a significant and intense chunk of our lives may be spent pondering hard choices should we continue in our relationship with ex or part from them to see who else we might find but what if we land on no one better but what if we stay and the relationship never improves should we buy this property that's beautiful but worryingly close to the railway tracks or should we buy the other one that has a bit less charm but might be quieter should we accept this job that has Prestige and the possibility of a stellar future or should
we stay where we are because we love our colleagues and have a high quality of life part of the agony of choosing at such moments is that we are in the background consumed by the idea that the wrong choice may prove appalling in the extreme and the right choice a root to exceptional fulfillment but we are perhaps suffering unnecessarily and might find reassurance in the Strategic use of two kind of thinking alternately optimistic and pessimistic in tone to trial the former we might propose that part of the reason why certain choices feel so hard is
that all options on the table have in truth something quite good to offer us the choice is only hard because we are having to pick between substantially decent Alternatives we cannot choose because the choices before us are all pretty good if we stayed with X there would be much to celebrate and if we went off and found someone else well they would have many charms too as for the two homes we're judging between both are really very pleasant in different ways and the same holds true for our jobs whichever option we choose we will have
much to be pleased about there is equal Comfort to be found by running the argument in an opposite pessimistic direction we can get easily obsessed by the idea that A wise choice is going to help us to prevent a nightmare but considered soberly there will be something pretty difficult about every route we choose to go down we're finding it hard to choose because all options have their unavoidably disappointing Dimensions X partner can certainly be annoying but so will y partner pretty much anyone we end up with is going to have their dispiriting sides there is
no dodging the inherent difficulty of everyone as for property no house can ever make life perfect a lot of unhappiness will be ours wherever we happen to sleep no house can spare us fundamental agonies of existence similarly the dissatisfactions we know in our present job will have equivalence whatever job we pick in other words everything is certain to be a bit awful a truth we are vainly striving to deny in our Furious surge for what we think of as the right choice what powers the pain of choice is to a large extent an illusion the
idea of a single solution that can either conclusively deliver happiness or skirt unhappiness we are thereby exaggerating our agency once we recognize that by the time we are spending hours on a choice anything we choose will be both pretty fine and simultaneously stubbornly somewhat awful too we may cease to grow either quite so exercised or so terrified we can afford to rest more easily we are never far from Pain and we are never far from Joy we might almost let a roll of the dice decide the rest
