How can we make more meaningful choices?

Source: Unsplash Robert Anasch

When I was old enough to walk the mile to our neighborhood pharmacy, I took my babysitting money to buy candy. A time-lapse movie would have shown me standing frozen in front of a large display of hundreds of candies, and in the background kids would come and go. They’d grab their selections seemingly on a lark, pay the teenager behind the register, and skip out of the store with their friends.

But for me … if I chose the Baby Ruth (my favorite), then I couldn’t try the Butterfingers (one of my sister’s favorites) or Marathon bars (another sister’s favorite) or, or, or. I fidgeted with my babysitting dollars, as a thin layer of fear hovered around me.

I don’t remember my thought process. Maybe it was being brought up in an environment where I worked hard as a student to get the “right” answer, or was comparing myself to others. Maybe I was second guessing myself by going for the same thing every time. Or, somewhere in my tween-year-old brain, picking one meant missing out on another.

What is choice? Why are we sometimes afraid to make a choice? And how can we make more meaningful choices in our lives?

what is choice?

We can only choose when there’s something to compare and contrast. Even if we think we’re only deciding on one thing - like whether to go for a walk, there’s an automatic mirror-choice to compare against — “not” to go for a walk. There isn’t always a simple answer. There can be many factors playing into our decision like: weather, time, access, or I just don’t feel like it.

We make choices every day. Big ones and little ones. Simple and complex. Options that affect only us, and those that affect other people too — once we become aware of our choice ripple-effects.

What if we spent more time framing our options with a well-formed question? Could that help us determine which alternative feels more right, at the moment?

A decade ago, my husband and I had a side-gig (a neighborhood development project) where we kept beating our hopeful heads against a wall of costs. We were caught up in our excitement about building on a lot filled with family memories. We held the vision of rooftop gardens overlooking downtown through oodles of scenarios. Beautiful ideas that lured us by night, but required too many zeroes come morning.

Out of the blue, a woman contacted us — asking if she could store a historic mansion on our lot while she searched for a permanent location. We laughed at the idea of babysitting a gigantic house and psyched ourselves up for another round of scenario planning, sure we’d find a way.

The next morning my husband asked: What if we moved the mansion?

What happens in the moments before we make a choice? What if we could slow down time around the actual decision — does our body make the choice before our mind catches up to talk about it?

why are we sometimes afraid to make a choice?

When you think of making a choice, do you get all excited by lots of options, or are you instantly overwhelmed by too many possibilities? Here in the US, we pride ourselves for having so much variety, from coffee to cars to entertainment.

Surprisingly, research shows that when we have an abundance of options, we tend to be less satisfied. The energy it takes to choose steals some of the pleasure away from the decision. From a psychological perspective, people would be happier with less choices according to Barry Schwartz in his Ted talk “The Paradox of Choice.” One of his tips when you have too many alternatives: pick “good enough” and stop chasing the elusive perfect option.

In the business world of rational decision-making, little credence is given to people following their intuition. That’s too woo-woo. Interesting, because in that same corporate world, concepts like business acumen in following your gut or the reverence given to the mysteries of creative endeavors are both highly valued.

In my podcast this month, I interviewed Emily Sadowski, PhD. She found that people trying to develop their leadership skills and those trying to develop their psychic intuition pursued the same type of inner work. Emily’s research set out to find a way to have a conversation about intuition in both worlds. I joked that at work, the closest you got to a discussion about intuition was if you talked to HR over a glass of wine at happy hour. Nobody in corporate would touch it decades ago.

Emily explains that pretty much everyone has an intuitive experience in their back pocket. Remember a time when you were thinking of a friend you hadn’t thought of in awhile and they reached out to you? Sometimes we might experience a fleeting feeling or a floating thought like my computer hasn’t been backed up in awhile and decide (or not) to back up our computer.

She encourages people to understand that intuition is highly personalized. Some of us get our intuition hits through thoughts, others colors, still others body sensations. Some people have a very future-oriented big picture vision of what to do, while other people just happen to know the next right step. And sometimes there’s a sense of now’s not the right time to make a choice.

Next time there’s a decision to make, Emily suggests taking time to review our options, then check in with how our body reacts. Does it get all tingly and excited? Emily says to take that as a YES. If our body cringes or we recoil. She suggests to take that as a NO.

Whether we’re overanalyzing, afraid we’ll pick the wrong option, or nervous about ripple effects — an orchestrated pause for self-reflection can help.

how can we make more meaningful choices?

According to Elaine Dundon in “Making Wise Choices: The Key to a Meaningful Life,” every moment is a choice along the path to meaning. Some of the myriad selections we make every day have little impact. While others may greatly alter our circumstances and overall sense of satisfaction.

Elaine speaks of an important space. The gap right before we make a choice. Often, an impulsive reaction doesn’t provide the mental headroom for the reflection needed for a more meaningful alternative.

How many times have I knee-jerk reacted wishing I’d taken a beat? When I ask my husband a question and there’s silence, I often push for a response. He recently said, I’m processing.

I took a pause to let it sink in …

I’m processing seems more honoring for both of us — it communicates I heard you and allows more time to work through whatever is needed. Sometimes it’s hours and sometimes it’s days. But either way, a more thoughtful choice in how to respond percolates to the top.

Sometimes we have a hard choice to make. We want a particular outcome, but don’t know which option will create the desired effect. There’s an element of uncertainty involved because we don’t know what will happen because we haven’t chosen yet.

There’s a better question to ask coaches Nancy Collier in “A Better Way to Make Hard Choices.” What growth opportunities will each alternative extend to you? No decision is a guarantee of an outcome anyway, so which option interests you more or triggers more excitement?

***

When my husband asked, What if we moved the mansion? I wondered if the risk would be too much with everything going on in our family and work lives. But there was something else in the pause before answering — an improbable possibility. The opportunity to save a 100-year-old historic mansion held itself up like a dare, an invitation for an adventure.

My body knew first. A smile started deep inside me. Among the myriad choices I made everyday, I knew this would be a big one.

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