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A few years ago, back when we still were living in our Brooklyn apartment, I had the idea to paint our bedroom peach. I pinned a ton of peach rooms onto my Pinterest boards, then went to the paint store where picked out a half a dozen swatches. I taped the strips up onto the wall opposite my bed and then…. nothing.

I think I was waiting for one of the options to feel clear to me. But none of them ever did. I walked past them morning and night, feeling faintly ashamed that I couldn’t seem to make a decision. As the days turned into weeks, the swatches felt like they were mocking me: “What’s wrong with you? Just pick a color!” they seemed to say. Eventually I gave up and I took them down. My walls stayed white by default.

I know I’m not alone in this, because when I recently asked our community what’s holding you back from completing you home projects, “decision paralysis” and “indecision” were among the top answers. And this is a problem, because not only does indecisiveness keep us stuck, it also can be a sign of a deeper issue in our relationship with our homes.

Because when we can’t decide, we often over-rely on other people’s opinions to move forward. We buy the thing that an influencer recommends, or we try to imitate an image we see because we don’t know how to create that feeling without copying it. We may end up with a home that looks fine, tasteful even. But eventually we realize that our home doesn’t feel like us.

Why am I So Indecisive About My Decor?

It would be easy to blame our indecisiveness on the overwhelming number of options available in the home decor space. Benjamin Moore alone offers more than 7000 paint colors, and new paint companies seem to be opening up shop daily, adding even more choice to the mix. There are thousands of furniture manufacturers, big and small, and platforms like Chairish and 1stDibs and Facebook Marketplace have made it easy to access thousands more vintage and used items. If you’re looking for tile, you can find it in just about every size, color, and finish — and search it just once or twice and you’ll be receiving Instagram ads for it for the next six months.

Yes, there are too many design options for the average mind to comprehend, and while this does worsen the problem of indecision, it’s not the root of it.

Decisiveness comes from knowing what you want. This might seem simple enough, yet in a society where we are constantly being taught to look outside ourselves for insight, we often feel lost when it comes to our own desires. We’ve been conditioned to trust expert opinions, ratings, reviews, and data more than our own instincts. With this as our programming, no wonder it feels safer to make a decision based on the opinion of an influencer than it does to explore the question, “What do I really want?”

Add to this that our culture is very uncomfortable with the idea of wanting things. Consider that the origin of the word want meant “to lack.” Thinking about what we want can feel by turns ungrateful (why can’t just be happy with what I have?), greedy or sinful (I’m so materialistic, what’s wrong with me?), pathetic (why don’t I have this already?), and scary (what if I want something I’ll never have?). Because acknowledging our desires is somewhat taboo, no one gives us a framework for exploring or clarifying what we want.

This is why the abundance of choice by itself is not the problem. If you know what you truly want, you could have a thousand options and the right one will be clear. If you don’t know what you want, even two choices will be too many.

Why Don’t I Know What I Want?

I’ve seen five main reasons why people lose touch with what they want in the design process. None of these are personal flaws, and each one can be addressed through the steps I outline later in this post.

Pssst… Want to skip straight to the remedy? Get your free copy of The Home Designer’s Guide to Getting Unstuck. In this new resource, I walk you through a series of quick exercises that will help you prioritize your needs and visualize your desires so you can move forward on your home projects with clarity and confidence. Download it for free here.

You’ve Skipped a Step in the Design Process

When you started designing your space, did you go straight to Pinterest and start saving inspiration? If you’re like most people (including me five years ago), that seemed like a sensible starting point. The problem is that when you start by looking at inspiration, it floods your senses with other people’s realities, and it becomes hard to know which direction to choose.

This is what we call inspiration overload, and it’s one of the fastest ways to kill a design project before it even starts. The problem isn’t looking at other people’s homes. It’s looking at them before you’ve taken time to get clear on your own desires.

You’re Torn Between Want and Should

Indecision can also be a symptom of an inner conflict. Maybe you do know what you want, but you don’t feel entitled to want it. (This can happen if you’ve been made to feel frivolous or superficial for spending money on your home, for example.) Maybe you’ve been led to believe that there are certain ways a home should be, and you’ve never questioned it, but something in you is craving something different.

Family and cultural expectations can be profound, and it takes a lot to question them. Sometimes the fear of disappointing others is enough to make us afraid to even look at what we really want. Yet unless you develop the courage to look at your own desires, that feeling of inner conflict and indecision will persist.

You’re Afraid to Commit

If you second-guess yourself right before making a decision, or worry you’re going to regret your choice later, it may be because you’re experiencing a kind of commitment-phobia. Deciding is hard because it means you have to let go of a lot of possible options. (The root of the word decide literally means to kill — you’re killing off choices, and each choice is a kind of life you could live in a certain kind of home.) In my experience, Dreamers struggle with this the most, because they have such a rich fantasy life around their homes.

