There are a lot of things to be afraid of out there. Snakes and spiders, to start with two of my personal favorites. Ugh.
Terrorists. Plane crashes. Drowning. Taking tests naked.
These things are scary but inconsequential. You have better odds of being struck by lightning than of being killed by a terrorist, a plane crash, a snake, or a spider. Or of taking a test naked. Unless the latter is your thing, in which case you should go for it. Please be sure to let me know how it goes.
The point is that most of us worry about things that seem truly terrifying, but there’s no real point in fretting over them because the likelihood that they’ll happen is low AF, as the kids like to say these days, or they won’t really kill you if they do. They are, as scientists like to say, bullshit fears.
There are things we’re afraid of, though, that aren’t as glamorous as a big hairy spider landing on your collar and crawling down your shirt. There are things we fear that cause us more real harm than we can ever imagine.
One of them is being afraid of choosing the wrong thing.
See Also – The Completely Free (Idiot’s) Guide to Becoming a Digital Nomad
I know. It sounds about as scary as Waldorf Salad (although I’ll wager you never had to eat my grandmother’s at Thanksgiving). I talk to a lot of people who have wonderful opportunities right in front of them, begging to be taken, and these folks have an impossible time choosing one to pursue because they’re afraid of picking “the wrong one”.
When was the last time you had to decide on a major, job, path, partner, etc and you were paralyzed because you were afraid you would go the wrong way? It happens ALL. THE. TIME.
In fact, many people spend years – decades, even – avoiding a solid decision because they fear making the wrong one. So they spend their entire lives hoping that either someone will make it for them or that their indecision won’t matter.
It does matter. A whole f**king bunch.
The secret to getting over The Fear of Making the Wrong Decision is this:
You have time.
You have lots of time to make a ton of wrong decisions. Even if your decision turns out to be completely wrong, you’re going to have learned a ton from making it, so you’ll be better off for doing so. Bonus.
If you don’t choose, though, you could end up spending your entire life dancing around it, not learning anything from it, and standing still. When the time comes, you may even realize that you wasted an opportunity, and then you’ll have to face something truly painful: regret.
Learn about your options, and when you’ve learned everything you can about them, make a decision. Leap.
Stick with it for a few years, milk it for all it’s worth, and learn a ton from it even if the opportunity/job/path/partner doesn’t work out. It’s the learning that will move you forward, not making the right decision the first time.