Let me say right up front that I’m a big fan of therapy. I suggest clients go to therapy all the time. I think therapy is an incredibly helpful tool for many, many people.

But.

I have been seeing more and more clients who have been in therapy for years, often trying to address a specific issue so they can make a decision. Sometimes they’re trying to decide where to live. Sometimes they’re trying to decide if they should change careers. Sometimes they’re trying to decide whether or not to stay in a relationship.

And therapy helps! But not everyone, and not always with the most pressing issue.

Sometimes you just have to make a decision.

The thing that will make you feel better, that will immediately improve the quality of your life, that will give you back all that time and brain space is just…deciding, and moving forward.

Therapy can keep you stuck because it’s often focused on the WHY of it all. Digging into that can be important, but also exhausting and time-consuming. When it comes to making a decision, I think it can often be more useful to focus on the WHAT, and then the HOW. The WHY can be figured out later. I’ve seen people put off big life changes for years because they aren’t sure if the reason they were making a decision was the right one.

But the reason, for most decisions, doesn’t actually matter all that much. It doesn’t necessarily affect the outcome.

When we decide, when we pick WHAT we’re going to do, we’re taking action. When we focus on the WHY, we can stay wondering about this for months, years, even decades (ask me how I know!). I encourage anyone making a decision not to linger for too long on the why. Instead, let’s focus on WHAT you’re going to do, and HOW you’re going to do it. We’re taking action, moving forward, and liberating ourselves from the past.

Making a decision can be long and arduous or quick and painless. And I’m here to tell you that the quality of the decision, nine times out of ten, will be the same whether you’ve spent a week deciding or a year. I’m not saying you should decide overnight to divorce, or have a kid, or leave your job. But I know from experience how much longer people are spending pondering these decisions than they need to. And that’s time you can’t get back.

Look—don’t quit therapy. But if you’ve been trying to make a big decision for months, or years, get in touch. We can get it done in an hour, and you can go back to using therapy for dealing with the emotional stuff, strategies for managing your life, and everything else therapy is good for. But you’ll be moving forward at the same time, not staying stuck in one place.