The first step to overcoming a fear of commitment is defining exactly how you want to feel in your home. When you commit to a clear, compelling vision, it’s easier to let go of other possibilities that don’t fit. It also helps to remind yourself that every day you stay stuck in decision paralysis is one more day you don’t get to live any of your visions for your life at home.

You’re Going Through a Big Transition

Life transitions change us, often in ways that aren’t apparent while we’re going through them. I was very hard on myself about my inability to make home design decisions in the couple of years after my son was born, but I later realized that I was going through a period of seismic change in my lifestyle and my mindset, and this naturally changed what I wanted out of our home.

If you’re going through a transition right now, know that indecision is a part of the transition from an old self to a new one. Be patient as the dust settles, and focus on what feels certain. This will help tether you to your core desires with so much else in flux.

You’re Afraid of Making a Mistake

With the proliferation of design media, many of us believe that there is a right and a wrong way of decorating. We worry that we’ll choose something that clashes, or looks tacky, or is off-trend or out of date. The constant judgments we see on social media don’t help the situation.

Fear of making a mistake is paralyzing because it turns every decision into a pass-fail test. But in absence of a strong, intuitive sense of what we want, it’s the only guidepost we have for choosing our decor.

How to Overcome Indecisiveness

What I see in so many of these situations is fear. Fear of disappointing others, fear of judgment, fear of regret. When we are motivated by fear, our decision-making is inherently aversive. Our choices are made out of a desire to avoid pain rather than to maximize joy.

So we choose the safe thing, the recommended thing, the trendy thing. Or we don’t decide at all, which is a decision in itself, and live with the consequences, like me and my white walls.

More and more I notice that the people who are most successful not just in design, but in life, are those who know what they want. I wonder to some extent if this is the great secret to the success of the manifesting movement: that it prompts people to be honest and clear about their desires. Knowing what you want doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily get it. But refusing to even ask the question all but guarantees that you won’t.

People who know what they want have less noise in their daily lives. Their priorities are clearer. They’re less distracted by things that don’t matter. And this translates to their homes, where they have a clear sense of what works for them, and what doesn’t.

If this sounds appealing, know that it is easier than it sounds. It all starts with getting curious about what you really want. Here are four tips to help you do this.

Look In Before You Look Out

If this post is hitting close to home, shut down the browser tabs and the social media apps for a moment. Ask yourself: What would my ideal life look like in my home? Imagine yourself going through your daily activities. What do you notice, and how do you feel?

These feelings will be like an anchor to you whenever you make design decisions. If you find yourself choosing between two different fabrics or sofas, you can come back to these feelings and ask, Which one supports the feeling I want for my space?

Allow Yourself to Daydream

You may not have immediate answers for the questions in this guide. That’s ok. It can take time to get in touch with your deepest longings. A practice that can help is daydreaming: allowing yourself to fantasize about your dream home and your dream life.

Often we put the brakes on dreaming because we fear it will be painful to dream up possibilities that we don’t believe we can have in real life. But dreaming clues you into desires that you may be able to satisfy in other ways. For more on the power of dreaming and practices to help you do it, read this post.

Listen to Your Body

Many of us try to think our way through decisions, but deciding is a whole body process. Notice what it feels like when you really like or want something. Do you feel a warmth or a lightness or a kind of ache inside? Where in your body do you feel these sensations?

This is so important to notice because you want to be able to tune into these feelings when you’re making design decisions. Over time, you’ll start to notice when something “clicks,” and when it leaves you cold.

Own Your Envy

If you find yourself overcome with jealousy over what others have, realize that this too can be a clue to your desires. Many of us, women especially, have been taught that envy is shameful, and that we shouldn’t acknowledge when we want something that others have.

But every time I look my envy in the face, I discover a new side of myself, one that has been craving something without a way to express it. Envy was my first clue that I wanted to be a designer, when I found myself envying an independent furniture maker profiled in the pages of a magazine. And envy is what brought me back to a daily drawing practice, when I realized I envied the artists I follow on social media.

The key to learning from envy is to approach it with genuine curiosity and an abundance mindset, rather than fear or scarcity. If you believe that you can’t have what you desire, your unconscious is unlikely to reveal the deeper longing. If you’re open to the idea that your wants can be fulfilled in many ways, it will be easier to see the desire underneath. (For more on how to work with the powerful force of envy to find more joy, see this post.)

Ultimately, indecisiveness in home decor is a signal flag that you aren’t clear on your wants and needs for your home. Instead of beating yourself up or forcing yourself to make a sensible decision, take a few minutes to get close to what’s in your heart. You may find that not only are you more decisive in your home, but in your life as well.

Reminder: Sign ups for the 5 Secrets to Designing a Feelgood Home are now open! Check the schedule for this year’s free live workshop here.