If you’ve ever felt frozen by indecision, you’re not alone. I’ve been there too – staring at two options, waiting for the “right” one to magically feel easier. The truth? It’s rarely the decision itself that keeps you stuck. It’s what’s underneath it – fear, doubt, or a lack of clarity.
After coaching hundreds of women through big decisions about their careers, relationships, and personal lives, I’ve developed a simple process to make decisions that clears the fog and gets you moving forward fast.
Step 1: Identify Your Overwhelm Culprit
Start by uncovering what’s really keeping you stuck. I call these your Overwhelm Culprits – clarity, confidence, community, conditioning, or consistency. Each one reveals a different root cause of indecision.
Want help finding yours? Take my free Overwhelm Culprit Quiz – it takes less than three minutes and shows you your culprit instantly.
Once you know your culprit, your next move often becomes crystal clear.
Step 2: Get Clear on the Facts — Not the Feelings
List where you are now, where you want to be, and what’s in the way. Use data, not drama.
Ask yourself:
- What’s the actual problem?
- What would success look like?
- What fears are showing up, and what do they reveal?
By separating facts from fears, you’ll see your decision through a more grounded lens.
Step 3: Play Out the Best and Worst Case Scenarios
Here’s where most people gain perspective fast. What’s the absolute best thing that could happen? What’s the worst?
When I left my corporate career to start my business, my worst case wasn’t failure – it was finding another job. That realization made the leap far less terrifying.
Nine times out of ten, the worst case isn’t nearly as bad as your mind makes it out to be. Once you see that, you take your power back.
Step 4: Tune Into Your Intuition
Your body knows the truth before your mind catches up. Ego protects you from risk; intuition guides you toward growth.
Ask: What do I already know but don’t want to admit?
Your first thought is often your truest one – before fear, logic, or other people’s opinions cloud it.
If your intuition says yes, trust it. You already have the wisdom you need to move forward.
Your Next Step Toward Confident Decision-Making
If you’re spinning in circles about what to do next, start here.
- Take the Overwhelm Culprit Quiz.
- Name your culprit.
- Use the four-step process above.
In less than 20 minutes, you’ll know exactly what’s holding you back – and how to move forward with confidence.
CLICK FOR TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Feeling stuck on a decision? It’s probably not the decision that’s the problem. It’s the real reason behind it, why you can’t make it. Let me walk you through a simple four step process I use with my coaching clients to break through a decision fast. Whether it is about your career, your next big move, or something deeply personal, you’ll finally walk away knowing exactly what to do next.
I’m Corrie LoGiudice, keynote speaker, leadership coach, and upcoming author of the Five Overwhelm Culprits. I’ve helped hundreds of high achieving women and allies who feel like they’re spinning in circles, they’re paralyzed by indecisions, second guessing themselves, and burning out from trying to get it all just right. What I found is most people don’t struggle with decision making. They struggle with what’s lying underneath it.
And that’s where my overwhelm culprit framework comes in. It helps you to identify the specific pattern, the specific reason, whether it’s [00:01:00] lack of clarity, lack of confidence, community conditioning, or consistency that’s keeping you stuck. So let’s walk through what this actually looks like in practice, because once you identify your culprit, the next steps become crystal clear.
All right, so here’s my go-to four step process to get unstuck and make a confident decision fast. number one is identify your overwhelm culprits. One of the simplest ways to do this is by taking my free overwhelm culprit quiz on my website.
We’ll also make sure that we link to it in the show.
Once you take the quiz, you’re gonna discover what your overwhelm culprit of the moment currently is.
It’s gonna be one of five different culprits. The first one is lack of clarity. Then there’s lack of confidence, lack of community, lack of conditioning, which is your physical and mental health and wellness. And lastly, lack of consistency. Right, once you get your culprit result, it’s going to seem [00:02:00] fairly obvious why you are stuck in the moment on whatever this decision is.
Which brings us to number two. Get clear on where you are now, where you wanna be regarding the decision and what’s ultimately getting in the way. This is a traditional coaching framework, and the most important thing to do here is to make sure you’re using data right, not drama. What is the actual problem?
What would your ideal outcome look like? What are the facts , Not just your fears about the current situation? Though your fears are very valid as well, so long as you really reflect and gain clarity on what you are specifically afraid of so that we can identify it and move past it in the next step.
From here. Number three is to start playing out the best case and worst case scenarios. So what is the absolute best thing that could happen should you move forward with this decision? great example. Something myself and many of my coaching clients have done [00:03:00] is leave a corporate career to go and start your own business.
