How to Recognize When You’re Negotiating with Yourself

Negotiating with yourself seems like the kind thing to do when you’re trying to make a change in your life or career. Many of the people in my circle are entrepreneurs and as entrepreneurs, they are accustomed to a certain level of uncertainty. But that doesn’t mean they are immune to it.

I often find myself feeling out of sorts about my life and career, but that doesn’t mean I allow myself to wallow in the what-ifs of it all. I get to work picking out the parts of my story that are keeping me from where I want to go. In this article, we’re going to explore some ways to recognize when you’re negotiating with yourself so you can align your thoughts and actions and get back to getting on track with what you really want.

The Problem with Negotiating with Yourself

Let’s start by addressing the fact that negotiating with yourself about a decision is part of the process. It’s not bad or good. But when left unchecked can turn into an all-day-and-not affair of inaction. And everyone knows that if you don’t put one foot in front of the other, you’re not going to get anywhere.

Negotiating with yourself can look like trying to talk yourself out of trying something new. If you’re circling around a new idea, career choice or life path than it is okay for you to take the time you need to be sure about it. But here’s where most people lose more time than is necessary: they wait for the moment when everything feels right instead of waiting for the moment when they feel like they have their own back.

When you stop negotiating with yourself and start having your own back about the decisions you make you realize that there are no wrong turns. There are only less-than-ideally-informed turns. And that’s just a part of life.

How to Catch the Moments when You’re Negotiating with Yourself

The first step to recognizing when you’re negotiating with yourself instead of taking action is the type of thoughts you’re having. It’s not the inaction that’s the tell; although, it could be. Instead, it’s the constant replaying of thoughts or questions that have yet to be answered.

Should I do this?

What will people think?

What if it doesn’t work out?

I’ve spent so much time trying other things that it feels like this isn’t going to work either.

There’s no right or wrong way to make a decision; however, there are telltale signs that you’re avoiding making a decision and it usually looks like negotiation.

You’ve told yourself you’re collecting information or researching more about the thing you want, but really, and unfortunately, you’re stalling.

Why Are You Stalling?

Let’s look at the reasons you’re pulling back from the very thing you want to move closer to: your goal. Whether you want to change your business model, update an offer, create a side hustle, hire employees or fire employees, or you want to change careers entirely, there’s a reason you’re not taking the leap of faith needed to do the work. It’s important to be gentle with yourself when you catch the stall in action. It’s not a bad thing. It also serves as information that something is changing and needs some room to breath.

It might feel like your body needs to catch up to your mind or vice versa, or it might feel like anxiety bubbling up in your stomach. Or it might feel like you have absolutely no idea how to move forward. Nothing is wrong. And neither are you. Stalling is a very human reaction to having to make a decision. But the sooner you find out why you’re stalling, the sooner you can get to work getting to work.

One of two things could be happening: 1) you don’t really want the thing you say you want and so you’re putting off the decision so you don’t have to figure out what else there is to consider. or 2) you are so afraid of failing at the new thing that you’d rather just not start at all.

Which of the two things is it? Because it’s not that:

• you don’t have time.
• or you don’t have the skill.
• you don’t have the support.
• you aren’t ready.

It’s either: you’re not being honest about what you really want or you’re afraid of getting it.

How Can You Tell the Difference?

When you’re negotiating with yourself about an important decision, especially about your career or business, you’re going to be faced with a lot of what-if questions. Most the what-if questions you’re going to pose to yourself are not really a factor. They are your brain’s way of trying to protect you from the unknown.

But let me offer you this: what if you did know? What if you are sitting there reading this right now and you know exactly what you want AND you’re afraid of THAT? How often do you let yourself be honest about what you really want? Does it feel foreign to you? Does it feel unsafe? What happens when you make a decision that’s just for you?

These are the kinds of questions that open up the possibility of moving forward. You don’t have to burn your entire life to the ground to experience change, nor do you have to change anything if you don’t want to. But the trick here is to be as honest as possible with yourself, even if you never tell another soul.

Are you being honest and is the honesty freaking you out?

