The Curse of Choice
The amount of Freedom a society has is often determined by the amount of Choice it has. Choice in terms of services and product, and choice in terms of what to believe, what you can say, and what you do.
Seems like a logical argument, so why do we have more depression and people suffering anxiety than ever before?
Because of the paradox of “The Paralysis of Choice”.
Let’s have a look back 100 years as an example. People had limited choice in terms of goods and services. There was one type of butter, there was just bread, not every variety of bread under the sun, you bought milk, not skinny or skim or high calcium, or lite….You had no expectation, milk was milk, bread was bread, and butter was butter.
What happens with choice is that when you are faced with 10 different types of milk with different benefits to each one, you start to second guess your choice. You start to wonder if the ‘other’ type is better than the one you normally buy…and all of a sudden you’ve set expectations on the product that were never there when you didn’t have any choice. Then when you have choice and you wonder if the other’ product is better, what happens is you find you can’t make a choice and you procrastinate or become decision-paralysed.
And with all this extra choice and ‘Freedom” comes anxiety, because you’re not sure which choice you should make, expectation that the ‘other’ product is better, and paralysis when you just can’t make a decision.
The same goes for the intangibles such as what to believe, and what you can do. Having a multitude of different beliefs and actions should allow us to become more educated with other ways of thinking and doing things and should lead to education and tolerance…unfortunately what usually happens is that it hardens people’s opinions of what is right and wrong and this comes back to the primal survival response…I need to be part of the herd because there is safety in numbers, so therefore I criticise anyone who has a different belief or opinion from me and my friends.
Wake up to what is going on here. Stop letting choice create anxiety and worst of all procrastination and paralysis.
Live a Life Worth Living
John Rosel
info@the4pillarsoflife.com.au
www.the4pillarsoflife.com.au