By Caroline Davis, Inner Freedom EFT
About a month and a half ago, my husband officially sold his business.
It was something we’d been working toward for quite some time. There had been years of conversations, decisions, uncertainty, and preparation leading up to it.
And then, finally, the papers were signed.
Given all the stress leading up to that final meeting, I’m not sure what I expected to feel when it was finally official. But part of me probably expected to feel relieved.
Or excited.
Maybe even giddy.
Instead, I felt like I wanted to cry.
For the next few weeks, I was surprisingly upset. In fact, it was one of the hardest periods I’ve gone through in quite some time.
And almost as soon as my initial reaction hit, I began trying to figure out what it meant.
Was I afraid of everything changing?
Was some part of me worried we’d made the wrong decision?
Had we made the wrong decision?
Was I afraid of failing in my own business?
If this was something we’d wanted, why didn’t I feel happier about it?
Maybe you’ve experienced something similar.
You have a decision to make. You think it through. You weigh the possibilities. Eventually, you make the choice that feels right for you.
And then the choice becomes real.
Suddenly, you’re anxious.
Or sad.
Or unsettled.
And another question creeps in:
Did I make the wrong decision?
When Our Feelings Make Us Question Our Decisions
It makes sense that we might look to our feelings for information.
Sometimes discomfort really does tell us that something isn’t right for us. Sometimes hesitation deserves our attention.
But this experience made me wonder whether we sometimes ask our feelings to tell us something they can’t necessarily tell us:
whether we’ve made the right decision.
Because even a decision that ultimately feels right can involve loss.
Choosing one direction may mean letting go of another.
Starting something new may mean leaving something familiar behind.
Changing a relationship, a job, a home, a routine—or in our case, a business that had been part of our lives for many years—can bring up emotions that don’t fit neatly into categories like good decision or bad decision.
Sometimes change is simply hard.
Even when it’s good change.
There’s a reason uncertainty can feel so uncomfortable. Our brains are constantly using past experience to anticipate what might happen next. When something significant changes, suddenly there may be much less certainty about what comes next—and research suggests that uncertainty can engage systems involved in anticipating and responding to potential threat.
That doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong.
Sometimes it may simply mean we’re standing in unfamiliar territory.
More Than One Thing Can Be True
With a little distance, I can begin to see the sale of the business differently than I could in those first few days.
It has already begun to open up possibilities in my own career that I couldn’t fully see at the time.
I can see more clearly now that it was the right decision for us.
But that doesn’t make what I felt when we walked out of that meeting wrong.
Both things can be true.
I can believe we made the right decision.
And I can feel sadness about what was ending.
I can be excited about what’s ahead and uncertain about what it will look like.
I can want a change and still feel unsettled when it actually happens.
Maybe part of trusting ourselves is learning that we don’t always have to resolve those contradictions.
Making Room for What I Was Feeling
What helped wasn’t figuring out exactly what the feelings meant. It was allowing myself to have them and supporting myself while I did.
What helped me most during those first difficult weeks wasn’t finally figuring out exactly why I felt the way I did.
It was beginning to acknowledge that this was a difficult time for me.
I stopped expecting myself to feel relieved or excited simply because this was a change we’d chosen. I let myself feel sad when I felt sad. I used the tools I already had—especially EFT tapping—to gently process some of what was coming up. I got support from those around me when I needed it.
And, perhaps most importantly, I tried to meet myself where I was rather than continually asking myself to be somewhere else emotionally.
I didn’t need to make the feelings disappear.
I needed to make room for the fact that they were there.
That experience has also made me think differently about something I’ve encountered both in Buddhist teachings and in the work of Michael Singer: the idea of allowing emotions to move through us rather than immediately trying to resist, judge, or hold onto them.
That doesn’t mean we don’t feel them.
And it doesn’t mean we ignore what they might be telling us.
But looking back, I can see how quickly I began trying to interpret my feelings.
Why am I feeling this?
What does this mean?
Is this feeling good or bad?
Does this mean we made a mistake?
Instead of simply allowing myself to be sad, afraid, uncertain—or whatever else was there—I was trying to make the feelings give me an answer.
What if they didn’t need to?
What if, sometimes, we can give ourselves enough space to simply experience what we’re experiencing?
