Your time on earth is limited; and Bronnie Ware has written an entire book to remind you of this and inspire you to make the most out of it.

She’s an Australian nurse who spent a number of years caring for patients nearing the end of their time on earth. When she’d questioned her patients about any regrets they had or anything they would have done differently, Bronnie noted that five common themes surfaced again and again.

The most common one was this:

“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

She explains that “most people had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.”

Here’s the reality of life:

Time is elapsing.

And while every sunrise invites a new chance for you to create the change you wish to see in your life, every sunset becomes one less sunset you will get to see. It’s sad, but it’s true.

All that stands between where you are and where you want to go is action. But the invisible brick wall that stops us from taking action is indecision. We overwhelm ourselves with options or we exert so much energy on ruminating over what to do to the point of exhaustion.

So we don’t end up making a decision.

We decide to sleep on it. We wait for a ‘sign’ because we’ve been taught to believe that the ‘right’ answers to our questions are out in the world around us. We lean out, instead of leaning in, which, as Michael Neill explains in Super Coach, disconnects us from our innate inner wisdom found within:

“After 30 years of coaching individuals and groups from nearly every walk of life, I can say with confidence that the people who do really well over time are often not the smartest or best-read. They have an unusually high degree of trust in their own sense of knowing, and a willingness to follow that sense… They have a deep relationship with and abiding faih in the wisdom within.”

Here’s what I want you to understand:

Indecision breeds inaction; and inaction is failure by default.

When you don’t make a firm decision to lean into what you truly want (launch your side-business, apply for your Master’s program, start your podcast channel, start writing your book), you won’t take action toward it. You’ll simply continue living as you are (constantly thinking about what you really want, wishing you could have it).

And it’s in that zone—that constant rumination zone—where self-doubt, fear, and confusion manifest. As you continue to ‘think’ and ‘rationalize’, you continue to feed the voice of insecurity; and that voice pulls you deeper and deeper into the comfort of your couch.

So you do nothing, and thus, you fail by default.

When you don’t take action, you don’t grow.

You don’t learn.

You don’t discover new lessons about yourself or business or life. You don’t fall and so you don’t build the courage or resilience to rise back up. You don’t fail and so you don’t figure out how not to do things, and thus, you don’t move closer to your goal. You don’t push yourself out of your comfort zone and so you don’t experience any growth or expansion… And so, as you can see, you simply fail by default.

How to Go From Indecision to Decision and Action

So why is decision-making so difficult for us?

The reason is this:

We get caught up in a vortex of thinking that our future happiness and wellbeing are solely dependant on making the right decisions today. We try so hard to predict how today’s actions will manifest into tomorrow’s outcomes. So we place extra (needless) pressure on our present self to make the ‘right’ decision today. This weighs us down and locks us in fear and self-doubt like an anchor locks a boat at sea.

When this happens, you start imagining ideas and projecting them as facts!

You imagine that if you start your side business, it might fail and you will feel unsuccessful. You imagine that if you apply for your Master’s Program, it might lead to rejection and you will feel embarrassed. You imagine that if you launch your podcast, it might flop and you will feel defeated.

So you let it be, and indecision trickles with the winds of time, and in twenty years, you might look back and say ‘I wish I did.’

You don’t want that to happen.

Right?

So here’s what you need to realize:

Your indecision is caused by ideas that are rooted in imagination, not fact.

As Dan Gilbert explains in his book, Stumbling on Happiness:

“Your mistake was not in imagining things you could not know—that is, after all, what imagination is for. Rather, your mistake was in unthinkingly treating what you imagined as though it were an accurate representation of the facts.”

And it’s similar to what philosopher Alan Watts once said:

“A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So, he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions.”

As you continue to simmer in that pot of imaginary self-projected future suffering, you’ll continue to create more space and time for fear and insecurity to fester and spread.

Look, there are things that will work out and things that won’t. That’s just a fact of life. So in order to go from indecision to decision, and inaction to action, list out the goals you think you want to pursue.

Go through each and ask yourself this question:

“Do I want to do this?”

• If the answer is ‘yes’, stop ruminating about it and just do it!

• If the answer is ‘no’, stop wasting more energy on it, and don’t do it!

• If the answer is ‘maybe’, then lean into it, take one small step into its direction and see how you feel. If you’re enjoying it, continue doing it. If not, stop.

We go from indecision to decision and action by taking a series of ‘one small steps’. And we do it courageously in spite of our fears, doubts, and insecurities.

So if you’re worried that if you start a business it might not be what you really want to do or that it might fail and you’ll lose a lot of money, that’s fair.

The question is: ‘Do you want to start this business?’

If the answer is yes, then you don’t need to quit your job and jump right it, you can take a series of ‘one small step’ in the right direction: conceptualize it, build it, launch it, test it, and see how you feel in the process of doing so.

Remember: Action brings more clarity than thought.

So stop imagining and start creating.

Or you know what?

Here’s a better idea: Start imagining the possibilities, get excited, and go create!

What Matters to You

Indecision breeds inaction; and inaction is failure by default.

If you don’t find the courage to live a life that is true to you, if you don’t honour what it is you want to create with your time on earth, you will lead a life of resentment and regret. You might not realize it now, but in twenty years, you will.

In The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho wrote:

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.”

That eternity of which he speaks is your inner wisdom.

It’s the faith and eternal knowledge that lives within you.

It’s all the answers that you seek.

The only way to reconnect with it is to make a decision and take action.

How?

By leaning in and taking one small step at a time.