There was a time in my life when asking someone else what they thought seemed perfectly reasonable.
“What do you think I should do?” “Do you think this is a good idea?” “What would you do?” “Am I making too much of this?”
Sometimes I genuinely wanted another perspective. But sometimes I already knew what I thought. I was asking because I didn’t trust my own answer enough to act on it. When you have spent years having your judgment questioned, your feelings dismissed, your choices criticized or your version of events challenged, you can develop a habit of looking to someone else for the answer instead of trusting your own.
You may not even notice yourself doing it. You ask your mother, sister, your adult daughter, or best friend. You might ask a coach, counsellor or therapist. Everyone you know is asked for input. And there is nothing wrong with asking for advice. We all need people who can help us see something we may have missed. The problem begins when advice becomes permission.
When Someone Else’s Answer Feels Safer Than Your Own
Living in an abusive or controlling relationship can teach a woman to question things she once knew quite easily. She may begin asking herself, “Am I allowed to be upset about this?” “Was that comment inappropriate?” “Can I say no?” When her judgment has repeatedly been questioned, dismissed or overridden, she may begin looking to others for confirmation.
Then the relationship ends, but the habit of looking to others for answers may continue. Instead of beginning with what she thinks or wants, she turns to people she trusts and gives their judgment more weight than her own. The relationship has changed, but she is still looking to someone else for the final word.
The people she turns to may genuinely want what is best for her. The issue isn’t necessarily that they are trying to take control. When a woman doubts her own judgment, she may hand that control to them because trusting what they think is easier than trusting herself.
It Starts With Decisions. It Can Become a Life.
Handing over control may begin with relatively small things. Should I go to the party? Do you think I should call him? Would you take that job? Then the decisions get bigger. “Should I move?” “Should I lend my son the money?” “Should I date this person?”
The more often someone else decides, the easier it becomes to ask them the next time. Eventually, the question is no longer simply, “What do you think?” A woman may not consciously think, “I don’t trust myself to make this decision.” She automatically asks what they think before she has even considered what she thinks. And each time that happens, she misses an opportunity to discover what she thinks, what she wants and what she is capable of deciding for herself. She doesn’t get to discover, “I chose that, it didn’t work, and I handled it.”
You Are Going to Get Some Decisions Wrong
Self-trust cannot depend on always making the right decision. Nobody gets that deal. People who trust themselves make decisions they later regret. They misjudge people. They spend money they wish they hadn’t spent. They take jobs that turn out to be terrible. They say yes and later realize they should have said no. Self-trust isn’t built by creating a perfect record of good decisions. It grows when you discover that you can make a choice, live with the outcome, learn something, adjust when necessary and choose again. Getting something wrong does not disqualify you from making the next decision.
When someone has lived with self-doubt for a long time, a mistake can feel like evidence. “See? I knew I couldn’t trust myself.” So next time, she asks someone else. And the cycle continues.
What Happens When Everyone Else Gets a Vote?
There is another cost to constantly looking outside yourself for answers. Other people can become accustomed to having a say in your life. That does not necessarily mean they are controlling people. Relationships develop patterns.
If you regularly ask your sister what you should do, she may naturally begin telling you what she thinks you should do. If you have always deferred to your adult children, they may come to expect that their preferences will be considered before your own. If a friend has spent years helping you make decisions, she may be surprised when you suddenly say, “Thanks, but I’ve decided to do something different.”
Over time, this becomes part of how the relationship works. One person is accustomed to asking for direction and the other is accustomed to giving it. Neither person necessarily set out to create that dynamic. They simply repeated it often enough that it became normal between them.
When You End Up Living Someone Else’s Version of Your Life
This may be the consequence we talk about least. If other people are continually influencing what you should do, tolerate, pursue, spend or prioritize, how do you discover what you actually want?
Imagine years of making choices based primarily on what will keep other people comfortable. You take the job your family thinks is sensible. You continue saying yes to requests because saying no feels harder than going along with what is expected. You put off something you genuinely want because someone important to you thinks it is foolish.
No single decision seems enormous, but our lives are made from thousands of decisions. One choice follows another, and over time those choices determine where you live, how you spend your time, who you spend it with, what you pursue and what you leave unexplored. You can end up with a perfectly functional life and never realize how much of it has been shaped by other people’s preferences.
