“I keep going in circles,” I told him.
He waited.
“I can’t seem to make a decision with peace. Every time I think I’ve arrived at an answer, another thought appears.”
“What kind of thought?” He asked.
“The usual kind. What if this is wrong? What if I missed something? What if I regret it later? What if this affects other people in ways I can’t foresee?”
“And then?”
“And then I start over.”
I revisited the same options, reanalyzed the same facts, and reconsidered the same fears. Sometimes I spent so much time evaluating a decision that I lost sight of what I was trying to decide in the first place. I wasn’t moving forward. I was simply circling the same territory, hoping that one more round of thinking would finally produce certainty.
For a few moments, he said nothing. Then he asked, “What are you hoping to find at the end of all that thinking?”
“The right answer.”
He smiled slightly and said, “The right answer, or certainty?”
I wanted to answer immediately. Instead, I found myself hesitating. Because the more I thought about it, the more I realized he had touched something important. I wasn’t merely trying to make a good decision. I was trying to find a decision that came with guarantees. No regret. No loss. No unintended consequences. No possibility of discovering later that I should have chosen differently. In other words, I wanted something life had never promised.
He seemed to notice where my thoughts had gone. “You are expecting something from decisions that decisions were never meant to provide.” He said.
“What?”
“Certainty.”
I found myself thinking about several decisions I had delayed over the years. One involved changing direction in a professional project. For months, I moved between different options, filling notebooks with considerations, advantages, risks, and contingency plans. Every time I reached a conclusion, I found a new possibility that needed to be examined. At first, I called it thoroughness. Looking back, it was mostly fear. Not fear of making a bad decision. Fear of making a human one. Because a human decision always contains uncertainty.
“No human decision can be absolute,” he said.
The statement sounded obvious. Yet emotionally, I had never accepted it. Part of me still believed that if I thought long enough, gathered enough information, and consulted enough people, I would eventually arrive at a perfect choice. A choice so clearly correct that all doubt would disappear. But every important decision I had ever faced seemed to resist that fantasy.
He leaned back and said something I would return to many times afterward. “Decisions are not about certainty.” He said, “They are about sincerity, humility, and movement.”
The word that stayed with me was movement. Because anxiety rarely moves. It analyzes. It rehearses. It predicts. It revisits. It stands at the crossroads, imagining every possible road while refusing to walk any of them.
I remembered a friend who once spent nearly a year deciding whether to relocate for an opportunity that genuinely excited him. Every few weeks he discovered a new concern. A new variable. A new risk. Eventually, someone asked him a simple question: “If every concern disappeared, would you move tomorrow?” After a long silence, he admitted that another concern would probably replace the ones that had already been resolved. The problem was not a lack of information. The problem was expecting certainty to arrive eventually. I understood him because I had often done the same thing.
“What kinds of decisions trouble you most?” he asked.
“The ones that affect other people.”
He nodded.
“Tell me more.”
I thought about my answer. “Family decisions. Decisions that affect parents, children, or people who depend on me. Those are the hardest.”
“Because you don’t want to harm them.”
“Exactly.”
“What do you do when faced with those decisions?”
“I try to think through every possible outcome.”
“And then?”
“I try to think through the outcomes of those outcomes.”
He laughed quietly and said, “So you attempt to see the future.”
I smiled. “When you put it that way, it sounds impossible.”
“Because it is.”
There was no criticism in his voice. Only clarity. He continued. “When decisions affect other people, include them.”
That sounded simpler than I expected. Seeing my expression, he elaborated. “When decisions affect others, their perspectives matter. Not because they possess certainty, but because they see things you do not.”
That reminded me of a conversation I had once had with a family member while wrestling with an important decision. I had become so focused on what could go wrong that I completely overlooked a potential benefit that seemed obvious to her. It wasn’t that she was wiser than I was. She was simply standing in a different place and therefore seeing a different part of the landscape.
Perhaps that is why consultation matters. Not because it produces certainty. But because it expands vision. Then he said something else. “We do not possess God’s vision.”
The statement immediately softened something in me. So much anxiety comes from unconsciously expecting ourselves to see everything. Every consequence. Every possibility. Every future outcome. We want complete visibility before moving forward. Yet no human being has ever possessed that kind of vision.
Wisdom is not knowing everything. Wisdom begins by accepting that we cannot. I admitted something that had often frustrated me. “Sometimes people don’t really tell me what they think.”
“What do you mean?”
“They leave the decision entirely to me.”
He smiled. “Have you told them that?”
