How to Make Decisions When Everyone Around You Has an Opinion

Written by Constanze Zientek, Women‘s Coach

Constanze Zientek is a women's coach who works with highly sensitive women in their thirties, helping them to cultivate inner strength, embrace embodied leadership, and build an authentic, aligned life. Her approach blends emotional depth, clarity, and self-trust.

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Have you ever found yourself deeply insecure about a decision and felt like everybody had an opinion about what was right or wrong? Or do many of the people around you have very different points of view, leaving you more confused than before? If that resonates, you are not alone, especially if you’re in your 30s. Our 30s tend to be an extremely stressful period of life because one false step can seem to have long-lasting consequences. The "pressure of the right decision" can not only cause high amounts of stress, but ironically, it can also increase the probability of making an unaligned decision. So what can actually help with the deeply human, deeply adult problem of making the "right" decisions? Let’s take a closer look.

The illusion of wrong and right

Have you ever been in a situation where everybody around you told you that your decision would lead to "bad" consequences, but instead, it turned out to be an amazing thing that happened to you? Or have you been in situations where something apparently very bad helped you on so many different levels in hindsight, but at the time, it seemed to be a real tragedy?

When it comes to decision-making, there often seems to be a dilemma between wrong and right. Many times, people see the process of decision-making as a doomsday scenario. With decision-making comes judgment, many people believe that a "right" decision will lead to success and happiness, while a "wrong" decision will send them into a downward spiral they cannot escape.

The reality of decision-making is often very different. Many times, people realize later that what they thought was a bad decision in the first place leads them to a lot of learning over time. Often, these learnings become the baseline of a bigger, better, wiser version of themselves.

Beyond the "wrong and right" narrative is often the fear of long-lasting consequences. Of course, some decisions can yield long-lasting results. That doesn’t mean, though, that they are detrimental in the long run for the person making the decision.

Decisions can be wild cards. Sometimes, an outcome is simply not predictable. Is that a good or bad thing?

That depends entirely on what you make it mean for yourself. One could even say that declaring a decision as wrong is a decision in itself. It will put a label on something that happened in the past and leave no space for improvement in the present. In most cases, the "wrong or right" narrative is simply not the truth, but a thought error and an illusion that can unnecessarily keep us stuck for a long time.

The real quality of a decision is not determined by the label of wrong or right that is placed on it, but by the real impact it has on a person’s development. That impact is not measured by external circumstances but by the inner progress that is being made by the person over time.

Therefore, the good news is that it is entirely up to you to decide whether a decision is good for you or not.

The pressure of comparison

On top of the fear of wrong and right comes another illusion that especially tends to hit people in their 30s, the illusion of external timelines. Suddenly, your own intrusive thoughts about the biological clock, society’s expectations, and even well-meaning friends or family members remind you that there is not much time left for important personal decisions like having a career peak, finding a partner, getting married, or having children. And if left unchecked, these intrusive thoughts easily get the upper hand. Suddenly, you feel like you’re in a rat race regarding fundamental aspects of your life.

Do not buy into it. Surely, it’s hard. But do you know what’s harder? Spending many years of your life in relationships that were committed to out of fear instead of true alignment, or in a career that silently kills you just because you’re afraid to start over. Instead, focus on asking yourself what you truly desire, what makes you feel fulfilled, and get to know yourself as deeply and authentically as possible. External timelines and circumstances are an invitation to get into a deeper relationship with your inner world, not your outer world.

Switching the focus

So, what can you do to ease the process of decision-making altogether? An important first step can be to shift the narrative from judgment to alignment. Switching the focus from asking yourself “Is this right?” or “Is this wrong?” to “Is this something that is aligned for me?” is such a powerful way to work on your relationship with the process of decision-making altogether.

8 tools that actually work with decision-making

Decision-making is such a vast topic that there’s much more to say about it than one single article could ever hold. But there are many factors of successful decision-making that I’m going to display in the upcoming steps.

