At the supermarket, before a vacation, at the clothing store, in front of the UWV job board, at an online webinar. Choice stress is triggered at many times and can leave you feeling overwhelmed. You want to make the right choice and not regret it later. Having an awful lot of options to choose from can cause choice stress. In this blog, I discuss choice stress and what you can do about it.
Choice stress psychology
When you have choice stress, you have so many options to choose from that you can suffer from analysis paralysis. With a few choices, you can still contrast which option is better, but this analysis becomes very difficult when you have dozens of options to choose from.
One consequence of paralyzing or stopping analysis is that you don't come to a decision.
Especially if you are unfamiliar with the product, you may suffer from the paralyzing effect of too many options[1]. For example, you can still choose your favorite chocolate in the store, but as soon as you have to buy vacuum cleaners in a store and you have as many choices as you do with the chocolate, it becomes more difficult.
Choice stress sometimes causes other consequences besides paralysis, namely:
- Frustration
- Fatigue
- Anger
If you then throw your hands up in the air and choose something and then that choice is disappointing, you may again suffer from regrets and be very hard on yourself. You may feel that you should have looked into the matter better or you get angry at the agency or people who give you so many options that they make it so difficult for you[2].
Adding to that, it turns out that when you have an awful lot of choice, you are often less satisfied with your decision than if you had few options to choose from.
You may think that the marketing that is being unleashed on your choices is causing these feelings, that you could have made a better decision. It doesn't. In the studies, it was only the amount of choice that was already causing avoidance, regret and anticipation of regret. No marketing techniques were used to influence choice[3].
Choice stress in young adults
Choice stress is especially something adults suffer from. Recent research shows that children and seniors do not suffer from choice stress and that adolescents, say students, suffer from choice stress as much as adults[4].
One reason young adults may suffer from choice stress is because they make many choices for the first time. Those choices are then often in areas in which they have little knowledge. For example, if you don't know what you want to be, choosing the right course of study is very difficult.
Then you go live on your own and for the first time you get to choose what you eat, instead of your mother. Suddenly, all that choice in the supermarket is overwhelming.
Then it continues with other choice options, such as which driving school to use to get your license. Which cleaning products are best to use.
Choice stress in adults
For adults, choice stress can return to other choices, such as when you want to buy a house. Need to find a job or buy baby gear. Not to mention the name of your child.
Choosing the school your child will attend is also a subject of stress. Especially since we have free education in the Netherlands, you can choose all kinds of forms, such as
- Christian Education
- Catholic Education
- Protestant Education
- Hindu Education
- Jewish Education
- Islamic Education
- Jenaplan Education
- Montessori Education
- Public School
- Free School
Especially if you live in a city with many offerings, this choice may give you headaches.
The paradox of making choices
Barry Schwartz has developed a theory and called it the paradox of choice. In his theory, he states that when you can make an awful lot of choices it actually limits your freedom instead of increasing it.
For example, it used to be that you needed something and went to the grocery store to get it. You didn't have multiple versions of what you needed. You had 1 kind of salt, not all kinds of salt with iodine or from the Himalayas. Because now you do have all the variations as an option instead of that one thing you need, as written above, you get more stress and you get more unhappy (because of regrets). He indicates that this makes you trapped by unhappiness.
For example, because you have more choices when shopping, the process of shopping is also something that takes longer. For example, think of buying clothes where you have to go and try on all kinds of t-shirts before you find "the right one."
This paradox goes even further in today's society. After all, you no longer have to live as you should. You don't have to get married, you don't have to work for the same company for 40 years. Again, this creates stress about whether you are living your life the right way and whether you are making the right decisions to make yourself happy.
Now you can't say that everything used to be better, but you could blame society and the oppressive feeling of still doing "how it's supposed to be" for your unhappiness. Because you now have all options open, you can only blame yourself if you are not happy[5].
In doing so, you may also suffer from the fear of missing something.
Gratitude for less regret
Yet it is true that people in the past were also happy just as they are now. So how can that be? Chances are, people back then counted their happiness much more. Maybe you've been working for the same boss for 30 years, but ... and the addition of things that made you happy anyway could begin.
You can also use that technique very well now that you do have all the choices you want.
By writing down daily what you are grateful for, you learn to pay attention to the good choices you have made and shift your focus from what could have been to what is. You then also see that what is is good and what positive aspects it has.
If you find it difficult to be grateful, a hypnosis expert can help you identify where that ingratitude lies, what beliefs underlie it, and help you strengthen gratitude.
Changing mindsets for less choice stress
Another choice we can make for ourselves, the choice to feel good about what we do. Very often being happy is also a matter of putting a smile on your face and not thinking too much about what you have done and what else you could have done.
How you think about the world-how it works and functions-determines many of your beliefs. These, in turn, determine many of your emotions and behaviors. For example, with regression you can find out why you often avoid choices or regret the choice you make. This is often an unconscious pattern and with regression you can learn where this pattern originated. During regression, you go back to that moment and start doing something with it that breaks the pattern of not choosing or regretting the choice.
This helps you have a different mindset towards making choices, making it more enjoyable to make the choice and making you really stand behind that choice. This makes you more grateful and happier for the choices you have made.
Tips for making choices
Sometimes it's also just hard to make a choice. If at any point you are left with only 2 options, you can apply the heads or tails technique. You connect one option of choice to the head and the other option to the coin. You flip the coin and then you see the choice made by chance. Are you happy with the outcome? Then that's the right choice. If you think "shit, I wanted the other one" then you know you should still go for the other option.
Want to learn more about how hypnosis works to influence people's mindsets? Then check our calendar for upcoming events and courses where you can learn about hypnosis.
Are you wondering if you can hypnotize someone or can be hypnotized yourself? Then come to the hypnosis playshop. You will learn in 1 day to bring someone under hypnosis and someone else will learn to bring you under hypnosis.
[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10454446.2013.843490?src=recsys
[2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0031721718754823
[3] https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/more-tech-support/201011/the-burden-choice
[4] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/20445911.2015.1118107