How to Stop Negotiating with Yourself

When you’ve answered the above questions: are you being honest and are you freaking out, it’s time to answer the next question. What now?

If you’ve done the hard thing of being honest and you know your answer, what are you supposed to do with that? This is where the real work starts: you have to decide what to do next. Your options are 1) nothing; 2) half-ass a commitment and “see where it goes”; or 3) commit all the way so you can stop thinking about this already.

I’m a big fan of option 3. That’s why it always looks like I’m burning my life down and starting over again. This creative platform and my coaching practice are a great example of something that looks random on the outside, but is actually the result of avoiding a decision for a long time.

For years, I wanted to have a personal blog that I could publish regularly and share my creative pursuits. I just thought all the things we think when we want to start something new: “It will take too much time to get going.” I accepted that that statement was true and avoided committing to the process for years. Until one day in 2025 when I decided I was going to commit.

As for my coaching practice, when I go back and look at my journals over the last couple of years, it’s been something I’ve been circling around for a while. Even on the blog here, I talk about “trying coaching” again. But the truth is that even then, when I offered a free coach week practice to anyone who wanted to talk about their business or life, I wasn’t fully committed. It wasn’t until I rebranded my instructional design and consulting business in late 2025 and relaunched it that I realized I wasn’t fully committed to that either.

Ultimately, I closed the doors of my consulting business. Something I had been thinking of all year anyway, and when I finally committed to building a coaching practice, it became so obvious to me that I needed to walk away from learning and development to pursue this business it felt like no work at all.

So how do you stop negotiating with yourself? You choose from three options and then act accordingly.

The Three Options to Stop Negotiating With Yourself

When you don’t make a decision about your career, you spend a lot of time wondering when the right sign will show up to tell you what you should do. You think about how to shift the narrative of your life. But when you decide to do nothing, which is a perfectly fine decision, you get to stop worrying about the outcome. If you look at a decision like should you write a book or not, you might carry that question with you for years. All the while, you’re actually deciding to do nothing (option 1) even though it still feels like you’re “thinking.” By not deciding, you are deciding. Funny how that works.

When you move to the half-assed commitment level, you might dabble in writing, here and there, but it never gets your full attention and it makes the entire process and product feel like a pipedream.

But when you decide you are all-in, no questions asked, then you clear the way for success. You’ll notice I’ve not talked about how long success can take. Because how long something takes should never be a reason to avoid doing it. The time will pass anyway. How do I know? I now have a fully functional, regularly-updated blog platform that gets hundreds of visitors a month.

If I had started 5 years ago, it would be that much more successful. But I didn’t. I made the decision not to start. And when I was half-assing it years ago with business blogs, nothing was happening either. I couldn’t get any traction because I was splitting my attention and saying it wasn’t important. But when I dedicated a window of time each week to build the blog, it got built. And now it’s a year later and the platform has become a whole ecosystem of blogs, thoughts, ideas, opportunities, business and more.

What to Do Now that You’ve Decided to Stop Negotiating With Yourself

Acknowledging that you’re playing it safe by not making a decision is just the first step in getting to where you want to go. Next, you pick one of the three options above. I vote for option 3. Go all in. Even if all in means you only have 5 minutes a day to give this goal. It’s still a commitment. The trick is to show up for those 5 minutes no matter what. That’s the part people forget: 5 minutes compounds daily. Every little bit helps. 100 words written of your book or your blog is 100 words more than you had before. That’s progress. Don’t discount it.

Once you pick a level of commitment, stop asking the damn question. You’ve decided. It’s done. You don’t get to go back. Of course, you can absolutely undo it and forget it ever happened. But don’t do that to yourself. Your goals, whatever they are, especially your career goals, are worth the effort and energy to get where you want to go. But you might have a goal to just keep your kitchen clean. Nothing is a lost cause. Don’t treat any part of your life like that. Everything is negotiable until it’s not. And you’ll know what it’s no longer an option to negotiate with yourself because you’ll start committing. You’ll decide to decide.

And the power to decide needs to be exercised regularly and happily.

Don’t sell yourself short on having this experience: decide to decide. That’s how you can stop the spinning and break the cycle of negotiating with yourself at every turn.