When I was a little girl, I used to go to Walmart with my family for grocery shopping. Unlike other kids my age, I wouldn’t go on a rampage in the toys isle.
No no.
I had to wait for the perfect time to strike on my unsuspecting parents and what better time than the checkout line.
The checkout line- a heaven of beanie babies, candy, magazines, small insignificant things you would never normally buy but somehow kind end up in your car, and chocolate bars.
My parents were busy shoveling items onto the conveyor belt and while they were busy and stressed about moving things fast enough, I had this 30 second glory window where I could ask my dad if I could get a candy bar and without thinking, he would say yes. So I took my shot and my father asked me to choose which one I wanted.
Choose which one I wanted.
Shoot.
There were 28 different candy bars and you want me to choose one?
By the time I went through each candy bar, my parents asked me which one I wanted but I hadn’t made up my mind yet. So I left Walmart that day with a hungry belly and a sad face.
All because there were too many choices.
Times have changed a lot since I was younger. Almost nothing is binary anymore. We are surrounded with eveprevelent options with almost everything we do. The more choices we have, the more confused we get in deciding which one is the right choice to make. This concept is called Overchoice, or The Paradox of Choice. This concept is relevant throughout all departments from psychology to business to economics to any profession in society dealing with a product and an audience.
If you think you won’t get suffocated by choices just yet, overchoice has already incorporated itself into society in the form of millennial culture. We spend hours channel surfing between thousand of different channels but still end the night watching something we’re disinterested in or have seen a thousand times. We make bigger closets to accompany our dressers and drawers to hold all the clothes we have, but we still scream “MOM, I HAVE NOTHING TO WEAR!” All the options we have end up stressing us out and at the end of the day, we don’t do anything different. We stick to maybe seven channels on average that we watch constantly and probably only wear about eight shirts in our closet that we alternate between two pairs of jeans. And for boys, its like. Three shirts so imagine that.
We wanted more options in life for us to be able to explore life and learn new things but we seem to be limited by our comfort and that’s what prevents us from actually exploring the choices we have.
No matter how many choice we have, at the end of the day, nothing is ever good enough.
We, as a society, are always dissatisfied.
Unhappy.
We are always in a constant search for something better because no matter how many options we have, they’re never enough to satisfy us. We’re in a constant state of anxiety thinking that “Oh, well maybe my life would be better if I chose that.” or “Maybe I would be wiser/stronger/hotter/happier if I were to choose that.” When you have a million choices, there are a million more ways to go wrong. Million more mistakes to make. The risks are higher. The pressure is higher. You end up stuck.
The multitude of options are trapping us in a little unhappy cage in our own mind.
Why do you think divorces are at an all-time high? Think about it.
We don’t take things seriously anymore because they believe there’s always going to be something better. Why are they going to deal with someone’s shortcomings and problems if society has convinced them that there is someone better out there?
Slowly, we as a society are transforming into choice bound people and bringing awareness to this concept will hopefully make us self-aware of what we choose and how we choose it.
So next time you need to choose what to have for breakfast, give yourself two options and I promise, you’ll more likely be happier with the one you choose.