Decision-making is a deeply personal process. What is the right fit for you may not be the right fit for someone else. But with the right tools for you, you won’t feel insecure about your own decisions ever again. Take what resonates.

Speak to others, then pause

Putting other people’s opinions above your own can be one of the biggest problems in a decision-making process. However, other people’s opinions are based on their values, their preferences, and their individual life experiences. Yours might be entirely different. Therefore, other people’s opinions should always be taken with a grain of salt. Your friends and loved ones can have incredibly valuable insights, but after you hear them, just pause. If, even after a while, you feel like it resonates with you, make it stick. If you feel resistance coming up around what has been said or if you feel like it brought up a lot of fear, it might not be a healthy standpoint for you.

Stop comparison

Other people are not on your same timeline. This one is big, especially for people in their 30s. It is way too easy to see what’s going on in the lives of others and assume that you’re somehow behind or doing things wrong. If you feel like you’re behind because your friends just got married, that’s not a reason to stay in your current relationship if you’re thinking about breaking up. If your friends seem to be further along in their careers, that doesn’t mean that yours is not taking off. The truth is, nobody is safe when it comes to comparison (Have you ever read the group chat of a WhatsApp mom group?). Comparison can quickly put you in a state of mind where feeling what resonates with you becomes harder and harder.

Get clear about your values

Your values are like a roadmap for your decisions. Knowing them gives you a true instruction manual for the things that make you happy and fulfilled. They might be wildly different from the people around you. For instance, one person might absolutely value connection over learning, while another person highly values learning or alone time over social opportunities. These examples are just starting points, as values can go much deeper. You can even consider aspirational values—values that might not be present in your current self 100%, but that you are striving to build over time.

Trust in your future self

How many times in your life have you not known what would come out of a decision, and it turned out to be better than you expected? Or maybe it didn’t turn out as you expected, but somehow you still made it work. Actually, these not-so-good results of decision-making are your future self’s greatest asset. If you have dealt with challenging situations in the past, you’re absolutely capable of doing it again. So, it’s either this or something absolutely better. Building self-trust that your future self can handle things is a big step into inner authority. Your mantra could be, "I trust in this and I always figure things out."

Involve your body as much as possible

Your body has its own intelligence. The sensations it gives you can display very clearly whether something is aligned for you or not. Observe, "Do you feel excitement? Are you feeling fussy, or maybe a bit anxious as well?" If possible, pause, focus on calming the anxiety first, and then listen again. Anxiety often leads us astray in the decision-making process because it overlays everything that is actually important. Often, anxiety is just a side effect of change. Observe if there is more than just anxiety coming up, "Is there genuine excitement or joy?" If that is the case, it is usually a really good sign that you’re on the right path. The sum of all sensations that come up within you is a very important indicator that reveals more than your thoughts alone ever could.

The shut-up strategy

As bluntly as that sounds, sometimes we just have to tell anxiety to shut up. If you really can’t shake it, imagine telling your fear to just shut up. There are no wrong decisions if you do not decide otherwise. The concept of a wrong decision doesn’t even have to exist in your reality. It can always be a lesson if that’s what you make it, and you can learn what you don’t want to do or allow in your life.

Hold ambiguity

Sometimes multiple truths coexist. You can want one thing and also want the exact opposite. That contradiction is part of being human. Allowing yourself to exist in that paradox leaves deeper room for your final decision to sink in. The importance lies in not forcing the decision immediately, but in really listening to your conscious and subconscious when it comes to making a decision.

Avoid decision fatigue

Whenever you feel like there’s too much to decide, start with the most urgent decision. Those decisions are often made more easily than the ones you have more time for. If the question comes up whether you want to do A or B, ask yourself which one came more naturally and first. This might sound ridiculous, but you might also flip a coin to confirm this. It’s not about the coin making the decision, but about your reaction when you see it. If you’re happy that the coin lands on one side, that's a big indication, just like if you feel very upset about the coin's side. Both are important pieces of feedback that you can use for yourself.