That is why one question is worth asking: “How much of the life I am living did I actually choose?” You may not know the answer immediately. The purpose of the question isn’t to make you regret your life or start changing everything. It is to notice where your own voice has been missing from decisions that belong to you. And that can be the beginning of something different.
This is where it is worth becoming curious about who has the final say in your life. When you have a decision to make, do you know what you think before you ask someone else? Are you looking for information that will help you decide, or are you looking for someone to decide for you? And when someone you trust disagrees with your choice, does their disagreement change what you believe is right for you?
Questions like these can make an automatic habit visible. And when you can recognize what you have been doing, you have something you didn’t have before: the opportunity to choose whether you want to keep doing it.
That choice may also change some of your relationships. People who are accustomed to being consulted may be surprised when you begin making more decisions for yourself. They may disagree, question your choice or continue offering direction you no longer need. That doesn’t mean those relationships have to end. It means their opinion can become what it was always meant to be. Something you can consider, rather than something you have to follow.
The Resentment Nobody Intended
There is another strange consequence of handing decisions to other people. Sometimes we become angry with them for making them. Suppose your friend strongly encourages you to do something. You aren’t convinced, but you trust her judgment more than your own, so you agree. It goes badly. Now you are frustrated with her. “Why did she tell me to do that?”
But underneath the frustration may be something harder to admit. You didn’t really want to do it. Some part of you knew that. Now you are angry with her and disappointed in yourself. “Why did I listen?” “Why didn’t I say what I wanted?” “Why do I keep doing this?” Those questions can become more evidence in the case against yourself. This is one way self-doubt can feed itself.
You doubt yourself, so you give someone else the decision. You dislike the outcome, so you criticize yourself for giving the decision away. That criticism makes you trust yourself even less the next time. The way out is not to become someone who never asks for advice. It is to change what you do with the advice you receive.
Advice Is Information, Not Instruction
You can ask five people what they think. You can listen carefully. You can consider their experience. You can ask questions. You can learn something that changes your mind. And after all of that, the decision can still belong to you.
There is an enormous difference between asking, “What should I do?” and asking, “What information would help me make this decision?”
The first question places the answer outside you. The second allows other people to contribute without asking them to take over. This matters in helping relationships too. A good coach, counsellor, therapist or mentor should not become another person whose approval you need.
Good guidance should help you make your own decisions. A coach, counsellor, therapist or mentor can ask questions you haven’t considered, offer knowledge, challenge an assumption or help you see choices you didn’t know were available. But ultimately, you are the person who has to live the life that choice creates. Good guidance helps you find your answer without making the decision for you.
Start With One Decision
You do not have to wake up tomorrow morning suddenly certain about everything. That would simply give self-doubt another impossible standard to meet. Start smaller.
The next time you notice yourself reaching for your phone to ask someone what you should do, wait a moment before you make the call. Instead, consider this, In an ideal world, what would I like to happen? You are not committing to anything by answering the question. You are simply giving yourself a chance to discover what you want before everyone else’s opinions enter the room.
Then you can ask, “What am I worried will happen if I make this decision myself?” That question may tell you far more than another person’s advice ever could. Maybe you are afraid someone will be disappointed, that you’ll make a mistake or that you’ll have to justify your choice.
Notice it. Question it. Then choose. Not because you are guaranteed to get it right. Because this is your life, and you deserve the opportunity to discover what happens when you participate fully in creating it.
Once you know what you would like to happen and what you’re worried about, you can consider the realities of the situation. Gather whatever information you need and listen to the perspectives of people you trust. Their advice may change your mind or it may open a possibility you didn’t know existed. The difference is that your own preference was part of the decision from the beginning instead of something you let someone else determine.
There will still be people whose wisdom matters to you, and there will still be times when you ask for help. There will also be decisions you wish you had made differently. That is not failure. That is a life being lived.
And each time you listen to what you know, consider the information available and make your own choice, you gather something self-doubt has kept from you for far too long. Evidence.
Evidence that you can choose.
Evidence that you can change your mind.
Evidence that you can handle an outcome you didn’t expect.
Evidence that you can learn.
Evidence that you can choose again.
You do not have to know that every decision will be right before you trust yourself enough to make it. Nobody gets that deal. What you can know is that the final say in your life belongs with the person who has to live it.
You.