What If Discomfort Isn’t Always a Warning?
When uncomfortable feelings arise after a decision, it can be tempting to immediately do something with them.
Maybe we replay the decision.
We imagine the alternatives.
We ask someone else what they think.
We start looking for reassurance that we did the right thing.
And sometimes, of course, reconsidering a decision is appropriate.
But what if we didn’t automatically assume the discomfort meant something had gone wrong?
What if, before trying to determine what the feeling means, we became curious about the feeling itself?
Perhaps there’s fear about what comes next.
Perhaps there’s grief about what’s being left behind.
Perhaps a part of us is struggling with uncertainty.
Perhaps something familiar—even something we were ready to leave—still represented a kind of safety simply because we knew it.
Instead of asking only:
Did I make the wrong decision?
We might also gently ask:
What about this change feels hard right now?
That’s a very different conversation.
Because then we don’t necessarily have to fix the feeling or turn it into an answer.
We can allow ourselves to experience a much wider range of human emotions—even the ones that seem contradictory.
Self-Trust Doesn’t Require Certainty
I think we sometimes imagine self-trust as a kind of unwavering certainty.
We make a decision.
We feel good about it.
We move forward confidently.
No looking back.
But I’m not sure that’s what self-trust actually looks like.
Maybe self-trust has room for uncertainty.
Maybe it allows us to listen when something inside us is uncomfortable without immediately allowing that discomfort to have the final say.
And maybe it means trusting that we can meet whatever arises after a decision, too.
We don’t have to know exactly how everything will unfold.
We don’t even have to know exactly what we’re feeling yet—or why we’re feeling it.
Sometimes we can simply acknowledge:
This is harder than I expected. Maybe I can support myself through this.
Without automatically thinking:
I’m feeling this way, so I must have gotten it wrong.
An Inner Freedom Practice
This week’s Inner Freedom Practice is an opportunity to gently explore a decision you’ve been second-guessing.
Rather than choosing something highly charged or life-changing like my example, I invite you to begin with a relatively mild decision—something you felt reasonably comfortable with when you made it, but have found yourself questioning afterward.
Using EFT tapping, we’ll slow down and notice what happens when you bring that decision to mind.
Is there a thought that keeps appearing?
An emotion?
A sensation somewhere in your body?
We’re not going to try to convince ourselves that the decision was right.
And we’re not going to tell the doubtful part of us to go away.
Instead, we’ll become curious about what that uncertainty might be responding to—and make a little more room for whatever is there.
Join me here:
Sometimes the Right Decision Can Still Feel Hard
I couldn’t have known, walking out of that meeting, exactly what the next chapter would look like.
And I still don’t.
What my mind and body did know was that something significant had ended—and they weren’t entirely happy about it.
Now, I can see more clearly some of what that ending made possible.
But I don’t think the lesson is that I should have ignored how I felt because everything would eventually work out.
If anything, it’s the opposite.
Those feelings deserved space, too.
Maybe we don’t have to choose between listening to our feelings and trusting ourselves.
Maybe greater self-trust includes being willing to listen to all of it—the certainty, the doubt, the sadness, the excitement, the fear—without requiring any one feeling to change or give us the answer.
Sometimes the right decision can still feel hard.
And perhaps feeling that difficulty doesn’t mean we’ve lost our way.
It may simply mean we’re human, standing somewhere between what we’ve known and whatever comes next.
If You’d Like Some Additional Support
Sometimes we can recognize that we’re second-guessing ourselves and still find it difficult to understand what’s underneath the uncertainty.
EFT tapping offers a gentle way to slow that process down and become curious about the thoughts, emotions, body sensations, and earlier experiences that may be connected to what we’re feeling now.
When we work together, we don’t try to force the doubt away or convince you that you “should” trust yourself.
Instead, we can explore what’s underneath it and make space for the different parts of your experience—so that fear or uncertainty doesn’t have to automatically determine what your feelings mean or what you do next.
If you’d like to explore what working together might look like, I invite you to reach out through my contact form to share the type of support you’re looking for and learn about scheduling a complimentary Discovery Call.
With compassion,
Caroline
Inner Freedom EFT
Inner Freedom. Healing Beyond.
Inner Freedom EFT 
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