The question surprised me. “No.”
“Why not?”
I wasn’t sure. Perhaps I had assumed their silence meant they had nothing to contribute. But he pointed out something I had never considered before. People often hesitate for reasons hidden from us. They may fear being blamed if things go badly. They may fear conflict. They may worry about disappointing someone. Sometimes they remain vague not because they don’t care, but because they are afraid. That shifted the entire conversation. The issue was no longer simply making the right decision. It was creating enough trust for honest dialogue.
A few moments later, he said something I desperately needed to hear. “You will make mistakes.” There was no hesitation in his voice. Not you might. You will.
At first, I resisted the idea. I realized how much of my decision paralysis rested on the hope that careful thinking could somehow exempt me from mistakes. Yet when I looked back over my life, many of the lessons I valued most came from decisions that didn’t unfold according to plan. A project I was certain would succeed ended in disappointment. At the time, I considered it a failure. Yet the experience exposed weaknesses in my approach that success would have hidden. Another decision led to a difficult season I never would have chosen. Yet that season taught patience, resilience, and humility in ways comfort never could. Growth and perfection rarely seemed to travel together.
He continued. “Some mistakes can be corrected.”
That brought relief.
“And some cannot.”
That brought humility.
“But even those can become teachers if you are willing to learn.”
I sat quietly. The longer I reflected on it, the more I saw how often I treated life as though it were a single examination where one incorrect answer ruined everything. But life is not a single test. It is a long journey. Most decisions do not permanently close the story. They become part of the story.
Eventually our discussion returned to the deeper source of paralysis. “The thought that traps people is usually simple,” he said.
“What thought?”
“What if something goes wrong?”
I nodded immediately. That thought had accompanied countless decisions.
“The question appears responsible,” he said. “But repeated endlessly, it becomes a prison.”
I understood exactly what he meant. At some point, caution stops serving wisdom. It starts serving fear. The mind stops evaluating possibilities and begins worshipping safety. Then he said something that reminded me of our earlier conversations about anxiety. “Do not become the servant of your thoughts.”
I sat with that for a while. Because it described what often happened during difficult decisions. A fearful thought appeared. Then another. Then another. Soon I stopped evaluating them. I was obeying them. He described it as allowing thoughts to go out of bounds.
I liked the image immediately. Most anxious thinking begins with something legitimate. A reasonable concern. A genuine possibility. But then the mind keeps expanding it beyond proportion. A concern becomes a scenario. The scenario becomes a prediction. The prediction becomes an emotional certainty. And before long, we react to imagined futures rather than present realities.
“So what should I do when that happens?” I asked.
He thought for a moment. Then he said, “Ask yourself a simple question.”
“What question?”
“Is this thought helping me decide, or is it helping me avoid discomfort?”
I found myself returning to that question often. Because many thoughts disguise themselves as wisdom. In reality, they are attempts to escape uncertainty. The more honest I became with myself, the more often I recognized the pattern. I wasn’t always seeking clarity. Often, I was seeking emotional immunity. I wanted a decision that would protect me from regret, criticism, uncertainty, and pain. But no such decision exists.
Some months later, I finally made a choice I had postponed for a very long time. Not because every question was answered. Not because certainty arrived. But because I accepted that certainty was never coming. I had reflected carefully. I had sought advice. I had listened honestly. I had prayed, considered the available information, and examined my motives as best I could. And then I moved.
That was the most important part. I moved. Was the decision perfect?
No.
Did everything unfold exactly as I expected?
Of course not. Some parts went better than anticipated. Others brought challenges I had never foreseen. But something surprising happened. I survived the uncertainty. And more importantly, I learned from it.
That was the moment I finally understood what he had been trying to show me all along. A decision is not the end of the journey. It is part of the journey.
Many of us suffer because we treat every choice as though it must permanently secure the future. We want today’s decision to guarantee tomorrow’s outcome. But life is more fluid than that. You learn. You adjust. You correct. You grow.
Looking back, the greatest gift he gave me was not a formula for making flawless decisions. It was freedom from the illusion that flawless decisions exist. Once that illusion begins to fade, something else becomes possible. You consult honestly. You reflect carefully. You remain open to correction. And then you move forward, not because certainty has finally arrived, but because you have accepted that learning matters more than certainty ever could.
And perhaps real maturity begins there: not when a person finds the perfect decision, but when a person stops demanding guarantees from life and becomes willing to walk forward with humility, sincerity, and the courage to learn from whatever comes next.
