Undecided Is a Mindset. Deciding Is a Practice.

Words matter more than we often admit. They do not merely describe our condition; they shape how we inhabit it.

Consider a familiar phrase on college forms and advising sheets: undecided major.

It appears harmless—administratively convenient, even neutral. Yet embedded in the word undecided is a subtle orientation toward the world. It suggests a lack. A waiting. A student suspended between possibilities until clarity arrives from somewhere else.

But what if we changed the language?

What if students were not undecided but deciding?

The shift is small in spelling but profound in posture. Undecided is passive. Deciding is active. One describes absence; the other names a process. One waits; the other explores.

When a student says, “I am undecided,” the unknown can feel like a void that must be filled quickly. Institutions often reinforce this anxiety by pushing students toward early certainty in the name of efficiency. Choose quickly. Stay on track. Avoid wandering.

But when a student says, “I am deciding,” the unknown becomes something else entirely: terrain to explore. Curiosity replaces anxiety. The future becomes less a problem to solve than a landscape to investigate.

At its best, education invites precisely this kind of encounter with the unknown.

Children understand this instinctively. Watch a young child encountering the world and you will see relentless curiosity, questions spilling out faster than answers can arrive, fascination with things adults overlook, joy in discovery for its own sake. The unknown is not threatening. It is exhilarating.

Somewhere along the way many of us lose that orientation. The unknown begins to feel like failure rather than possibility.

Education should restore that sense of wonder, not extinguish it.

To say I am deciding is to reclaim agency. It acknowledges that the path forward may not yet be visible, but it affirms that one is actively searching. It frames uncertainty not as deficiency but as inquiry.

And this matters far beyond the choice of a college major.

Life rarely unfolds in straight lines. Careers change. Industries evolve. Businesses pivot. Leaders confront decisions with incomplete information every day. The most successful entrepreneurs and executives are not those who waited until everything was certain before acting. They are those who learned to move through uncertainty—testing, learning, adjusting.

In that sense, the mindset of deciding is not only the foundation of education; it is the foundation of leadership.

The language we use to describe where we are—what we are doing, what we hope—quietly shapes how we experience the world. An old proverb captures this chain of influence:

Watch your thoughts, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your actions. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.

Destiny, in part, begins with language.

Call yourself undecided and you wait for clarity. Call yourself deciding and you begin the work of discovery.

For colleges and universities, this is not merely semantic. It is pedagogical. The task of education is not simply to help students declare majors; it is to cultivate the habits of inquiry, reflection, and courage that allow them to navigate a world that will continually change.

The same is true in life and in business. The future belongs less to those who claim certainty than to those who cultivate curiosity. The question is not whether uncertainty will appear—it always will. The question is how we name it and how we respond.

The real question, then, is not simply What should I choose?

It is something deeper: Who am I becoming as I learn to choose?

That is the work of deciding. And it is work worth honoring.

Perhaps it is time we retired the language of undecided and replaced it with something far more truthful and far more hopeful and empowering.

Not “undecided.”

Deciding.

(Written in collaboration with 5.2)