We make our choices, then our choices make us

 “No matter what the situation, remind yourself, I have a choice.” Deepak Chopra

                                 ( JP     https://instagram.com/lifeonthebeach84?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y= )

Every breath is a choice, every minute is a choice, and life gives us opportunities to make daily choices that we have to take responsibility for.

Most days, we make a conscious effort to “Choose to be happy” amongst other things, but on other days, life happens and it can’t all be rosy but we can choose to make lemonades regardless. Sweet or sour, it’s still lemonade, right?

As the year 2019 speeds away with reckless abandon, I have heard a couple of people talk about their unmet expectations/goals, and the struggle to maintain the optimism and that burst of energy that came with the New Year celebrations, that is, fireworks, barbeque, felicitations, and resolutions. The year is almost over, every minute counts.

Most people see the New Year as a fresh start, a new beginning, a magic wand – which isn’t a bad thing by any means but with such huge delusional thoughts come disappointments. Especially as the days on the calendar keep changing and the clock keeps ticking.

I believe that a new year for anyone can start at any moment, including today, right now. All one has to do is make a decision. In the words of Neil Peart: “If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice.” Until you take up the responsibility of making choices that will stir your life in the direction that you would like it to go, you will continue to be a doormat to life’s version of events and the world around you will keep moving forward. So it’s not over until it’s over. You can make the choice to begin again or start afresh, no matter how the past few months have been.

While you make your choices, also remember to choose to be better, do better, be brave, be kind, work hard, be happy, and best of all, choose to accept yourself for who you are, because that’s the mindset that needs to be properly aligned for every other thing to follow.

Ultimately, understand that the freedom to choose lies within you, the freedom to choose who you want to be, where you want to be, and the path you want to journey on.

Whenever you’re tempted to believe you’re “stuck”, remember, you are the master of your fate; the captain of your soul, and the end result of your life here on earth will always be the sum total of the choices you made while you were here. So choose today, while you still can.

Nkem Onwudiwe is the founder of Her Network – A Global Inspirational and Lifestyle Platform created to inspire and encourage all women to stand in their greatness and set real-life examples by living their truth.

( original  site study link https://guardian.ng/life/life-features/everything-in-life-is-a-matter-of-choice/ )

                                                               We are our choices.”
                                                                                                ― Jean-Paul Sartre

What happens when someone gives you advice?  Whether you asked for it or not, sometimes you take it and other times you disregard it. You go through a process of assessing whether it will work for you.  You don’t just accept what someone else is telling you as absolute.  The same happens when you are learning.  You decide what to take on board and what to discard. There is a judgment process happening unconsciously and we find that when people understand that process, and the factors that are impacting it, they can use their minds to make good decisions more of the time.  And it’s simpler than you might think. 

When our mind is doing this judgment processing it’s like a computer.  It takes everything we know about ourselves, our team, the work, the organization, the people and it critiques all the ideas, suggestions, models, tools, techniques, etc., assess their appropriateness or usefulness, and provides an answer based on all of that information. The answer being variations of ‘yes I’ll go with that or ‘no that doesn’t make sense to me. Often we don’t notice the processing we just notice the answer.  This process is in play all of the time, whenever you act, whenever you make a decision, whenever you interact with another person.   

Without understanding how it works the decisions made are not always failsafe.  Some of the information that the mind uses in making decisions is out-of-date data, it is influenced by old habits of thinking that may not be so helpful anymore.  Sometimes it’s informed by old fears, and anxieties, sometimes it’s informed by ego thinking.  These can be unhealthy habits of thinking.   When these inform decisions things don’t often turn out as we’d like.  When this thinking is in play we can discard potentially useful ideas etc. 

Within us, we have the capacity for purely healthy thinking.  When thoughts, ideas, and decisions come from healthy thinking it feels right.  It’s easily recognized because it has a good feeling attached to it. Often it is a very quiet voice, but when we listen to it, it can be totally relied upon.  This is what we refer to as wisdom. And when wisdom tells us what would work best for us, our team, and our organization it’s usually right. 

