📰 You are allowed to change your mind

A while back I stood in a hardware store aisle holding two cans of paint, unable to decide. Not because the choice was hard, but because some part of me had quietly turned it into a forever decision – as if the wrong color meant I would be stuck staring at it for the rest of my life. I put both cans back on the shelf and walked out with neither.

By the end of this short note, you will:

Here is the thing I missed in that paint aisle. Most of the choices that freeze us are not actually permanent. We just treat them that way.

You try a new grocery store, it is not for you, so you go back to the old one. You set a chair by the window, and a week later you move it. You start a new morning routine, and you adjust it until it fits. None of that is carved in stone. Yet when a choice feels new or unfamiliar – a new app, a new habit, a new way of handling money – the mind quietly adds weight that does not belong there.

A psychologist named Rachel Allyn wrote something in Psychology Today that stuck with me. She said plainly that many decisions are more reversible than you think. Her advice for people who tend to freeze up was gentle and practical: start with small, low-stakes choices, and let yourself pick something that is simply good enough, rather than waiting for the perfect moment that never quite arrives.

That matters because the fear is rarely about the choice itself. It is about being trapped by it. And once you see that most doors swing both ways – that you can walk back through them – the whole thing gets lighter. You are not deciding forever. You are just deciding for now.

Here is the step for today, and it is a small one on purpose.

Pick one thing you have been putting off – something genuinely minor. A new brand of coffee. A different seat. One shelf you have been meaning to rearrange. One free thing you have been a little curious about.

Then, before you do it, say this to yourself: "I can change my mind later."

That is the whole step. You are not committing to anything. You are running a quiet test. If you like it, you keep it. If you do not, you have lost nothing but a few minutes – and you have learned something for free.

If you would like the fuller thinking behind this, Allyn's short piece is worth five calm minutes: Psychology Today – "Breaking Free From Indecision".

If you try this, here is what tends to happen. The next small choice gets a little easier. Then the one after that. You begin to notice that "I can change my mind" is not weakness at all – it is the very thing that lets you move in the first place.

And if you do not try it? Nothing bad happens. The shelf stays as it is, the coffee stays the same. But the thing you have been circling stays circled. There is no harm in that. There is just a little less room to breathe than there could be.

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So that is your one simple step this week: make one small choice you have been avoiding, and remind yourself you are not locked in.

If you pick one, I would genuinely like to know. Just reply with the word "trying." That is all – one word. There is no wrong answer, and you will not bother me. I read every reply.

Talk soon,
Bob

If you're curious about the guy behind these emails, I put a few stories and photos over at bobcaine.com. No pressure, just a place to see the face behind the screen.