“The amount of pleasure and satisfaction we derive from
experience has as much to do with how the experience relates to expectations as
it does with the qualities of the experience itself.” The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz,
Are many people unhappy these days due to the surfeit of
choices? Developed nations are richer and offer their citizens more choices
than at any other time in human history.
The internet offers us access to unlimited information, entertainment and
things to spend our money on. Arranged marriages are becoming increasingly rare.
Some grocery stores offer as many as 30 different types of jams and jellies. Yet, despite so many choices, depression is on
the rise in developed nations and people seem to be remarkably disappointed by
many (or most) of their daily experiences and the choices they make.
As Barry Schwartz puts it in his book “The Paradox of
Choice”
“If I’m right about
the expectations of modern Americans about the quality of their experiences, almost
every experience people have nowadays will be perceived as a disappointment,
and thus regarded as a failure—a failure that could have been prevented with
the right choice.”
Choices for education, careers, kitchen appliances and
partners abound. Having many choices increases a person’s expectations of what
is possible for them. This may set the individual up with such high expectations
that almost any choice they do make, ends up being a disappointment in
comparison to that amalgamated mental expectation that they had derived from
all those choices they were exposed to.
I see it like this: When you have a lot of choices it
results in you inadvertently summing up all the good qualities from the gamut
of those choices. At this point, you
have the expectation that someone or something (job, career, education, mate,
sex, kiss, hobby, dinner, fluffy cat, etc) will amount to your new, heightened
expectation of it. If the person/thing/event is even just slightly less than your expectations, you experience emotionally
negative feelings of disappointment and sometimes, bouts of depression.
If you live throughout every day with such high
expectations, don’t plan on ever being extremely happy; plan on being regularly
disappointed. The key to happiness is lowering your expectations and relating your experience to a situation that could be worse (not better). This
action creates gratitude because then you are happy about your situation,
realizing it could be much worse.
Happiness doesn't necessarily require fewer choices, but it
does require the ability to modulate our expectations of those choices. If you are one of those people who frequently
says, “I’ve heard/seen/had better” you probably have high expectations and frequently
experience disappointment/boredom/and/or lack of contentment in your life.
The more choices you have the more opportunity costs come at you, assault you, and niggle at your mind. You may have been okay or happy with the one
choice presented to you—but, when you have a bunch of choices presented to you
and you make a choice, the choice that you do
end up making becomes difficult (and less wonderful) because you are evaluating this choice in light
of the other choices that were also available. You begin to reflect upon what
you lost from not choosing any of those other choices. Disappointment ensues.
