Choice and Happiness

Inspired from Psychology Today October 2007.
Unlike our ancestors, we have the time and energy to ruminate about our options.

How to Make Options Your Allies. You can outfox your evolved emotional makeup

God Is Not In The Details: Practice making decisions quickly about small things and routine purchases. Limit the time you spend comparing specs. Build confidence in your "gut" by attending to it.

Don't Dwell: Refuse to spend too much time regretting a decisions or blaming yourself for a poor outcome. Instead learn from your mistakes and determine to do better.

Keep Your Expectations Realistic: Needing it all is guaranteed to make you unhappy.

Risk a Wrong Decision: Fight emotional paralysis by seeing that even making "wrong" choice is often better than making no choice at all; you still learn through trial and error. It is better to blunder your way through life than to avoid making decisions.

Don't Look Back: Look forward to the future.


We know that today, most choices are frivolous and rarely jeopardize our existence, though fact doesnt stop us from fretting. And we overestimate the importance of big choices all the more. Isnt the ability to select partners, profession, doctors and lawyers critical to our quality of life?

We tell ourselves that when it comes to big decisions we must make the right one, or the fallout will be enormous.

Avoid thinking that we can tailor a fulfilling life from smorgasbord of options. Limiting choice doesn't just curb anxiety, it actually creates happiness. When you can accept limitation or make a commitment you feel fulfilled.

Choice can be great if we refuse to obsess about all the alternatives. The problem is finding a way to handle the psychology mechanism.

Action: Limiting our own options and then refusing to make a federal case about the final outcome. In spite of our evolved emotional makeup, options can be our allies.

Case in point: Not agonizing about a choice is a choice in itself.
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So true, I do feel so much better after reading this article. A decision is made and no point I spend too much time regretting a decisions or blaming myself. Besides I trial and error from the decision I made. So next time it will get better and like my girl friend had advice me "Look forward to the future".