What comes after the decision?

Now, this is where things get really interesting. Have you ever heard the saying “Great decisions feel bad at first”? There’s a lot of truth to it. If you’ve just made a new kind of decision, you might have just overcome a long-standing pattern. You might have leaped into the unknown. You might have given up some security, whether that’s financial, personal, or simply on a nervous system level.

Your nervous system is not designed to keep you happy, blooming, and growing. It is designed to keep you alive. It will always prefer a familiar surrounding to an unfamiliar one, even if the unfamiliar one turns out to be so much better for you. The growth process takes more than just a few weeks to implement. It can take months, and even years, in some cases. You mustn’t second-guess your decision for quite some time after making it.

It is very normal to want to go back to the old situation, even though you were so sure about changing it in the first place. Wait for your nervous system to catch up. Soothe it. Nervous system regulation becomes crucial here. There are many wonderful techniques to do that, and you are now asked to hold yourself through this process. Give yourself a lot of grace.

The importance of holding ambiguity

Another important thing to consider is that growth-oriented decisions often bring grief. Most times, not as intensely as losing a loved one, but still. There might be a small part of your life that has just passed away.

Something might have ended, and now you feel like a part of you is missing. That old version of your life has passed, while the new version might not yet be fully shaped. That in-between phase can hit the hardest. It’s when you need to keep trust in the new that is coming, while simultaneously mourning and letting go of the old.

Even if you’re mostly happy that it’s over, you’re still allowed to miss all the good things about it. Especially in transition periods, it’s very normal to have one foot in the old and one foot in the new. Life is a paradox, and contradicting emotions can very well coexist.

You can mourn the end of your relationship while also being deeply excited about new projects that are coming up for you. This is not at all a contradiction, but actually an embrace of life’s multidimensionality. And in many cases, it’s very temporary.

An outlook on regret

Regret is often something to be avoided completely in the process of decision-making. It can show up in many forms, and of course, it can feel very heavy and sometimes even permanent. But what if we could change our outlook on regret?

Regret is actually a very good indicator of what you want and need more sustainably. It can be a refinement in decision-making. Instead of asking, "Was this wrong?", ask, "What does this show me?" Wherever regret shows up, you gain information. It reveals where you did not speak up loud enough, didn’t dare to go all in on yourself, where fear still had the upper hand, or where something was just not sustainable enough to endure in the long run.

It also reveals what is really important to you. If it wasn’t important, the regret wouldn’t be so present in your mind.

Used consciously, that information will become incredibly valuable for your future decision-making. Your regrets might actually hold some of the biggest wisdom in order for you to move forward. I’m not saying they’re easy to deal with, they’re certainly not. But they’re powerful indicators for all your future moves and decisions. So don’t push them aside, but consider them as your guidelines. They can actually help you if you let them.

Do you need help making decisions?

In conclusion, making decisions is a very tricky territory to navigate, but it is not to be feared. The steps mentioned above can be the first step to gaining more sovereignty in the process of decision-making. Applying them regularly builds self-trust and practice, so it gets easier.

Doing the work alone is possible, but having a qualified thinking partner at your side who holds space and asks the right questions while you are making decisions based on your values and thoughts can be extremely helpful in the process. If you need help with that, book a coaching call today.

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Constanze Zientek, Women‘s Coach

Constanze Zientek is a women's coach working with highly sensitive women in their thirties. She supports them in cultivating inner strength, embodied leadership, and an authentic, aligned life. Her approach blends emotional depth, clarity, and self-trust. She furthermore practices as a lawyer with over ten years of work experience, specializing in inheritance law. Her work with clients in emotionally complex transitions, combined with her own journey through her thirties, led her to coaching. Today, she integrates structure and intuition to offer clear, deeply human guidance.