Choice stress: Helpful tips and tricks
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’re overwhelmed by choice, you have so many options to choose from that you can suffer from analysis paralysis. With just a few choices, you can still weigh the pros and cons to determine 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’re not familiar with the product, you may feel overwhelmed by the paralyzing effect of too many options[1]. For example, you can still easily choose your favorite chocolate in a store, but as soon as you have to buy a vacuum cleaner and are faced with just as many choices as with the chocolate, it becomes more difficult.
Choice stress sometimes causes other consequences besides paralysis, namely:
- Frustration
- Fatigue
- Anger
If you just throw your hands up in the air and pick something at random, only to be disappointed by that choice, you might end up feeling regret and being very hard on yourself. You might feel you should have researched the subject more thoroughly, or you might get angry at the organization 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 might think that the marketing bombarded at you when making choices causes these feelings—that you could have made a better decision. That’s not the case. In the studies, it was solely the sheer number of choices that led to avoidance, regret, and anticipated regret. No marketing techniques were used to influence the 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 there are other choices to consider, such as which driving school to use to get your driver’s license or which cleaning products are best to use.
Choice stress in adults
For adults, decision fatigue can arise from other choices, such as when you want to buy a house, need to find a job, or have to buy baby supplies. And I haven’t even mentioned choosing a name for 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 he calls the “paradox of choice.” In his theory, he explains that when you have an overwhelming number of choices, this actually limits your freedom rather than expanding it.
In the past, for example, if you needed something, you’d go to the grocery store to get it. You didn’t have multiple versions of what you needed. You had one kind of salt, not all sorts of salts—like iodized salt or Himalayan salt. Because you now have all these variations as options instead of just the one thing you need, as mentioned above, you experience more stress and become unhappier (due to feelings of regret). He points out that this traps you in 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 the way you’re “supposed” to. You don’t have to get married, and you don’t have to work for the same company for 40 years. This, in turn, creates stress about whether you’re living your life the right way and whether you’re 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].
You may also experience the fear of missing out.
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 what you’re grateful for every day, you learn to focus on the good choices you’ve made and shift your focus from what could have been to what is. You’ll then see that what is, is good, and recognize its positive aspects.
If you find it difficult to feel grateful, a hypnosis expert can help you identify the source of that ingratitude, the underlying beliefs, and help you cultivate 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 view the world—how it works and functions—shapes many of your beliefs. This, in turn, shapes many of your emotions and behaviors. With regression, for example, you can discover why you often avoid making choices or regret the choices you do make. This is often an unconscious pattern, and through regression, you’ll learn where this pattern originated. During the regression, you’ll go back to that moment and work through it in a way that helps you break the pattern of avoiding choices or regretting the choices you make.
This helps you develop a different mindset when it comes to making choices, making the decision-making process more enjoyable and helping you truly stand behind your choices. As a result, you’ll feel more grateful and happier with the choices you’ve 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.
Would you like to learn more about how hypnosis works to influence people’s mindsets? Check out our calendar for upcoming events and courses where you can learn about hypnosis.
Are you wondering if you can hypnotize someone or if you can put yourself under hypnosis? Then come to the hypnosis workshop. In just one day, you’ll learn how to put someone under hypnosis, and someone else will teach you how to put yourself 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
[5] https://gostrengths.com/what-is-the-paradox-of-choice/