We all have this capacity for healthy thinking, whenever we want it.  It comes from a part of us that is strong, quietly confident, sure of itself.  A part that holds no judgment or criticism.  It is not worrying, not anxious, not fearful.  A part of us that is ego-free.  It doesn’t need to prove anything.  When an answer comes from this place it feels right, it feels good.  And we just know. 

We access wisdom when our minds are quiet and calm, free of mental clutter.  Often wisdom comes to us when we least expect it.  People report getting their best ideas or solutions in the shower, whilst running, whilst walking the dog – times when they have relaxed and often when they’ve stopped thinking about the problem!  When our thinking has slowed down, when we’re calm, quiet, relaxed, wisdom shows up.  

This is what we think of as an optimum state of mind for a leader. When we know that this is how it works, that we have this natural capability, we can trust it and use it more often.  We find that once a leader realizes how this works for themselves, they can stay in the optimum state of mind more of the time, they worry less, stress less and their teams flourish. 

( original research site link https://www.meridianiliffe.co.uk/resources/state-of-mind-and-decision-making/ Meridain liffie )

                How to make better choices!

DOnt Fear about the end result in every decision  

Whether it’s choosing between a long weekend in Paris or a trip to the ski slopes, a new car versus a bigger house, or even who to marry, almost every decision we make entails predicting the future. In each case, we imagine how the outcomes of our choices will make us feel, and what the emotional or “hedonic” consequences of our actions will be. Sensibly, we usually plump for the option that we think will make us the happiest overall.

This “affective forecasting” is fine in theory. The only problem is that we are not very good at it. People routinely overestimate the impact of decision outcomes and life events, both good and bad. We tend to think that winning the lottery will make us happier than it actually will, and that life would be completely unbearable if we were to lose the use of our legs. “The hedonic consequences of most events are less intense and briefer than most people imagine,” says psychologist Daniel Gilbert from Harvard University. This is as true for trivial events such as going to a great restaurant, as it is for major ones such as losing a job or a kidney.

                              Listen to your gut feeling 

It is tempting to think that to make good decisions you need time to systematically weigh up all the pros and cons of various alternatives, but sometimes a snap judgment or instinctive choice is just as good, if not better.

In our everyday lives, we make fast and competent decisions about who to trust and interact with. Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov from Princeton University found that we make judgments about a person’s trustworthiness, competence, aggressiveness, likeability, and attractiveness within the first 100 milliseconds of seeing a new face. Given longer to look – up to 1 second – the researchers found observers hardly revised their views, they only became more confident in their snap decisions (Psychological Science, vol 17, p 592).

Of course, as you get to know someone better you refine your first impressions. It stands to reason that extra information can help you make well-informed, rational decisions. Yet paradoxically, sometimes the more information you have the better off you may be going with your instincts. Information overload can be a problem in all sorts of situations, from choosing a school for your child to picking a holiday destination. At times like these, you may be better off avoiding conscious deliberation and instead leaving the decision to your unconscious brain, as research by Ap Dijksterhuis and colleagues from the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands shows (Science, vol 311, p 1005).

They asked students to choose one of four hypothetical cars, based either on a simple list of four specifications such as mileage and legroom, or a longer list of 12 such features. Some subjects then got a few minutes to think about the alternatives before making their decision, while others had to spend that time-solving anagrams. What Dijksterhuis found was that faced with a simple choice, subjects picked better cars if they could think things through. When confronted by a complex decision, however, they became bamboozled and actually made the best choices when they did not consciously analyze the options.

( original study link Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19426021-100-top-10-ways-to-make-better-decisions/#ixzz7SLJ1TSsK )

                 

                                     Understand your Emotion 

You might think that emotions are the enemy of decision-making, but in fact, they are integral to it. Our most basic emotions evolved to enable us to make rapid and unconscious choices in situations that threaten our survival. Fear leads to flight or fight, and disgust leads to avoidance. Yet the role of emotions in decision-making goes way deeper than these knee-jerk responses. Whenever you make up your mind, your limbic system – the brain’s emotional center – is active. Neurobiologist Antonio Damasio from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles has studied people with damage to only the emotional parts of their brains and found that they were crippled by indecision, unable to make even the most basic choices, such as what to wear or eat. Damasio speculates that this may be because our brains store emotional memories of past choices, which we use to inform present decisions.

