LET’S TALK ABOUT CHOICES
Hello folks!
First thing first, I have been idle lately and I am really sorry for that. Despite the fact that there are a lot of projects going on around me right now but it’s not fair to say that they are the reasons to blame for costing up all my time. The truth is, I have been crushed by a huge procrastination fever a couple of week ago. And I already planned to write an article about it later, eh, maybe… tomorrow? (Oh, look, a squirrel!).
Okay, today topic is about choices. Raise your hand if you are also often caught up in this situation: you are in a critical stage of your life (colleges, jobs, relationship, doing grocery for dinner…) and you have more than one options to choose. These options can take you to totally different directions and a pro and con list doesn’t help. Your eye balls roll uncontrollably. Your heart races. Your palms are all sweaty. You are paralyzed to make a decision.
“What if I make a wrong choice?”- You wonder.
I personally always find it amusing about the perspective of whether a choice is bad or good. When I was 20, I quit my second year study in a university in Vietnam, took 4 months to learn English, and passed the exam to go to Finland.
My parents were furious. In fact, They got my life all sorted out should I stay. Thanks to their huge connection, they could arrange a job for me in a big airlines after I graduated. On other words, my decision to go abroad screwed up all of their life long plan for me. But you know what they say about youth and impulsive decision, I was in my 20 and I honestly didn’t care much about all that and just carried a big dream to get out and see the world.
4 years have gone and I am now still looking for a job after graduating from college, and 10 thousand kilometers far from home. Should I stay, at the moment I would be well settled in a good position in the airlines with a decent salary, be close with my family and even start one of my own as many of my friends do.
However, my experiences abroad during these four years are absolutely priceless. I discovered whole new aspects of myself, be more open and have met a lot of cool new people, experienced whole new cultures, traveled and met more cool people. Most of all, I found back my interest in writing and discovered the career path I want.
So did I make a wrong choice? It all depends on people’s perspective.
Yes, The uncertainty of not knowing the outcome of a choice is what makes us too afraid to decide. We always want to get the decision right for its all eternity, and from the first choice. However, even if magically we know all the possible outcome, it’s still hard to make the choice because each alternative will have many twists and turns that can get out of your expectation.
If you are a fan of Jared Leto, you absolutely know the movie “Mr. Nobody”, it is an excellent movie about paradox of choices. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend you to do so. For months, I couldn’t get the rhythm of its soundtrack “Everyday” out of my head.
Even when we overcome the paralysis and make a choice, we often end up less satisfy with the result of the choice than we would be if there are fewer options to choose from. Why? Because of the thing called “opportunity cost”, when there are a lot of alternatives to consider, it’s easy to understand that the attractive effects of the alternatives that we reject that make you less satisfied with our decision.
Then, is life simpler as we only have one option?
Well, ironically, it’s not. Even though we often have difficulty to make decisions, researches have shown that we feel more comfortable with more choices than one. Paradox, right? The more choices we have, the more freedom we have. All the shops and grocery stores know that, as you can see thousands of the same product on the shelf in order to make us feel like we are totally ourselves to choose whatever the best options.
Now you may be fed up with all the gibberish I have been baffling about, but my point is: We can never be truly happy with our decision as long as we still label our choices as bad or good. Seriously! In my case above, it is really difficult to say whether I made a right or wrong decision because each option took me to two totally different directions. But one thing I know for sure is that as long as I have no regret or resentment against it, then I am happy and move on with my decision.
Thus, next time you have a hard time to make a decision of your own, my only advise for you is to think of this is only YOUR DECISION, neither bad nor good. Don’t try to label it, because even if the option sounds stupid at first and you see the obvious disadvantage of it, you still never know what direction this decision will take you in the long way. Get yourselves over it and when you look back, you only see it as a valuable lesson.
No labeling your options is also a good way to avoid of being disappointed. When you have the perception of among all alternative, there is one more superior than the others, you may unconsciously raise your expectation and easily get disappointed when it doesn’t have the outcome you expected. Therefore, lower your expectation and do not think too much about your choice decision will give you a pleasant surprise of the possible outcome.
And to conclude my blog today, let’s all listen to our Music Friday again : All will be well by Gabe Dixon band.Have a nice weekend!
