I thought confidence was the missing piece.
Not unlimited confidence.
Not the sort of confidence that turns somebody into a motivational speaker or encourages them to take reckless risks.
Just enough.
Enough to feel certain about what I was doing.
Enough to stop second-guessing myself.
Enough to make decisions feel easier than they did at the time.
Looking back, I can see how reasonable that sounded.
If confidence arrived, surely everything else would become simpler too.
At least that was the theory.
The Problem With Missing Pieces
I think most of us have our own version of this.
Not necessarily confidence.
Something we’ve quietly promoted from “helpful” to “necessary”.
One day it would be nice to have.
A little later it starts feeling important.
Eventually movement becomes something we’ll do once it arrives.
Once the missing piece arrives.
The Relief We’re Hoping For
The more I thought about it, the less convinced I became that people were really waiting for confidence, certainty or any of the other missing pieces we talk about.
What seemed to matter was what those things promised.
Not success: Relief.
The feeling that once the missing piece arrived, the decision would stop feeling quite so difficult.
Once I started looking at it that way, a pattern began to emerge.
The missing piece wasn’t being asked to support the decision.
It was being asked to remove part of the burden of making it.
And that’s a big job to assign to anything..
What Changed My Mind
The thing that eventually changed my thinking wasn’t gaining confidence.
It was noticing what happened whenever one of the things I’d been waiting for finally arrived.
The decision didn’t disappear. It changed shape. The circumstances improved. Some of the practical challenges became easier to manage. But the responsibility remained exactly where it had always been.
With me.
That was a useful realisation.
Because it forced me to ask a different question.
Not: “What am I waiting for?“
But: “What job am I expecting it to do?“
The Pattern I Started Seeing
What changed wasn’t the things people were waiting for.
It was the role those things seemed to play.
The details varied from one person to another, but the underlying assumption felt familiar.
Life as it is today isn’t quite enough.
Something else needs to arrive first.
Once I started noticing that assumption, I found it difficult to stop seeing it.
Not because people were avoiding decisions. Because they seemed to be imagining a future version of the decision that would somehow be easier to make.
That’s the part that kept catching my attention.
I wasn’t convinced the missing piece was really the missing piece.
Don’t Rush Past This
Ask yourself whether the hardest part of decision-making is accepting that certain feelings may never disappear completely.
Not because something has gone wrong.
Because they were never signs that we should stop.
Uncertainty doesn’t always mean we’re missing information.
Conflict doesn’t always mean we’re making the wrong choice.
Sometimes they simply mean we’re facing a decision that matters.
Perhaps that’s why so many of the things we wait for feel so important.
We imagine they’ll remove the discomfort.
What if the discomfort isn’t the problem?
What if it’s simply part of deciding?
Your Next Step
The absence of perfect conditions does not prevent movement.
If there’s something you’ve been postponing, it may be worth asking yourself a different question.
What job have you quietly assigned to the thing you’re waiting for?
From Thinking to Doing helps you choose one thing to begin and work with what happens next — without making confidence, certainty or readiness conditions for movement.
What’s Coming Next?
Later this week we’ll explore what happens when certainty becomes the goal.
And why some decisions remain difficult even after we’ve gathered all the information we think we need.
If You Take One Thing From This
The thing you’re waiting for may help.
It just might not do the job you’ve been asking it to do.
People Also Ask
Why do people wait for confidence before taking action?
Because confidence feels like evidence that we’re ready. The difficulty is that confidence often grows through action rather than arriving beforehand.
Can more certainty make decisions easier?
Sometimes. But many important decisions still involve judgement, trade-offs and uncertainty even when we have good information.
What are invisible permission slips?
Invisible permission slips are conditions we believe must be met before we can move forward, such as confidence, certainty, motivation or perfect timing.
How do I know if I’m waiting for the wrong thing?
A useful question is whether the thing you’re waiting for is expected to remove the responsibility of deciding rather than simply support the decision itself.
References
Dogonchi, M, Mohammadzadeh, F and Moshki, M (2022) The Relationship Between Health Locus of Control and Health Behaviours: A Systematic Review. The Open Public Health Journal.
Sahib, A et al. (2023) Intolerance of Uncertainty and Emotion Regulation: A Meta-Analytic and Systematic Review. Clinical Psychology Review.
Yap, A, Johanesen, P and Walsh, C (2023) Moderators of Uncertainty Tolerance in Healthcare: A Systematic Review. Advances in Health Sciences Education.
