Relative Freedom (In Part 1 of this series, we explored Sway, by Ori and Rom Brafman, a powerful book that discusses several psychological forces that drive irrational behavior. Here, in Part 2, we continue by looking at Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.)

How free are you?

Some people [...]]]>

 
Relative Freedom
(In Part 1 of this series, we explored Sway, by Ori and Rom Brafman, a powerful book that discusses several psychological forces that drive irrational behavior. Here, in Part 2, we continue by looking at Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.)

How free are you?

Some people pretend that they are completely free to make their own decisions.
But it’s not true.
Everyone is influenced in an endless number of ways.

Don’t give up, though!
We can focus on maximizing our freedom.

Learn about the common forces that influence you, and you have a chance to neutralize those influences, or use them to your advantage!

One of the ways that we make decisions is through comparison.

Most people don’t know if they want something, unless they compare it to other things.

Let’s say that there are two different items that I’m planning to buy.
One has a retail price of $20, and one has a retail price $200.
A seven dollar discount off the $20 item seems great, and I’ll go out of my way to get to the store that offers that discount.

But a seven dollar discount off a $200 item?
I’m not likely to go out of my way to get that.
It seems like no big deal.

But it’s still the same $7 that I’m saving!

You can be sure that marketers are aware of this, and use it to make an item seem more desirable.

Have you ever bought something, just because of the money you’d save?

One way to resist the influence of a good buy, is to change your point of view.
Instead of looking at the buy in terms of what you’re saving, look at the total spend in the bigger context of your available money, priorities, etc.

Zoom out, to take a wider point of view, the pull of some little advantage gets much weaker.

There’s another problem with our love of comparison.
On our own, we tend to ignore choices that are difficult to compare to what we know.

Marketers, on the other hand, use uniqueness to sell.
They’ll make their choice sound really good, and then emphasize the uniqueness of the product so much, that we can’t compare it to anything else.

Put uniqueness in perspective, by asking yourself if that unique benefit is really so unique, and if it’s valuable to you.

 
Ownership
Studies consistently show that owners value their things more than buyers are willing to pay.

Why?
We fall in love with the things we possess, and even the ideas that we’ve accepted.

How does this effect how we decide and buy?

The feeling of losing something we own, is more important to us than the money we get for selling it.

Similarly, if we’ve already mentally taken possession of some potential object, the thought of losing that ownership far outweighs what it costs to buy it.

Marketers make use of this bias in two ways, so be prepared:

• Companies give us a free or ridiculously cheap trial ownership in a product or service. They want us to feel ownership, and they know that we’ll hate to give it up when the trial is over.
• Companies give us guarantees. Just try it, and return it if you don’t like it. The companies know that once we take possession of something, we’re not likely to give up the ownership.

Protect yourself.
Ignore trials of things that you don’t really want.
And don’t let a guarantee sucker you into trying something out that doesn’t really interest you.

You’re always told that you have nothing to lose by trying out some product.
But you do.
Once you try something, and take possession of it, it’s much harder to return it, even if you don’t really like it that much.

 
I’ll Decide Tomorrow
Most of us feel compelled to put off our decisions, and keep our options open.
We push off making a choice, even it when it costs us money, energy, or time.

When we see options disappearing, even unexciting options, the immediate threat of loss makes those options seem big and important.

The antidote to delay is focusing on the consequences of not deciding.
Every delay is a decision.
Every delay has consequences.

We lose many opportunities because we delay making decisions.

Under the Influence How do you make decisions?

Do you analyze the situation, and weigh all the pros and cons before taking action? Or do you just go with your gut, without giving it much thought?

Whichever way you decide, you probably feel that you’re in charge of your decisions, [...]]]> Under the Influence
How do you make decisions?

Do you analyze the situation, and weigh all the pros and cons before taking action?
Or do you just go with your gut, without giving it much thought?

Whichever way you decide, you probably feel that you’re in charge of your decisions, and your life.

Sometimes our gut feelings are based on all kinds of subtle issues that our unconscious mind has digested to give us a quick answer.

Sometimes our feelings express what is truly important to us, even though we haven’t put it into words and thoughts.

There’s nothing wrong with going with your feelings.
Conscious thinking isn’t the only way to understand the world.

But our feelings are not always our own.

The world around us shapes our feelings.
We’re led to desire things, or act in ways that don’t make sense rationally, and go against our deepest feelings of what’s really important in our lives.

I’m happy going with my feelings if they’re really mine, if they’re based on what’s really important to me.

Inner Forces
There are people around us that manipulate our feelings for their own financial, political, or personal goals.

But that’s not the only way that our feelings and thoughts get twisted.

Our mind is built in ways that favor certain types of thinking, feeling, and acting.
(You can think of these as inner forces that shape our behavior.)

Often these forces work to our advantage.
But sometimes, they work against us.

Recently, I’ve read two powerful books that reveal some of these inner forces that drive irrational behavior.
Both books are based on solid research, but they’re written for ordinary, intelligent people to read and enjoy.

In this blog post, we’ll explore the first one, Sway, by Ori and Rom Brafman.
We’ll provide an overview of some of the forces at work within you.

I’ve also added some ideas about how you can consciously weaken the power of these forces so you can make a more clear-headed choice.

Pain vs. Gain
We feel the pain associated with a loss (or an anticipated loss) much more strongly than the joy of experiencing a gain.

It’s like your brain turns up the volume on the pain of loss, so you can’t hear the joy of gain.

How does this change the way you act?
You naturally focus, or even obsess on minimizing loss, instead of maximizing gain.

This force makes you avoid trying new things and making changes in your life.
You’ll do anything to avoid making a mistake.

Counterforce:

1. The best choices offer long-term benefits.If we stay focused on little moments, we’ll always be afraid of losing some quick, instant pleasure.

   Consciously focus on the long-term benefits.
   Build up those benefits in your mind.
   Make the sounds louder, the image brighter, the colors more vivid.

   Turn up the volume on those benefits.
   Then compare them to the little things that give you quick pleasure.

2. There’s something even more powerful that you can do.
   Your mind loves to focus on what you might lose.
   Your mind wants to protect the things that it possesses, or pretends to possess. 

   Let it.

   Think about the powerful things that you want, that you find so hard to act upon.
   Take possession of them in your mind.

   Feel them as yours.
   Feel yourself enjoying the benefits.

   Don’t obsess on the fear of losing them.
   But let yourself feel that fear for just a moment.

   And let yourself feel a strong desire to protect those precious possessions.

 
Commitment
Once you make even a small commitment to an approach, it’s hard to consider alternatives.

Counterforce:
Take a few minutes.

Imagine several different people who have made dramatically different choices.
See them committed to different choices, paths, lives.
And see each one happy and enjoying her life.

Let each one totally forget about the other choices, and just enjoy what she has.

It’s easier sometimes to imagine other people making different choices.
It’s not as unsettling as imagining a different life for yourself.

 
Chameleon Effect
People change their behavior and performance to match the opinions people have of them.

Treat me as mediocre or weak, and I’ll absorb that view, and act that way.
I’ll take on your image of me.

Counterforce:
Imagine yourself happier, more successful, more confident, or more powerful.
(Success can be anything you want it to be: relationships, family, career, business, money. You define it)

Now imagine successful people treating you as a successful person.
See and hear the way that they interact with you.
Feel the emotion in their voices, and see the emotion on their faces.

They see you as a different person.
Now accept their image of you.

 
Group Conformity and Dissent
There’s a powerful force within us that pushes us to go along with others and not stand out.
It’s much easier to think for yourself, and take a different point of view/action, when there is even one person already dissenting.

Counterforce:
Whenever it seems that you have to choose what everyone is choosing, imagine a powerful, popular person who is calmly choosing a different path than everyone else.

See that person as friendly and well-liked.
Pick any point of view for him as long as it’s different than the crowd.

This opens you to possibility, and gives you more freedom to make your own choices.

(In part 2 of this series we’ll explore the book, Predictably Irrational)

Our desires and fears color everything we think and see. We’re not completely objective about anything.

But, it’s easier to look at someone else’s situation and see it more clearly, more truly.

Do you ever find yourself going in circles, unable [...]]]>

The Gatekeeper
Why is it so hard to see the truth about ourselves?

Our desires and fears color everything we think and see.
We’re not completely objective about anything.

But, it’s easier to look at someone else’s situation and see it more clearly, more truly.

Do you ever find yourself going in circles, unable to decide, unable to take action?
You feel the urge to move in some positive direction, and at the same time, you feel compelled to stay where you are, or move in some trivial way that is no movement at all.

Sometimes, we’re aware of being stuck, and it pains us.
Other times, we just dismiss it as no big deal.

Yet, when we look at others who are stuck like this, we can’t understand what’s wrong with them.

We often say to others the equivalent of “just do it.”
Personal Development seems easy from the outside, looking in.

Maybe you know people who are addicts, or who have some compulsive behavior, or phobias.

And you, who don’t suffer from their addiction or behavior, just can’t understand why they do what they do.

It seems like there’s an invisible force that pushes them in the wrong direction, or a barrier that stops them from moving in the right direction.

Much of the time, outside advice is no more powerful than the voice in you that tells you to move.
And you remain stuck.

We could speak of the power of habits.
When we’ve developed a habit, our mind works to maintain it and protect it.
We act in a certain way without thinking.

But that’s not the whole story.
There are many habits that you can break with attention and persistence.

While other behaviors haunt you.
As though there were someone inside you that won’t let you pass through a gate that leads to another life.

It’s as though there’s a jailer, or gatekeeper who guards you, and won’t let you out.

The Enemy Within?

This force within us that won’t let us move and change, seems like an enemy.

It sabotages our success, our growth, our relationships.
It keeps us stuck in a life that we want to transform.

We feel trapped, imprisoned.
Sometimes we feel as though we’re stuck in someone else’s life, while our true life is waiting for us beyond that invisible gate.

Will we ever pass through the gate to the life we ache for?

As long as we think that the Gatekeeper is our enemy, the more he will block our path.

Surprisingly, the Gatekeeper is not your enemy.
He’s here to protect you.
He’s the parent, the one who says “no.”

The gatekeeper is the one who treats you like a child, and thinks that you can only be safe if he holds you by the hand.

Think back to your time as a child.
Most parents try to protect their children from real, or imagined dangers.

Parents tell us where to go and what to do, and they tell us to stop.
Is there any word more associated with parenting than No?

Most of us move beyond taking orders from our parents at some point in our lives.
But we’ve internalized the idea that protecting ourselves from danger means acting like a parent.

That means standing at the door and saying no.

Who Stands Watch Over Your Life and Keeps You Safe?

We need a new way of looking at safety, and protecting ourselves.

We can’t just dismiss this part of ourselves that wants to keep us safe.
We have an innate, fundamental desire to be safe.

But we can replace our inner parent with a different kind of guardian.

We can appoint a trusted adviser, someone level-headed who will suggest which actions are more risky and less risky.

When you work with an adviser, you take responsibility for your own safety, and you accept that every action has risk.

And you are responsible to make the final decision.

Being a child often means not deciding for yourself.
It means letting someone else take responsibility for what happens.

Are we ready to stop being helpless children, who can always blame someone else for whatever goes wrong?
Are you tired of acting like a spoiled child, who wants his own way, but won’t accept any responsibility?

Are you ready to protect yourself?

I’m not suggesting that people with serious phobias or compulsive behavior can erase all their problems with a simple change in attitude.

But that change in attitude makes an extraordinary difference for everyone.

And for many of us, this change in attitude, changes everything.

In the first two articles in this series, we explored seven ways that choice becomes a burden and a problem in your life.

Then, in the third article, we introduced three tools you can use to overcome those seven problems, and get back control of your life.

Here, we present four [...]]]>  

In the first two articles in this series, we explored seven ways that choice becomes a burden and a problem in your life.

Then, in the third article, we introduced three tools you can use to overcome those seven problems, and get back control of your life.

Here, we present four more tools to master the problems of choice.

 
The First Tool: Define Yourself!
Consider the three areas of:

1. Being (who you are, including character and attitudes)
2. Having (including possessions and knowledge)
3. Doing (your actions, and the skills that enable you to act)

You define yourself, and let others judge you, according to a combination of the things you have, the activities you do, and the kind of person that you are.

You enrich or burden your life through the standards and goals you set for yourself in each of the three areas. This is key to personal growth.

Any religious, spiritual, or moral teaching speaks about appropriate standards or goals for each of three areas.
But the details of each area, and the right balance of those three is up to you figure out.

Among the three, defining yourself by what you possess probably causes you the most trouble.
I’m not suggesting that you give up possessions and go live in a cave. But there’s a big difference between enjoying your possessions, and defining yourself by them.

Some people try to escape the challenges of possessions by simplifying their life, and eliminating certain things from their life.
That’s because it’s often easier to go cold turkey, and stay away from something, then to use it in moderation.

But most of us don’t want to live in a black and white, all or nothing world.
And everyone needs to learn to choose among conflicting desires.

There will always be many things around us, competing for our attention.

Let the important and necessary goals and actions dominate your time and life, while the little stuff remains in the background.

Remember that how you define yourself will determines which choices will be most important to you, and will take your time and attention.

 
The Second Tool: Use the Help of Experts To Learn and Make Decisions
Do you know what you’re weak at, or ignorant about? That gives you some clues to when you’ll need help.

We live in a time when information is everywhere. For information junkies, it’s a wonderful time.

The Internet is full of free information.
But we’re also surrounded by information products.

These products are often sold with the message that “all you need is information”.
News media also market themselves with that same message.

But don’t confuse possessing information (even if it is completely accurate), with knowing how to use it to make decisions.
We often need time and real-world experience with a subject to understand the subtleties of it.

If you have a sick friend with a medical problem, for example, he has three needs:

• Know about the full range of treatments
• Find a medical professional who considers all possible treatments without bias
• Understand (in layman’s terms) the risks and advantages to various treatments

But your friend can’t expect to match the expertise of the person who is treating him.
At some point, your friend needs to rely on his doctor’s judgment.

When you need skilled help to make important choices and decisions, do your homework and check out the expert. Then let her advise you.

And, if you want to develop real expertise of your own in a field, understand that it will take the right information, the right mindset, and skills developed from using the information and making mistakes.

 
The Third Tool: Compare and Take Action

Earlier in the series, we spoke about the pitfalls of comparison.
But comparison can be a great motivator.

Seeing clearly the gap between where you are and where you want to be generates the energy to reach your goals.

And then there is the idea of modeling.

You find a person who is excellent in some field that you’re interested in.
Then you identify his attitudes, skills, and knowledge that fuel that excellence.

Compare that to what you have, and take action to acquire similar attitudes, skills, and knowledge.

 
The Fourth Tool: Test Yourself With Action
Develop an action-oriented mindset.

Convince yourself that only action shows you what you really can do, and gives you the opportunity to improve.

Some people want to plan forever before taking action.
They want everything to be perfect.

That’s not going to happen!
Instead, look for excellence, not perfection.

Plan enough to get a rough idea of what needs to be done, and have an absolutely clear picture of what you need to do first.
Take action.

Look at your results.
Some people think that the only meaningful results are when everything goes as planned.

We all want to achieve our goals.
But when our results don’t match our expectations, we have an incredible opportunity to learn and grow.

Take action.
Understand and accept the value of your results.

And with those results in mind, think about your next step.
And so on.

When you hear an interesting idea, take it to the next level by thinking abut how you can use it.
Focus on one clear next step that moves you in the right direction.

And take action again.

Out of Control? Are you in control of your life? Life is wonderful, and dangerous and unpredictable.

Sure, you pretend that you have everything under control. But you know that’s not true.

Pretending to be in control makes you feel safe. And everyone wants to feel safe.

It’s hard to think about personal growth, [...]]]>

Out of Control?
Are you in control of your life?
Life is wonderful, and dangerous and unpredictable.

Sure, you pretend that you have everything under control.
But you know that’s not true.

Pretending to be in control makes you feel safe.
And everyone wants to feel safe.

It’s hard to think about personal growth, enjoying life, or anything else, when you don’t feel safe.

The problem is that most of the world is completely beyond your control.
You’re surrounded by possibility, and asked to make hundreds of choices on what to buy, what to do, and what media to listen to.

And most of these choices don’t matter at all.

Seven Ways That Choice Fouls Up Your Life
In Parts 1 and 2 of this series we discussed 7 ways in which choice can become a burden and foul up our lives:

1. More products, more choices, more effort: You feel that today’s world with endless options and endless choices, so many of them about trivial things, are an unfair burden that is stealing your time and life from you
2. Expert Choices: In a world of overbearing choice, sometimes we’re encouraged to make choices that we don’t have the expertise to make, and sometimes these are life and death medical choices
3. You are Your Choices: You use your choices to define who you are. Today, you have more and more choices that seem to express who you are. But endless trivial choices can’t really say anything about you. It’s easy to lose track of who you really are
4. Negative Media Rules the World: We naturally give more weight to sensational and negative information, and the media uses it to steal our attention. And the more we hear something the more we think it’s real. We have more and more media in our lives, more and more information choices that offer no choice at all. We’re being buried in the negative
5. Missed Opportunities and Regret: Every choice that you make leaves some possibility behind, and leads you to regret your choice
6. The Curse of Comparison: When you encounter more and more options, the urge to compare yourself with others can drive you to want more and more, and doom you to be forever unsatisfied
7. Control and Blame: In a world of increasing possibility, there’s more and more that you can’t have, and can’t control. If you blame yourself for this, and look at the situation as your failure, this can take you down the dark road of depression.

 
We’ll look at 7 ways to lighten that burden, and focus our energy on what matters in our lives. In this article we’ll look at the first three.

 
The First Way: Decide what’s important to you
Do some inner exploration and figure out what you want out of life – the things that make you feel alive, not the 9 to 5 maintenance stuff.

Demand the truth from yourself. It’s sometimes hard to tell the difference between the things that you really want, and the things that your friends and the media tell you to want.

See if you can split up your world into four buckets: maintenance (the things you have to do to survive whether you like them or not, like eating or sleeping), must have (things that you can live without, but you’d feel like you were missing part of yourself), nice to have (pleasant and fun stuff that spices up your life), and filler activities (doesn’t matter much whether you do them or not).

Be thoughtful about what tasks you really have to do for maintenance. You want to shrink this area as much as possible.

Understanding what parts of your life fall into each bucket is a great start to taking control of your life.

The follow-up step to understanding is to set goals that focus on the things that are important to you. Plan your days so you grow the time you spend on your must haves as much possible. Allow a dash of time for your nice to haves, and try to eliminate the fillers.

The maintenance and must have activities should occupy the bulk of your days, with only a little time set aside for the nice to haves.

 
The Second Way: Live the difference between important and trivial
After understanding and planning, comes action! It’s not enough to think through the parts of your life and classify them into the buckets. You have to learn to see those categories as you take action throughout your day.

Now here’s a really crucial point. The same activity can be found in all four buckets, depending on what the activity is focused on.

For example, you can spend time on the Internet searching for critical information, must have information, nice to have information, or filler.

And it’s easy to start these kinds of activities doing some maintenance activity (like online bill pay), and end up just surfing around (nice to have, or filler activity).

Purchases (and the time spent deciding on a purchase) can fall into any of the four categories. Be honest with yourself about the kind of purchase you’re after and limit the amount of time for a purchase decision for the less important categories.

You need the same honesty about all your choices and decisions. Are you dealing with something trivial?
Insist on making those choices quickly and easily, without stress.

When you allocate time in your day for exploring media, remember to give the bulk of that time to information sources which aren’t biased toward negative, sensational reporting about trivia.

When you’re running errands (particularly where at least one of them is important, and is the reason you went out to begin with), be careful of how much you time you let yourself take for the more trivial activities.

 
The Third Way: Laugh
Don’t take the trivial stuff too seriously.
Make quick decisions about trivial things, and get on with the more important parts of your life.

(In the next article in this series we’ll look at four more ways to take control of your life.)

Barry Schwartz has written an insightful book on the dark side of choice, called The Paradox of [...]]]> Very few things in this world are one-sided, all good or all bad.
In Part 1 of this series I introduced the idea that the extraordinary human power of choice can lead us into our own personal hell.

Barry Schwartz has written an insightful book on the dark side of choice, called The Paradox of Choice.

I’ve extracted and combined the many ideas that Schwartz discusses into 7 key pathways or gateways into a personal hell.

In part one, I covered the first four gateways. In this article, we’ll discuss the remaining three gateways.

 
The Fifth Gate: Missed Opportunities and Regret
Every choice that you make leaves some possibility behind.
You’re always making trade-offs: price or safety, space or style.

Any trade-off you make is unsettling.
The truth is that you and I don’t want to settle for one option, while giving up the others.

We want it all.

When you plan your future choices, studies show that you find it easy to imagine choosing one option at the expense of another (for example trading safety for cost).

But when you get to the moment of choice, you find it much harder to actually give up one possibility for another.

In this world of endless choice, you are confronted with a mountain of alternatives, each with strengths and weaknesses.

There are few simple decisions.
Instead your decisions are full of a long list of trade-offs.

Studies show that we mentally exaggerate the loss associated with making a trade-off and missing an opportunity.

It’s as if you imagine yourself already possessing all the options.
Then, in your moment of choice, you feel yourself losing all the options but one.

When many options must be left behind for a choice to be made, you have a huge collection of perceived loss. These decisions can become painful enough to leave you paralyzed.

Result?
You do nothing at all.

And if you do take action and choose, you’re weighed down by the missed opportunities, and little satisfied with the choice you’ve made, and any benefits that it brings.

 
Regret
Do you ever feel regret?
It’s such a haunting feeling.

It gnaws and pulls at you, and whispers that you’ve missed out on great opportunities, by making the wrong choice or doing nothing at all.

If I asked you what you regret most in the last six months, you’d probably mention actions that didn’t turn out well.

If I asked you what you regret most in your life as a whole, you’d probably identify your failures to take action, and pursue things that you’re passionate about.

When you face so many alternatives, it’s easy to imagine that you’ve made the wrong choice, and that another path would have been better.

And you get buried in regret for not taking action, because you’re afraid to make a choice, and give up all the other possibilities.

When we think about the options for a choice we’re making, we imagine the regret we will feel for making a bad choice, and this drives us to delay or avoid making any choice at all.

In today’s world of endless choices, and hesitant decisions, regret follows us everywhere, and grows stronger with every decision we make, and fail to make.

 
The Sixth Gate: The Curse of Comparison

Whenever you say that something is good or bad, there is an implicit or explicit comparison to something else.

Social scientist Alex Michalos writes that people measure their satisfaction based on thinking about three gaps:

1. The gap between what you have and what you want
2. The gap between what you have and what you think others like you have
3. The gap between what you have and the best you have had in the past

When you encounter more and more options, you are driven to want more and more.

Why?
You can see others enjoying those possibilities, whether in real life, or the media, and imagine yourself in their place.

You can see yourself possessing those things, or enjoying those experiences, or being that person.

Comparisons between what we have and what we might have can be a powerful driving force to motivate us to take action.
That sounds like a good thing, and it often is.

Comparisons can enhance or diminish your experience of what you have.
But typically, our comparisons make what we have seem dull and empty.

What if those comparisons are not used to motivate us?
What if comparison is used in the absence of action?

In a world of options, and possibilities, comparison can readily convince us to be unhappy or unsatisfied with what we have.

How can any one option compare with a whole world of alternatives?
The potential excitement and mystery of the new and unknown dulls the familiar beauty that we already know.

And if we are not ready or willing to take action to change our situation, we are setting ourselves up to be miserable.

 
The Seventh Gate: Control and Blame

Do you need to feel in control of your life to be happy?

Studies were done where animals were put in unpleasant situations (mild shocks) that they could do nothing to stop.

These animals were later put in situations where the animals could act to positively affect their environment.

But the animals sat passively and did nothing. They had learned to be helpless.
There are many parallels between helpless animals and clinically depressed people. They both feel that they have no control over their situations, and are passive and miserable.

It’s not as simple, though, as feeling you have no control over a single situation.
There are always things that you and I have no control over.

Dr. Martin Seligman suggests that helplessness induced by failure or lack of control leads to depression if a person explains to herself that the causes of failure are far-reaching, recurring, and personal.

Do you tell yourself that your successes are a result of your own actions, in a way that’s readily repeatable, and relevant to large portions of your life?
And, do you tell yourself that any failures are due to temporary, narrowly relevant causes outside of yourself?

That’s what optimists do, according to Dr. Seligman.
Optimists see success under their own control, with endless possibilities to repeat success throughout their life. Failures are little bumps in the road that will go away.

Pessimists, on the other hand, see failure everywhere, and blame themselves for it.
They are prime candidates for serious depression.

Our world seems full of unlimited choices and possibility, but we can only get a tiny bit of it, while the rest seems forever denied to us.

We’re often disappointed with the results of our choices, and easily label our choices as failures, just because we can imagine some better alternative.

In this world of great choice, and great dissatisfaction, we see explosive growth in depression.

 
What’s Next?

We’ve discussed seven ways that choice can darken your life.
These are real dangers.

But the burdens that come with endless alternatives are not inevitable.
In Part 3 of this series, we’ll look at some changes in mindset that help us take advantage of choice and possibility, while avoiding the seven gates.

 
Resources
The Paradox of Choice Online

Choice is critical to the feeling and practice of freedom. Without choice, you would be doing exactly what you’re told to do, every moment of the day.

You’d be following your programming like a machine with no soul.

A kind of pretend choice is [...]]]> Do you think that having more choices is good for you?

Choice is critical to the feeling and practice of freedom. Without choice, you would be doing exactly what you’re told to do, every moment of the day.

You’d be following your programming like a machine with no soul.

A kind of pretend choice is where you can choose between the options that are given you, but the options seem empty of value, or virtually identical.
Typically, in that case, you have no power to change the options that are available.

That’s not much of a choice either!

Real choice, on the other hand, goes way beyond the choices that the world drops in front you.

You think about what’s possible for you, and you choose to go after those possibilities. These kind of choices can lead you to extraordinary places within yourself.

These choices are critical to finding the greatness within you.
These choices are critical to making a better world.

There are many wonderful things that we can say about choice, and I’ve written about the positive side of it many times.

 
Choices that make your world dark and bitter

But it’s not all joy and wonder and fun and games.
In fact, sometimes choice brings us hell on earth.

Barry Schwartz has written a really insightful book on the dark side of choice, called The Paradox of Choice.

Even though some choice is good, we’ll explain why too much choice can be an incredible burden.

I’ve extracted and combined the many ideas that Schwartz discusses into 7 key issues. Each of these issues, if you’re unaware of it, and unprepared for it, is like a pit or gateway that opens into a more burdened, dysfunctional life – a personal hell.

These gates are not about one-time problems. They relate to ongoing, chronic issues.

 
The First Gate: More products, more choices, more effort
There have never been more choices, in breakfast cereals, cookies, cars – nearly every consumer product you can think of. But this choice has a cost.

Studies show that people want more control over the details of their lives, at the same time they also want to simplify their lives. In other words, they want more choices, but they don’t want to deal with the complexity that comes with all those choices.

If you had to make a choice every second about what to do, you would go crazy.
Habits and rules and customs make certain behavior automatic so you don’t have to choose in those situations. This can make life simpler, but at the cost of missing some opportunities.

In studies, people will tell you that they’re happy to have more choices, but in practice they don’t begin to make use of all the opportunities they have to make choices.

The explosion of options and opportunities that is everywhere in affluent countries has 3 related, unfortunate events

• Decisions require more effort
• Mistakes are more likely
• Psychological consequences of mistakes more severe.

There are so many options, wherever you turn, that researching and deciding can eat up your time, and your time is your life. You feel this.
No one has enough time, and it’s getting worse.

You feel that all of these choices, so many of them about trivial things, are an unfair burden that is stealing your life from you.

 
The Second Gate: Expert Choices
Even worse is the increasing freedom that your doctor gives you to choose your treatment. Doctors never used to ask a patient’s opinion about anything medical, so it’s great that we’re starting to be informed and have choices.

But again, studies show that patients often don’t want the freedom that has been given them.

65% of people say they would want to choose their treatment if they got cancer, but only 12% actually want to choose their treatment, after they get cancer.

In a life and death situation that requires expertise that you don’t have, it’s frightening and dangerous to make decisions. It increases your stress level, and makes you unhappy.

Even if you can find good information to help you decide among options, do you really know how to analyze, sift, weigh, and evaluate it to make the right choices? I love looking for information on the web, but when there are a thousand opinions about everything, how do you use that information?

 
The Third Gate: You are Your Choices
More and more, you and I use our choices to tell the world who we are and what we care about. Often you will make choices to express who you are, even when you know that those choices have no real consequences.

For example, there’s a true story about two friends who drove together to the American embassy in a foreign country to vote, even though each knew that they would vote for competing candidates and cancel out each other’s vote.

You use your choices to define who you are, sometimes so others know, and sometimes, just so you know.

This is all great.
But, living with more and more choices, you start using more and more of them to express who you are. The most trivial choices become important when you think that others will judge you based on those choices.

And when you feel that every choice is being watched, your discomfort and stress level goes up, and up.

 
The Fourth Gate: Negative Media Rules the World
You’re being attacked with more and more information every day. It’s natural to expect yourself to pay attention to what’s important and take action on it.

You tell yourself that all the time.
But in the face of a growing mountain of information, you can’t satisfy that sense of responsibility.

And studies show that we give more weight to information based on how vivid, and how negative it is.
It’s the unfortunate truth that negative information draws your attention more than positive. I guess it’s part of your survival programming to react to the negative more strongly.

And the media abuses that knowledge to focus on the negative to hold your attention, and maybe sell you something.

And then you expect yourself to do something with all that information? You can’t just ignore it, can you?
And another problem.
Studies show that you take the frequency of certain events being reported as evidence of the pervasiveness of those events. The media uses the negative because it grabs our attention, and your natural response is to think that the negative dominates the whole world.

