The Power of Choice

“The greatest power that a person possesses is the power to choose” – J. Martin Kohe

Life is all about choices, every situation presents a choice and you choose how to react to each. Making that choice is the starting point of everything you do in your life, and your choices matter. You encounter a choice, you analyze your options, and you make a choice and then live with its consequences. Choices need to be guided by rationale, reasonableness, practicability and knowledge.

In situations where the possible consequences are large (i.e. important personal or business decisions), and you are not in your circle or competence, try to be as rational as possible when choosing. In situations where the consequences are small, say which soft drink to choose or which cinema to see and when you are well within your circle of competence let intuitions take over, especially when errors in such decisions do not do great or lasting damage.

However, as we commonly overestimate our knowledge, it is necessary to ensure that you get a clear grasp and understanding of your circle of competence.

This way of choosing or decision making, based on less irrationality, may not be the key to success and happiness but it will definitely avoid much of the self induced unhappiness.

We do not know for sure what makes us successful or happy. But we know with certainty what destroys success or happiness. Negative knowledge (what not to do) is much more potent than positive knowledge (what to do). Strive to eliminate all errors and better thinking will follow. Instinctive negative reactions should be given greater value in your decision making.

Your choices determine your happiness. Choosing a positive attitude over a negative attitude helps you overcome the challenges you face. Such choices are made internally as you talk to yourself and as you are ready to take responsibility for your situation instead of blaming others or circumstances. It is not what happens to you that matters, it is how you choose to respond to those circumstances that counts.

Why do we have a hard time making good choices? The problems seem to arise from our biases, our irrationality and how evolution has wired our brains to react and, as Samuel Johnson says, our illusion of ‘triumph of hope over experience’.

As Rolf Dobelli writes in ‘The Art of Thinking Clearly’ –

Intuitive choices, even if they lack logic, are better under certain circumstances. For many decisions we lack the necessary information and the time to acquire it, so we use mental shortcuts/intuition , rules of thumb or heuristics. Intuition improves with experience.

Intuitive thinking is swift, spontaneous and energy saving. In our evolutionary history, where the price of a first degree error was death, lightning fast reactions were vital and long ruminations were fatal. But where you have the time and most, if not ALL, of the information necessary then single minded rational contemplation, though slow and demanding and energy guzzling, would be the way to go.

Let me exhort you to ‘wake up!’ Recognize that it is your life we are talking about and that only you can live it. So stand-up and take responsibility for it as best as you can so that you can get the best out of it and be as happy as you can in it. Once again remember that choosing not to make a choice is also, your choice, and whether you accept it or not what happens in your life is still, and will always be, only your responsibility.

A surfeit of choices destroys the quality of life. As psychologist, Barry Schwartz noted – Broader selection leads to poorer decisions. Large selection options lead to discontent, as you can never be sure that you have made the optimum choice. Also, you may then not stay with your choice but change it again and again and thus lose focus as well as the opportunity to be happy with what you chose. Also, always “be careful what you choose. You may get it”.

You, no doubt want a full and meaningful life, with happy relationships within the family and with friends and the satisfaction of achievement and its recognition in your family and your workplace.

At home you seek adequate leisure time to build harmonious and happy relationships with your family, relatives and friends, and to enjoy mutual experiences that lead to happy memories thereof.

At work, you seek to recognize and seize opportunities and strive to advance them to a level where you will attain a sense of satisfactory personal achievement, and also, gain the recognition and appreciation of your colleagues and superiors.

To do all this, be like a scientist, think rationally and logically and avoid tautologies or repetitive/ circular thinking. The example Eliyahu M. Goldratt in ‘The Choice’ gives is of a sentence in a sports paper like, “They lost the game because they did not have the motivation to win.” The rest of the article does not provide any direct evidence that the team did not have enough motivation. But, we the readers, accept the statement because – “The team lost the game, didn’t they?” This is a tautology, a repetitive/circular reasoning – where the causality is not substantiated. Most people often resort to such circular logic and hence, they are unable to analyze the circumstances and determine the real root causes of a conflict. To recognize an event that has happened, as something that was meant to happen, is also, a tautology as it is only a demonstration of hindsight. So stop thinking things are fated or destined to happen. Destiny is only a probability, depending on your situation, motivation, effort and choice. Right personal choices lead to a happy life with the right Work – Life balance is something not properly understood, and is highly over-rated. It is not how many hours you spend working, or spend with your family or friends that count, t is the quality of the time you spend with them that counts. Choose your work/job wisely. Work is not work if you enjoy doing it and obtain great satisfaction and joy from doing it. Unfortunately, most people seek the security of easy and routine work, where they watch the clock, seeing the work they do as a burden and thus seeking to do as less as possible, while calling for more leisure, more holidays and more family time.

Leisure or holiday time is very precious and you would do better to spend it doing meaningful and memorable activities or building meaningful relationships, instead of just demanding more salary and casually passing the time. Again, it is not the hours you spend on each activity that count, it is the quality of the time you spend on each that counts. Your work comes first, (except in an emergency), because that provides you the means to take care of your family, your family comes next, before your casual friends/ colleagues. Always, be conscious of the value of the emotional benefits that you get from each hour you spend on your work, or with your family, or your friends. Also, note that leisure time is really very costly and is a perk added to your wages.

It will be good to list your options and do a ‘pre-mortem’ on each as recommended by Physiologist, Gary Klein. Assume that you have made the choice and that you are now a year or two or more into the future when your choice has become a disaster. You are now looking at the result of the choice from a future perspective. Now analyze the causes that led to your choice going wrong. This will help you avoid wrong choices and help avoid regrets later on. Writing your options and analyzing the plus and minus points of each, will be very helpful in understanding the results of said options but finally the choice or decisions still get made on feelings, sensations and thoughts, on what seems right.

Decisions made on comparison of Pro’s and Con’s do not take into account the important ingredient of emotion, which causes you to keep questioning the weighting and importance of each of the factors in the Pro’s and Con’s because the decision derived there from does not suit your emotional choice.

We tend to form opinions very quickly and allow our short term emotions too much importance in deciding on what to do.

To allow for a more rational choice, you need to view your options from a fresh perspective. Ask yourself that if it was your best friend making the decision how would you advise him/her to decide.

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