When you realize that family and friends are tired of hearing about your indecision...

We all experience this. That moment when you mention that thing that’s been nagging you to your friend and you swear for just a moment that they roll their eyes. Or maybe they start scrolling on their phone part way through the conversation. Sometimes they nod and share the occasional “uh huh” but you can tell they are thinking about something else. 

This has certainly happened to me as I’m always been someone who really thinks through decisions.

I’ve experienced this in the past, when there is something bugging me about a topic at work, and I’m trying to decide if I should bother my boss with it. Thinking it over gets me all fired up about it and wanting to talk it out to allow me to process it. 

In these instances, sometimes I’ve had family members or friends who seemed to be sick of hearing me talk through what I should do. So I stopped confiding in them, but I wasn’t really done working through the decision. This left me ruminating on the work situation without an outlet to come to a decision.

Over time, I’ve learned there are a few options when you find yourself in this circumstance.  

So what to do?

• Acknowledge that you’re feeling this and ask the friend how they are feeling about it. Sometimes we are thinking so much about something we’re concerned about that we don’t realize that were actually talking about it less than we think.
  
  Check in with that friend or family member or partner and see if they are sick of hearing about the topic. If they are, see if they might be willing to listen about it again in the future, maybe later that day or on another day. We all have different capacities for supporting each other in this way.
  
  

• Journal or talk it out with yourself. It is amazing what you can realize by dumping all of your worries into a notebook. The same is true when you record your thoughts via audio. By creating a recording, you get to play it back and hear your tone as well, which gives you even more information about how your feeling. 

• Find someone who will listen to you. Another option would be to see if someone else is willing to listen. We can burnout our closest partners and friends quickly on a topic. See if someone different has time to listen to you. The year I started receiving coaching regularly was life changing. It gave a time and space to think through my decisions and how I wanted to respond to situations whether at work or in my home life. And I drove my friends and family less nuts. 

What about you? Is this something you’ve experienced? If so, do you have any tips you’d like to share? I’d love to hear your thoughts! you can always email me at sarahlymancoaching@gmail.com.

Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash