02/04/2026
Yesterday at noon, I was at the dentist in Schötz, at Früh.
Routine checkup. Nothing dramatic. The kind of appointment you schedule and forget about until you're sitting in the chair.
The doctor suggested an X-ray, just to be sure. Standard procedure, I assume.
I hesitated.
"Is it really necessary?" I asked.
She looked at me, young, precise, German efficiency in her posture, and said very simply:
"Ich weiss es nicht. Sie müssen entscheiden."
I don't know. You have to decide.
And for a moment, I felt the discomfort settle into my chest. On my Business card is written "Strukturierte Entscheidungsberatung". This is what I do. I help people to decide.
And, that specific feeling of a decision handed back to me when I was hoping, maybe even expecting, that someone else would carry it for me. That someone with authority, with expertise, dressed in white, with certainty, would tell me what to do.
Instead, she told me the truth: she doesn't know. And I have to decide.
I've been thinking about that moment all day.
Because it reveals something most people spend their whole lives avoiding.
We are constantly looking for someone to decide for us.
Not because we are weak.
Not because we lack intelligence.
But because deciding, really deciding, requires you to accept something most of us have spent years learning to deny:
You are the only one who knows what is actually true for you.
And when someone hands that back to you, it can feel like rejection.
It can feel like they don't care.
It can feel like they should know better.
But what she actually did, by saying "I don't know, you must decide", was the kindest thing a person in authority can do.
She refused to replace my knowing with hers.
We spend our professional lives waiting for permission.
We ask our managers what we should do.
Or our mentors how to decide.
We ask our partners if they think we're making the right move.
And sometimes they tell us.
But the ones who actually help us, the ones we remember years later, are the ones who hand the decision back.
Who say: I can give you information. I can tell you what I see. But I cannot tell you what is true for you, because I am not you.
The discomfort you feel when someone does this, that is not rejection.
That is the beginning of clarity.
If you recognise this, if you're tired of waiting for someone to tell you what to do, I have opened a few free 20-minute calls this month.
One decision you are sitting with. One honest conversation. Something genuinely clearer at the end.
Link in the first comment.