Emotions are clearly a crucial component in the neurobiology of choice, but whether they always allow us to make the right decisions is another matter. If you try to make choices under the influence of emotion it can seriously affect the outcome.

Take anger. Daniel Fessler and colleagues from the University of California, Los Angeles, induced anger in a group of subjects by getting them to write an essay recalling an experience that made them see red. They then got them to play a game in which they were presented with a simple choice: either take a guaranteed $15 payout or gamble for more with the prospect of gaining nothing. The researchers found that men, but not women, gambled more when they were angry (Organizational Behavior and Human Decision

                                Play the devil's advocate 

Have you ever had an argument with someone about a vexatious issue such as immigration or the death penalty and been frustrated because they only drew on evidence that supported their opinions and conveniently ignored anything to the contrary? This is the ubiquitous confirmation bias. It can be infuriating to others, but we are all susceptible every time we weigh up evidence to guide our decision-making.

If you doubt it, try this famous illustration of the confirmation bias called the Wason card selection task. Four cards are laid out each with a letter on one side and a number on the other. You can see D, A, 2, and 5 and must turn over those cards that will allow you to decide if the following statement is true: “If there is a D on one side, there is a 5 on the other”.

Typically, 75 percent of people pick the D and 5, reasoning that if these have a 5 and a D respectively on their flip sides, this confirms the rule. But look again. Although you are required to prove that if there is a D on one side, there is a 5 on the other, the statement says nothing about what letters might be on the reverse of a 5. So the 5 card is irrelevant. Instead of trying to confirm the theory, the way to test it is to try to disprove it. The correct answer is D (if the reverse isn’t 5, the statement is false) and 2 (if there’s a D on the other side, the statement is false).

 ( original study link Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19426021-100-top-10-ways-to-make-better-decisions/#ixzz7SLMd27sn New scientist )

                                                        Stay focus 

Our decisions and judgments have a strange and disconcerting habit of becoming attached to arbitrary or irrelevant facts and figures. In a classic study that introduced this so-called “anchoring effect”, Kahneman and the late Amos Tversky asked participants to spin a “wheel of fortune” with numbers ranging from 0 to 100, and afterward to estimate what percentage of United Nations countries were African. Unknown to the subjects, the wheel was rigged to stop at either 10 or 65. Although this had nothing to do with the subsequent question, the effect on people’s answers was dramatic. On average, participants who presented with a 10 on the wheel gave an estimate of 25 percent, while the figure for those who got 65 was 45 percent. It seems they had taken their cue from the spin of a wheel.

Anchoring is likely to kick in whenever we are required to make a decision based on very limited information. With little to go on, we seem more prone to latch onto irrelevancies and let them sway our judgment. It can also take a more concrete form, however. We are all in danger of falling foul of the anchoring effect every time we walk into a shop and see a nice shirt or dress marked “reduced”. That’s because the original price serves as an anchor against which we compare the discounted price, making it look like a bargain even if in absolute terms it is expensive.

                                        Stay Strong 

Does this sound familiar? You are at an expensive restaurant, the food is fantastic, but you’ve eaten so much you are starting to feel queasy. You know you should leave the rest of your dessert, but you feel compelled to polish it off despite a growing sense of nausea. Or what about this? At the back of your wardrobe lurks an ill-fitting and outdated item of clothing. It is taking up precious space but you cannot bring yourself to throw it away because you spent a fortune on it and you have hardly worn it.

