning .
While we may be unable to describe our “fear” in the context of an important decision situation, it may well be an extremely valuable input. I would never ignore or minimize a fear-feeling of this kind. It may in fact be helpful to label such fears as “hunches” or “senses”.
How should one deal with intuitive inputs such as “fears”, “hunches”, or “senses”? The right response will usually be situation-dependent but in general it may serve to caution us about the situation itself. Our “fear” intuition may be telling us to proceed cautiously, perhaps to hold off deciding until this intuitive warning can be more fully understood.
Only the person who is directly involved in the decision situation can determine which one of the three types of “deciding fear” is most likely to be at work. Another person – a close friend or family member, or a coach of some sort – may be able to assist in this process. Fear arising from one’s psychological sources may need to be addressed by a professional therapist or psychologist among others. Fear arising from one’s intuition may benefit from an experienced coach’s support.