This distortion causes you to dramatically miscalculate the various risks you face in life, and leads to some very bad choices.

(In Part II, we’ll discuss the remaining three gates that can lead you to a hellish life, when you’re unaware of them.)

Control is overrated.

Sure, we want the world to work in somewhat predictable ways, but at what cost?

When my kids were little and fighting, sometimes the only thing I thought about was getting control and stopping the fighting.

And for a person or country that’s under attack and wants to make [...]]]> Fear and Predictability

Control is overrated.

Sure, we want the world to work in somewhat predictable ways, but at what cost?

When my kids were little and fighting, sometimes the only thing I thought about was getting control and stopping the fighting.

And for a person or country that’s under attack and wants to make it stop, control seems to be everything, even if that control limits someone’s freedom and self-expression.

We get scared when the world seems out of control and we don’t know what to do.
We like being in predictable situations where we can fit in and know what to do, without challenge or struggle.

Controlling the Children in School

What’s the purpose of public education? Why did we and other countries set up mandatory schools?

If you ask the woman on the street or even educators what the purpose is of public schools, a few common answers would be:

• Teach important basic skills
• Make good workers
• Make good citizens
• Make good people
• Help each person to reach his or her personal best
• Teach people how to learn

I’ve had some wonderful teachers over the years that really cared about their students.

But let’s talk about how the institution got started.
The real answers are frightening

After the King of Prussia lost some major war to Napoleon, he created and enforced compulsory schooling. Following his advisors, he believed that schooling from an early age would create:

• People who were more loyal to the state than their own families
• People who wouldn’t question authority (you had to ask permission before being allowed to ask a question)
• People who have the same opinion on issues which were important to the state

This kind of school is all about training the children to be controlled.
But this type of school wasn’t for everybody in the kingdom.

Schools for Leadership
There was a second type of school set up for a small segment of the population.
These schools encouraged questions and original thought.
Who were these schools for? Children from selected areas of society. They were expected to be leaders.

In other words, those who would be leaders were taught to think for themselves, and most people were taught to be dutiful, non-thinking followers.

When compulsory education was established in this country, it was modeled after, you guessed it, the Prussian schools – the ones for the followers.

Has it changed much over the years?

In many classrooms keeping the kids under control is more important than what they learn.

In many classrooms teaching the basic skills which employers want is far more important than teaching children to think for themselves, and explore their greatest talents.

How many classrooms encourage dissent?
How many classrooms view any sign of opposition as arrogance?
How many times do we hear the message that all success in life is dependent on school?

I’m not an educator. I’m not an expert in educational methodologies.
I do have great respect for the people who face the daily task of teaching our children, often under less than ideal conditions.

And yes, classrooms can’t be totally wild and random and at the whims of the children.

And there are many subjects that should be taught to most children.

With all that said, we desperately need some vision for how schools can help children to find the greatness within them.

When will we get past the desire for a controlled and predictable cookie-cutter education, and move on to learning and personal greatness?

Ejcooksey was kind enough to send a thinking bloggers award in my direction, and I’m proud to accept it.

The award is meant to publicize blogs that help us think in new directions. These blogs introduce us to new ways to look at some aspect of our personal or professional lives.

The [...]]]> Thinking Bloggers Award

Ejcooksey was kind enough to send a thinking bloggers award in my direction, and I’m proud to accept it.

The award is meant to publicize blogs that help us think in new directions.
These blogs introduce us to new ways to look at some aspect of our personal or professional lives.

The rules of the award are simple enough. If you accept the award, you pick 5 blogs that have touched you in this way and pass the thought. (You’ll find my picks at the bottom of this post)

Carried by Thoughts

Thoughts can be wings to bring us to new places, or keys to open up dusty parts of our mind, our life, and our society.

Sometimes the ideas that we hear on blogs, and the thinking that results, is all in our heads. This sort of thinking doesn’t challenge our hearts or our sense of who we are.

Then, there are times when the ideas that we see on blogs bring us to a type of thinking that starts in the head and reaches down to the heart.

It’s not easy to ask probing questions of ourselves and of the world around us.
And it’s deeply challenging to follow those questions far inside ourselves, and listen to the voice that commands us to take action on what we’ve found.

Thoughts are not strong enough alone to take us on this quest. We need powerful feelings to wake us from our ordinary dreams, and show us the way.

• Do I dare to meet my twin, who has let go of the ordinary for a promise of greatness?
• Do I have the emotional courage to rebuild a part of my life or world that’s not what it could be?
• Do I feel the excitement and fear of facing something momentous, something that seems too big for me, yet calls me anyway?
• Do we take a deep breath and chase that mysterious voice, unsure of where we will end up, but sure that we must explore?

Life has many levels.
I enjoy blogs that help me think in new ways, even when they don’t challenge me.
But to me, the most interesting blogs are as much about emotional courage as they are about great thinking.

Courage and Self-Reflection

It may be that my heart is overactive, and I should consider a retreat to the illusion of cool intellectual objectivity that I once lived in.

