People often dread taking decisions and spend considerable time agonising over choices. Overanalysing and overthinking about decisions can result in analysis paralysis, costing us a lot of time, energy depletion and decision fatigue. And the higher the number of options to evaluate, the more likely our limited daily mental resources will be strained, leading to loss of productivity and mental exhaustion. The abundance of information readily available on the Internet has led to greater anxiety and indecision, the so-called ‘Paradox of Choice’.
Why are people so afraid of making decisions? In the past, a wrong decision could lead to permanent damage; in response to traumatic events such as wars, famines or illnesses, survivors would become suspicious, distrustful, afraid of failure, afraid of making mistakes.
So, we are culturally conditioned to be afraid of making decisions. However, Ruth Chang, Professor and Chair of Jurisprudence at the University of Oxford, in her research on hard choices and decision-making, explains that frequently we make choices difficult, because we assume that an option must be better or worse than another.
Let’s assume we need to make a choice between a career as an interior designer or as a finance professional; how can we rationally choose between these two very different career paths? Instead, what we can do is to shift our perspective and commit to one of the two alternatives and make it our best choice. So, if we decide to go for a career as an interior designer, we will create valid reasons for it to become our best choice. This is exactly what we do when we commit to a relationship with someone: when we first started dating X, we could have chosen Y, W or Z as potential partners, but when we chose to commit to X, we created valid reasons to be with him, and in doing so, we transformed him into Mr. Right.
So, difficult choices are often turning points and great opportunities to transform ourselves into actors, to create our own motivations and to actively choose in line with our values to become one person rather than another. When we keep changing our mind, this is a sign that we haven’t yet come to a decision over what to commit.
Although decision-making is often disliked and risk aversion is so deeply rooted, when we commit to one alternative, we open ourselves to be creative, to be able to deal with the unknown, to accept risk-driven experiences and to celebrate mistakes as opportunities to get out of our comfort zone, to learn and grow, with optimism, trust in the world and in the people around us.