How to Become More Decisive When You're Used to Pleasing Others

Indecisiveness has a reputation for being a cognitive issue — an inability to weigh options, a tendency toward perfectionism, a difficulty with commitment. And sometimes it is those things.

But for many women, indecisiveness is primarily a learned pattern from an environment in which expressing a clear preference — having an opinion, wanting something specifically — carried social risk. In those environments, vagueness was safer than preference: you cannot disappoint someone if you have not stated what you wanted.

The indecisiveness that results from people-pleasing is not a cognitive limitation. It is a protection strategy that has outlived its original context.

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The People-Pleasing Roots of Indecisiveness

In an environment where your expressed preferences were consistently overridden, criticised, or used against you, you learned to suppress or conceal those preferences. The safest response to "what do you want?" was often "whatever you want" — not because you had no preferences, but because having them visible was unsafe.

This strategy becomes habitual. Over time, the suppression of preferences can become so thorough that access to genuine preferences becomes difficult — not because you are performing uncertainty, but because you have genuinely lost the habit of consulting yourself.

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Rebuilding Decisiveness

Start with low-stakes preferences. What do you actually want for dinner? Which of these two options appeals to you more? Which film would you prefer to watch? These small decisions are practice for genuine preference-expression. The muscle of decisiveness is rebuilt in small repetitions before the large ones.

Consult yourself first. Before asking others what they think or want, ask yourself. What is your actual preference? What does your gut say? Then you can consult others from a grounded position rather than from a vacuum.

Make smaller decisions faster. For decisions where the stakes are genuinely low, practice making them quickly — without excessive consultation, without prolonged deliberation. Decisiveness is in part a habit, and faster decisions in low-stakes contexts build the decisiveness habit.

Tolerate others' disappointment. The indecisive pattern is often maintained by the fear that having a preference will disappoint someone. Practise expressing preferences when others' preferences differ — and allowing their mild disappointment to be survivable.

Notice the relief. When you express a genuine preference and act on it, notice how it feels. The relief of having been honest is typically different from the anxious relief of having avoided someone's disapproval. That genuine relief is the feeling of acting from yourself rather than from performance.

If this reflection is resonating, the work goes deeper in the book. Read The Good Girl Delusion →

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The Good Girl Delusion goes deeper into this work. Read The Good Girl Delusion →

If you want personalised support, coaching is also available. Explore Coaching →

Related: How to Speak Up for Yourself · How to Stop Seeking Validation · People Pleasing: The Emotional Cost