When You Know What You Want to Do and Still Ask Everyone Else For Approval

You made the call months ago and you keep asking for second opinions. A 10-minute check shows where your trust in your own word got low, plus one decision to act on this week to begin to restore that trust in yourself.

You decided back in August to stop running your Sunday D&D game. You've been the Dungeon Master for three years, the person who plans the story and plays every monster, and the prep now eats most of your Saturday. You love the group. You're also tired, and you know it's time to step down.

Since then, you've asked your partner whether you're making the right call. You texted your best friend the same question, twice. At 1 a.m. you read a Reddit thread called "Is it okay to stop being the DM?" all the way to the bottom. You've written the message to your D&D group four times and saved it as a draft every time.

Everyone you asked said the same thing: you've earned the break, send the message. Two months later, and the message to your D&D group is still sitting in your drafts. Meanwhile part of your attention goes back to it every Saturday, which is one reason you keep feeling scattered and depleted.

That makes sense. You already know your answer. What's missing is trust that you'll stand behind the decision once it's sent. This is a trust problem, not a judgment problem, and that kind of mistrust has a cause you can look at and a way to rebuild it.

Where trust in yourself comes from

You trust a friend because of their track record. They said they'd pick you up at the airport, and they were at the curb. They said they'd return your Catan expansion, and it came back with every piece. Each person's kept promise adds a little trust, and after enough promises that are kept you stop double-checking.

Your trust in yourself runs on the same kind of record. Every time you said "I'm starting the gym on Monday" and Monday came and went, you noticed. Most people have a long list: the January budget, the guitar they were going to practice every morning, the plan to check email only twice a day.

When you've watched yourself drop enough plans, a new decision feels shaky even when it's a good one. So you borrow confidence from people whose word you trust more than your own right now. That's why you asked your partner, your best friend, and a Reddit thread about something you'd already decided.

The promises were meant for your best weeks

Most of the plans you dropped have something in common. You made them on a good day, with plenty of energy, and sized them properly for that day and the capacity you felt. Then, an ordinary week showed up with a sick kid, a work deadline, and a night of bad sleep, and the plan no longer fit the time and energy you had.

The timeline was usually off, too. In 2024, researchers reviewed 20 studies of people building health habits like flossing, healthier eating, and stretching. The typical person needed about two months before the habit felt automatic, and some people needed close to a year, according to a review in the journal Healthcare.

So if you gave a new habit three weeks and then called it a failure, you stopped more than a month before most people see a habit stick. What you took away was "I can't stick with anything." What actually happened is that the plan ran on the wrong timeline. That's a design problem, not a character problem.

The reputation meter

Plenty of games track how much a group trusts you. In World of Warcraft, Skyrim, or Fallout: New Vegas, each faction has a reputation meter. Finish a job for them and the meter goes up, and they start offering you better quests. Walk away from a job halfway through and the meter drops, and they get careful about what they hand you.

Your trust in yourself works like that meter. Each promise you keep to yourself moves it up a little, and each one you drop moves it down. When the meter is low, the voice in your head that would normally say "Go ahead, send it" goes quiet, and you go looking for someone else to vouch for the decision.

Asking other people still has its place. A friend who has stepped down as Dungeon Master might tell you how to word the message so the group can find someone new to run the game. That's new information. Asking your best friend a second time whether it's okay to stop being the DM is a request for permission and approval, and their "yes" does nothing for your trust in yourself; They're the one who made the call, not you.

Watch for: the question you tack onto a decision you've already made. "I'm going to stop running the game. Does that sound crazy?" The first sentence is the decision. The second sentence asks someone else to approve it.

The Second Opinion Check

This takes about 10 minutes with a piece of paper or the notes app on your phone. It shows you where you're asking other people to vouch for your decisions, and which old promises are behind that.

• List the decisions you've already made. Write down anything you've decided in your head and haven't acted on yet: the message to your D&D group, switching gyms, telling your manager you can't take the extra project. Up to five is enough.

• Write down who whose advise you got about each decision. Put the names next to each, plus any forums or group chats that might have influenced your decision making. Add a tally mark for every time you asked, so asking the same person twice counts as two.

• Check the asks that gave you new information. Put a check next to any conversation that told you something you didn't already know. Every ask without a check was a request for permission or approval. Most people find more checkmarks in the permission/approval group.

• Name the old promise behind your shakiest decision. Look at the decision with the most checkmarks and ask yourself when you made a similar promise and didn't follow through on it. Maybe you stopped running a game once before and felt guilty about it for a year. Write that down in one sentence.

• Choose one decision to act on. Pick the smallest decision on your list you've already made, but have been stalling to act on. You'll use it in the next section.

Step four tends to be the uncomfortable one, and it's also the most useful. It points to the specific old promise that makes a new decision feel risky. Once you figure out that old promise, you have something concrete to work on.

Make it doable this week

Take the decision you chose in step five and act on it in the next 48 hours. Send the message to your D&D group, book a trial week at the new gym, or tell your manager you can't take the extra project.

Once the action has been taken, write about what happened. How did the people involved respond? Did you feel relief, a wave of second-guessing, or both? Whatever happened, you made a call on your own and followed through on it, and that's one point back on the meter.

If the 48 hours pass and you haven't acted, write down what stopped you. That's useful information too, because it usually points straight back to the old promise you named in step four.

Try this today: the next time you type "Does that sound okay?" at the end of a message about something you've already decided, delete the question and just send the message.

Your next step

When you already know your answer and still ask everyone else, the fix starts small: one decision you act on puts one point back on the trusting yourself meter.

I'm a life coach for geeks, gamers, neurodivergent people, and overwhelmed professionals in Phoenix, and a lot of the people I work with are smart, capable, and waiting for someone else to say yes to a decision they've already made.

In Life Reboot: Nerd Edition™, a 12-week 1:1 program, we keep your weekly commitments in a running list called your Quest Log and size them to the week you actually have, so you keep more of the promises you make to yourself. Details are on the program page.

If you'd like to talk through one stuck decision in 30 minutes first, you can book a free strategy call.

On Thursday, November 19, at 12 PM Phoenix time, the free Silverman Coach Masterclass "How to Trust Yourself Without Waiting to Feel Ready" goes further into rebuilding trust in your own word, starting with one small daily promise you can keep. Details are on the Silverman Coach homepage.

Pause. Reboot. Grow.