Many people overanalyse their possible options, trying through exhaustive thinking to predict the best possible scenario for their lives. Research shows, however, that this strategy often leads to what Barry Schwartz calls the paradox of choice: the more options — and the more “perfect” the options — we look for, the more anxiety, indecision and likelihood of regret increase. Extensive comparison of options is associated with fatigue, reduced satisfaction and disappointment, without necessarily preparing us any better.
In most cases, choices are not good or bad, right or wrong, in themselves; they acquire meaning through the action and commitment that follow. This idea is rooted in existential psychotherapy, according to which meaning does not pre-exist but is constructed through our choices and our experience. From this perspective, a decision is not the final product of thought but a dynamic process that gains value through commitment and action. Many choices can turn out to be the more correct ones for us if we act upon them, while conversely they may prove harmful or “wrong” if we remain passive observers of them.
This raises the question of our responsibility in the world and in our choices, and of how those choices turn out. Are we playing a game in which we simply press buttons and see which box opens, or are we living characters who choose and shape their own experience? Gestalt psychotherapy offers its emphasis on immediate experience and awareness of the here and now. Together with the concept of creative adjustment, it holds that the organism does not search for an ideal choice in advance but forms the best possible choice through its continuous interaction with the environment. We therefore need to think of decisions not as static entities, but as roads with continuity within our experience.
Ellen Langer, a researcher at Harvard University and a pioneer in the study of the mind–body relationship, argues that obsession with the “right” choice does not help; what matters is our ability to remain open and flexible in the face of new information. In this context she notes that even a random decision (tossing a coin, for instance) can work in a liberating way — not because chance determines the outcome, but because it shifts our attention from the paralysis of analysis towards action and the making of meaning afterwards.
For this reason we do not need to chase the best and most correct option, but to follow a choice and then try to make it right for us. This post-decision adjustment, and the optimisation that accompanies it, is the best way to reduce our anxiety between options. Langer was among the first researchers to question the idea that thought determines behaviour. Instead, she proposed that thought, meaning and interpretation emerge out of our action and experience. By the same token, we can imagine what happens when this does not take place.
Overall, contemporary interdisciplinary knowledge converges on a shared idea: the “right” choice is not something to be discovered and arrived at in advance, but something co-created through our stance, our action, and the way we choose to relate to it. Through trying and evaluating; through checking where we are, how we feel about it, and what needs to be done differently. This capacity to re-evaluate and reshape our orientation or our practice is one of the most useful abilities we can develop. Flexibility in our thinking and behaviour can come only from a calm psychological state, in which we are aware of ourselves and of our environment.
To close, a few of Langer’s thoughts: “Almost all the problems of the world come down to the absence of recognition, of conscious observation, and of critical awareness (mindfulness).” If we understand the other person’s perspective, anger, jealousy and conflict decrease. Mindfulness, for her, is a practical tool that opens the mind. Once this multiplicity has been recognised, it becomes difficult to return to a one-dimensional understanding of reality. Psychotherapy facilitates this widening of reality by cultivating these capacities, strengthening our flexibility, and supporting us in experimenting with different ways of being and acting.
