How to stop second-guessing your decisions

Do you ever get stuck trying to figure out if you’re making the right decision about your next move?

Maybe there’s a new role you want to go for. A business you want to start. A change you want to make in your life.

How do you know you’re making the right decision?

You probably do what many people do: You make pro and con lists. Do some research. Ask everyone whose opinion you trust.

ut none of that really helps because you’re stepping out of something familiar into something new, and new means unknown and uncertain, no matter how much homework you do.

But here’s the wonderful thing:

There are no wrong decisions.

In 99% of situations in life (truly, outside of the rare life-or-death ones), whatever you choose is simply a decision. If you do it and it feels great, wonderful, keep going. If it doesn't, you get to shift, evolve, and choose differently from there.

I remember years ago I was working at Microsoft and began to feel the inner tug to make a change. Every “rational” argument seemed to suggest it was the wrong decision to leave. Microsoft is an extremely prestigious company. I had a great role, good salary, stock options.

But I followed the tug and left for a startup almost nobody had heard of.

Almost immediately, nothing went as I’d imagined. It was a challenging whirlwind, and we ended up selling to a large tech company just a year and a half later.

So was it the wrong decision to leave Microsoft?

Not at all. I learned a lot, including what I wanted to build next.

Going to that startup eventually led me to found Happier, the most meaningful company I’ve been part of creating.

Your brain treats every significant decision as final, and that's exactly why choosing feels so heavy.

But each decision is just the next step, never the last one.

So change the question:

Instead of asking "Is this the right decision?" ask yourself: What feels right to me right now? What is pulling at me? Which choice would give me the most to learn from and the most options to choose from next?

This is how you create your next.

One decision at a time, each one teaching you what you want more of and what you're ready to leave behind.