Still, I’m often impressed by the courage that’s shown by so many bloggers, as they search to understand their hearts, their lives, and their world. I feel blessed to be allowed to look over their shoulders as they journal about their walk through life.

As bloggers, no doubt we sometimes lapse into being self-absorbed in the eyes of those who stumble upon our words.

No matter. The courage and the inspiration that we find while listening in on others’ dreams pays us back a hundred fold for the momentary lapses, at least among the many blogs that are worth visiting more than once.

The Awards
And so, here are the rules of participation in the award:

Congratulations, you won a !

Should you choose to participate, please make sure you pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging. I thought it would be appropriate to include them with the meme.

The participation rules are simple:
1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to the post that tagged you, and the original post that started it all, so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).

Finally, here are the blogs that I’m tagging for the award (in no special order):

Ririan Project

Shards of Consciousness

Mark Joyner’s Atomic Mind Bombs

Positivity Blog

Creative Power of Thought

In Part 1, Fear on Ice, we explored feeling trapped in a situation that we want to escape from, where we’re afraid to remain, and afraid to change.

In Part 2, Too Many Choices, we [...]]]> We all get stuck.
We get stuck in our fears and other feelings, in our pain, and in our choices.

In Part 1, Fear on Ice, we explored feeling trapped in a situation that we want to escape from, where we’re afraid to remain, and afraid to change.

In Part 2, Too Many Choices, we looked at having too many choices, and not being able to choose between them.

We also get trapped when we look for solutions to the challenges that face us. 

Solutions are great.  The problem arises when we keep jumping from one solution to another, without taking real action with any of them. 
What do I mean?

What if I have a particular goal? Let’s say I want to start an Internet Business. I’ve got a pretty good idea why I want to do it, but I seem unsure what to do first.

Ok, so I look for and find an apparent solution. (There’s always someone waiting to sell me a solution, right? And there are many practical solutions out there.)

What happens next?

Example 1:
Diana struggles with the unfamiliar ideas of the solution, and some of the actions required that make her uncomfortable. And she takes action, makes mistakes, and learns. The unfamiliar ideas become familiar, and the uncomfortable actions become more comfortable. She faces more challenges, and uses additional ideas, solutions, and help when she needs it. She keeps moving in the direction of her goal.

Example 2:
Brian also struggles with the unfamiliar ideas, and the uncomfortable actions required by the solution. He focuses on listening or viewing the materials in the course. He reads the message boards, maybe even makes some great comments. He listens to all the calls.

But he doesn’t take any significant action beyond exploring the course.
After a while he can’t stand the discomfort of not getting anywhere, and he looks for a “better” solution. It’s the Internet after all, so he has no trouble finding another solution. Maybe it’s better than the first one, or maybe it’s not.

He’ll have an opinion on which one he likes better. But he’ll probably never know which one of the solutions fits him better.
He’d have to take action, and really exercise the solutions to know how effective they are for him.

This can go on for years.
Sometimes Brian finally gets tired of doing nothing, and takes action.
Sometimes he runs out of spare cash.
Sometimes he gives up on his dream, and tells himself he’s hopeless.

I think the last case is the worst of all.
Unless you’re accumulating debt through endless, fruitless attempts, I think it’s better to keep the dream and do nothing, than give up the dream entirely.
With the dream still alive, there’s the possibility that you’ll find some way to reach it.

But either way it’s sad.

Many of us are all too familiar with our friend Brian.
We’ve bought books, e-books, software, audios, DVDs, seminars, and even mentoring that we’ve put to little use.

Welcome to our consumer society. You’re trained to look for solutions outside of yourself, and there are only a few dollars that stand between you and that perfect solution.

And truthfully, is $27, $97, $297, or even $2997 too much to spend if that’s all that separates you from your dreams?

There’s nothing wrong with looking for information and help outside of yourself. Human beings are extraordinarily adept at working with others, and at using tools and ideas to accomplish great things. And there’s nothing wrong with paying for help, or ideas.

You must be confused by now.
First I complain that we’ve been trained to look outside ourselves for solutions, and then I talk about how good we are at leveraging help from outside of us.
Make up your mind, Joel.

Here’s the heart of the matter.
Do we first look for solutions within ourselves?
Do we look to apply something we already know?
Do we look to take action as soon as possible?

Or do we react to a challenge or problem by looking for something or someone else to solve our problems? And do we look for a solution that requires us to do little or nothing?

There’s something seriously wrong with that.

Hey, I don’t believe in doing unnecessary work. There are plenty of things that I can do with my time. I’m not trying to fill up the hours.

But we have the wrong idea about action. We think it just uses up our time that could be better spent relaxing, or being entertained, or even learning about something.

Action is the most extraordinary teacher there is. When I take action, it changes me and it teaches me. Action switches me “on”. It puts me in an extraordinarily receptive state to learning, and to further action.

I’ve got to think of action as something that transforms me, not as something that wastes my time and uses up my life. It’s action, not money, which is the key to getting unstuck.

And the secret to taking action is simple. Do something, anything in the direction of your dreams.

(Take a look at this blog entry from Ken McArthur on Internet Success and Taking Action)