There’s a lot of fears, things that under underline this type of decision, which is why so many people either don’t go for it or they put it off for a long time. That is, I, I can’t even tell you how many people I’ve worked with that they put it off until they were laid off somewhere and they actually had the time and capacity to start working for it.
So they were more or less forced to work on it as opposed to making that decision yourself. So. From here, this specific exercise could make it so much easier to decide whether or not it is the right timing for that decision. So what would be the absolute best case scenario? For me back, way back when I started my business.
So when I reflected on this, it was I was no longer gonna have to commute 20 hours a week. I was gonna get to spend time with my son. At the time, I was only spending an hour with him in the evenings. He was five months old. Um, the most I got to see him was through my home security camera systems while he was playing with my au pair, right?
So amazing like time. I was [00:04:00] gonna have more time. Best case scenario was I was gonna be able to make enough money to cover my household, you know, all of my bills in lieu of having a traditional salary. Best case scenario was that it wasn’t gonna take me a super long time. So those are all the best case scenarios.
From there, you then reflect on what’s the absolute worst case scenario. So for me, when I looked at this, the worst scenario was that I spent a year on it, it didn’t work, and I ultimately either went back to my old job or that I found a different one. So after reflecting on this, I was like, you know what?
Let me work out some kind of like a contract. Agreement where I could stay part-time in my old job while I make this transition. So that actually helped me identify through using that worst case scenario, a way that I could bridge that gap to make me more comfortable with that decision. Right? Other worst case scenarios too would be, um, doing this forever and I don’t make any money, [00:05:00] right?
Or I’m doing it and it doesn’t work. And all those things. When you look at those fears in the worst case scenario, they all tie to the same solution, which would be, it’s okay, I could just get another job, which is why it’s so, so groundbreaking in a way to play out what’s the best case and what’s the worst case.
In general, if you find that your, you know, cons far outweigh the pros, then it may be time to hold off on the decision for a little bit. Nine times outta 10. The worst case isn’t actually that bad. And realizing this gives you power, in your scenario. So looking at it this way, sometimes the real obstacle isn’t the decision, it’s the fear that decision reveals. Lastly, number four is tune into your intuition. Right? Ask yourself, what do I already know, but don’t want to admit? Right? Our bodies almost always know the truth, but our mind kind of stays busy trying to keep us [00:06:00] safe, right? That’s the difference between ego and intuition. Ego is what our mind is telling us to keep us safe, right?
So using the example before of leaving a safe corporate career to start your own business, your ego is the one that’s telling you that, Hey, if you make this change, you’re gonna lose the roof over your head. You’re gonna lose your income. You’re not gonna be able to feed yourself, right? So your ego is designed to actually keep you safe where your intuition is for your highest good.
So all those years ago when I made this decision, and like I said to a lot of my clients, end up doing the same thing. When I was looking at my intuition, I knew deep down that I was gonna be happier, that I wasn’t gonna care if I made less money, that I really valued my time and I wanted to be with my son and intuitively like deep in my gut, I knew it was the right decision.
So there’s. Your body almost always knows the truth, right? Your mind is trying to keep you safe. There’s a difference between [00:07:00] hesitation because it’s scary and hesitation because it’s the wrong decision for you. You already know the difference and the fastest way I find for both myself and my clients to know whether or not you’re evaluating your decision from your ego versus your intuition is to evaluate what was the very first thought that came into your mind? Right? A lot of times, the very first thought is our most intuitive thought before everybody else’s thoughts, expectations, or fears start to get in the way and start more or less overanalyzing and talking you out of whatever that first intuitive decision was.
So think back to what was the very first thing that I thought about regarding this decision, and from there, that’ll help you better tune into your intuition and whether or not it’s aligned.
So if you’re feeling overwhelmed or unsure of where to begin, start off by taking my free overwhelm culprit quiz. In under three minutes, you’ll identify the real reason why you’re stuck. And you’ll get a customized action [00:08:00] plan to help you move forward with clarity and confidence, right? Again, I’m gonna link to it in the show notes below, and you can find it at www.corrielo.com/overwhelm Culprit.
Thank you so much for being here. Hopefully you found value in my sharing this. If you have any follow up questions, definitely feel free. Send me a DM on social media. I’m most active on LinkedIn, send them my way. I may do a follow up video answering all of your questions regarding this topic and um, yeah, I’d love to hear from you.
Okay, so thanks so much for being here. I’ll see you on the next episode. Take care.
Thanks for checking out the next step with Corrie Lo. If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend, subscribe and leave a review. Together we’ll transform overwhelm into action and we’ll keep taking the next step towards competent leadership. See you next time.