The force behind both these bad decisions is called the sunk cost fallacy. In the 1980s, Hal Arkes and Catherine Blumer from The Ohio State University demonstrated just how easily we can be duped by it. They got students to imagine that they had bought a weekend skiing trip to Michigan for $100, and then discovered an even cheaper deal to a better resort – $50 for a weekend in Wisconsin. Only after shelling out for both trips were the students told that they were on the same weekend. What would they do? Surprisingly, most opted for the less appealing but more expensive trip because of the greater cost already invested in it.

The reason behind this is the more we invest in something, the more commitment we feel towards it. The investment needn’t be financial. Who hasn’t persevered with a tedious book or an ill-judged friendship long after it would have been wise to cut their losses? Nobody is immune to the sunk cost fallacy. In the 1970s, the British and French governments fell for it when they continued investing heavily in the Concorde project well past the point when it became clear that developing the aircraft was not economically justifiable. Even stock-market traders are susceptible, often waiting far too long to ditch shares that are plummeting in price.

( Orginal study  link Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19426021-100-top-10-ways-to-make-better-decisions/#ixzz7SLRDt7Co )

                    See from a different perspective 

Consider this hypothetical situation. Your home town faces an outbreak of a disease that will kill 600 people if nothing is done. To combat it you can choose either program A, which will save 200 people, or program B, which has a one in three chance of saving 600 people but also a two in three chance of saving nobody. Which do you choose?

Now consider this situation. You are faced with the same disease and the same number of fatalities, but this time program A will result in the certain death of 400 people, whereas program B has a one in three chance of zero deaths and a two in three chance of 600 deaths.

You probably noticed that both situations are the same, and in terms of probability the outcome is identical whatever you pick. Yet most people instinctively go for A in the first scenario and B in the second. It is a classic case of the “framing effect”, in which the choices we make are irrationally colored by the way the alternatives are presented. In particular, we have a strong bias towards options that seem to involve gains and an aversion to ones that seem to involve losses. That is why program A appears better in the first scenario and program B in the second. It also explains why healthy snacks tend to be marketed as “90 percent fat-free” rather than “10 percent fat” and why we are more likely to buy anything from an idea to insurance if it is sold on its benefits alone.

                             Deal with social pressure 

You may think of yourself as a single-minded individual and not at all the kind of person to let others influence you, but the fact is that no one is immune to social pressure. Countless experiments have revealed that even the most normal, well-adjusted people can be swayed by figures of authority and their peers to make terrible decisions (New Scientist, 14 April, p 42).

In one classic study, Stanley Milgram of Yale University persuaded volunteers to administer electric shocks to someone behind a screen. It was a set-up, but the subjects didn’t know that and on Milgram’s insistence many continued upping the voltage until the recipient was apparently unconscious. In 1989, similar deference to authority played a part in the death of 47 people, when a plane crashed into a motorway just short of East Midlands airport in the UK. One of the engines had caught fire shortly after take-off and the captain shut down the wrong one. A member of the cabin crew realized the error but decided not to question his authority.

                                Close your options 

You probably think that more choice is better than less – Starbucks certainly does – but consider these findings. People offered too many alternative ways to invest for their retirement become less likely to invest at all; and people get more pleasure from choosing a chocolate from a selection of five than when they pick the same sweet from a selection of 30.

These are two of the discoveries made by psychologist Sheena Iyengar from Columbia University, New York, who studies the paradox of choice – the idea that while we think more choice is best, often less is more. The problem is that greater choice usually comes at a price. It makes greater demands on your information-processing skills, and the process can be confusing, time-consuming and at worst can lead to paralysis: you spend so much time weighing up the alternatives that you end up doing nothing. In addition, more choice also increases the chances of your making a mistake, so you can end up feeling less satisfied with your choice because of a niggling fear that you have missed a better opportunity.

You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control the way you think about all the events. You always have a choice. You can choose to face them with a positive mental attitude.”
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

“There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“One of the greatest regrets in life is being what others would want you to be, rather than being yourself.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Sometimes you have to choose between a bunch of wrong choices and no right ones. You just have to choose which wrong choices feel the least wrong.”
― Colleen Hoover, Hopeless

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