Stop Over Complicating Things!

Hi I’m Isabelle and I’m an overcomplicator.  Are you an overcomplicator, too? Welcome to the club!

What are some of the ways we overcomplicate?

• We keep gathering more and more opinions rather than forming our own
• We think “but I don’t know how”
• We learn more and more and then discover that there are contradictions!
• We even sometimes choose confusion over clarity

This was me! Seriously, as a young mom, I so often felt unsure of myself, like I didn’t really know what I was doing and why didn’t anyone tell me it would be this hard, or confusing, or painful???

But here’s the biggest lesson I learned both in parenting and humaning…
Clarity comes from taking action. Say that again!
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Take Action

So, wherever you are on your journey, whatever is on the horizon for you, the ideas here can help you move forward with more confidence and ease. With 3 tips for how to be more decisive and 5 simple steps for how to take decisive action.

We can’t think our way through challenges. Or out of our problems. We can’t think our way to perfection. Or even into things working out how we want!
At some point, we have to roll up our sleeves and just do it. Try that lesson. Be willing for it to flop. Because when things don’t go well, or don’t go as planned…that’s just as much of a learning experience as when everything goes swimmingly well. 

And guess what?  You’re also modeling for your kids that it’s ok to try things without knowing how it will turn out. That we learn from just seeing what happens. From observing the outcome and making adjustments from there.

Remember to celebrate your successes as well as your efforts! Celebrate your willingness to try!

Some things will work well for a while and then fall away. And that’s ok too. That’s just how it is. But in order to keep that forward momentum going, we need to stop overcomplicating and choose the next step.

Here are three tips for how to be more decisive…

3 Tips for How to Be More Decisive

1. Stop deceiving yourself into thinking that there’s one best or right way.…There are SO many ways to do life. We’re looking for someone to tell us what’s best and exactly how to do it. But that is just keeping us stuck.
2. Don’t second-guess yourself.
3. Look forward, not back – We want to look back briefly, observe the present, and plan for the next empowered action.

That’s how you gradually but incrementally improve. And gain that forward momentum that we all need in order to feel inspired to continue.

This is in part a personality thing, of course. Some of us feel a sense of heaviness about decision-making…like we don’t know enough or it feels like too big of a responsibility. Others of us want to continually change our minds, thinking there must be something better we just don’t know about yet. Some of us just decide and then regret our choice, thus going back to making a new decision. And others of us just drag our feet and keep saying “I don’t know what to do next.” OR “I don’t know how.”

My own personal experience early on…I kept constantly changing my mind. Every time there was a challenge or even push back from my kids, I’d start questioning my decisions. I’d think I was doing this mom thing wrong. So I’d do more research, ask another friend how she was handling nap time, stall, even do nothing some days because I didn’t know what to do.

There are hundreds of ways to raise a child…all these options are great… Until they get in your way of moving forward. I just want you to remember that you can and will find your OWN way.

Here’s what that looks like…

We want to commit, implement, observe, tweak, and move forward.

5 Action Steps to be More Decisive

And that very first step, to commit, requires us to make a decision. To make a choice.

My suggestion is you find someone further down the path than you are, find out why and how they did things, get in touch with your intuition about your child, situation, family…and then simply decide.
It’s ok to rely on people you see as “experts” – it’s ok to learn more. But don’t let that slow you down. Give yourself a time frame. And then simply go all in.

I want to let you know first of all, you are not alone. And secondly, you can get past this. By gaining confidence in yourself. By recognizing this tendency and stepping out of that pattern. So you don’t stay spinning in that place of considering all the options all the time. Sometimes we just have to choose.
Wherever you are on this journey or whichever type of decision maker you are, you can practice making decisions with more confidence and ease.

Speed, commitment, and forward momentum will get you to your goals so much faster. Will help you accomplish more. AND gain that confidence we all crave so much.

Just decide. Remember, you can always change your decision! But beware that you don’t do this too often. Because then you dilute the impact of your decision.

Indecision can keep you stuck. This can negatively impact your homeschool in big ways. And truly overcomplicate things.

As a reminder, here are the 5 steps to being more decisive:

commit, implement, observe, tweak, and move forward

Embracing & Living Out Our EMPOWERED Choices

So today, I invite you to practice being more decisive! This can make a huge impact on your life…making it more fun, more interesting, and yes, more successful.

Here are some simple truths to remember:

• We all have good days and bad days, clean sinks and dirty sinks, cooperative children and saucy children.
• We all wonder sometimes why we chose this over that, and think that would be so much easier and what’s wrong with me!
• We all want it ALL, right now.

And, if we want the disempowering inner chatter to stop, we need to be bold and decisive and commit to the choices we have made. We need to choose again.

And then we need to just get on with it!

I’ll leave you with this wonderful quote from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe…

“Whatever you can do or dream, you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!” 

If you like this idea of considering your options and then empowering yourself to make a decision and move forward, this is the way I teach and coach in all of my offerings. I want you to feel like you can do this, and feel more joy and ease along the way. Check out all that I offer!  (IsabelleBridges.com)

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