If you choose the right one, it'll be okay?

My current understanding of fear of choice is that it is not exactly fear of choice that brings problems to life. It is more like life has problems in the first place, so there is fear of choice. When people have nowhere else to go, they have to give themselves an answer. For example, a lost man stands at a fork in the road: "Which of these directions is better for me?" Of course we had to ask him, "Where are you going?" And his answer was, "How should I know? I'm lost!" -- he gave himself an account. But unless you accompany him back a little bit, you may be able to figure out what went wrong. If you just stand at the fork in the road, trying to find the right exit in place, there will always be no solution.

Choose the fear of the people to find the answer, is such a thing without solution. In this aspect, I have more contact with college students. They are all very smart, so the logic behind the choice is very clear to them. Therefore, it is useless to try to help them overcome this confusion by reasoning. In my experience, most people who choose fear agonize over their pain for a while enough to come to the following conclusion:

1. I understand that every option I have to tangle with is both good and bad and imperfect.

2. This means that there is no absolute good choice, so there is no so-called bad choice, choose which will not die, I understand;

3. I also know that I can't choose which is better now. If I struggle with it for another month, I still can't choose which is better.

4. I know, really, that what I need is not more contemplation, weighing and comparing. I need courage, determination and self-responsibility.

Basically, fear of choice can not be justified beyond this range. But what about recognition?

5. But I can't fucking choose!!

Then I remembered my own experience. I'm pretty neat about making choices, as you can see from exams when I was a kid. When presented with two options that both seem likely to be correct, my first reaction is always a quick mental question: "If I thought about it more, could I have figured it out?" "Once I have come to the conclusion that" thinking is useless ", I will jump to a random choice and then immediately turn my attention to the next question. This is the strategy of a strong man. In almost every exam, I turn in the paper first.

I had a friend who was jealous of my efficiency. He spends an inordinate amount of time on these vague and uncertain options. Today, he would probably be a choicophobia patient, but there was no such term. To help him speed up, I tried to talk some sense into him -- easy to talk about, right? But he gently pushed me back with a word:

"Nonsense, you can be wrong, I can be wrong!?"

-- I was speechless. Looking back, his statement reveals a cold truth: I wasn't so determined because I assigned more skill points to attributes like "decisiveness" (which I didn't), just because I got good grades. I knew with confidence that I had done well on the other questions. So if you get a few multiple choice questions wrong, it doesn't matter. It's in the top five, if not number one. This way, I don't need to rely on one or two questions to be right or wrong for my overall grade.

If he didn't have problems with the other questions, it would be easier to get him to drop one or two.

But at that time I still just deja understand not understand, I try to debate with him: "But you anyway also do not know how to choose is right, you tangle along while also do not have any value, you spend a long time to choose the answer to follow the machine to choose a no essential difference..."

Yeah, everything I said was right. Can't argue with that. But I didn't understand him.

The question has little to do with the choice of one or two questions. The problem lies beyond these questions or two.

Back to the fear of choice in life. We have a fantasy:

It's as if this choice is essential to our lives, important enough to mask all other inadequacies.

The function of fantasy is always to cover up the unsatisfied reality. Like my friend, who avoids frustration and helplessness with his academic performance by fighting over one or two questions. If we look back enough and see clearly enough, we can always find that there was something concrete and huge missing in our lives at that point in time. It is difficult to deal with these omissions in a more direct way, or even to face the pain directly. The lost man, for example, goes round and round at the fork in the road, imagining that there is a way that will lead him straight to his destination -- but how can he possibly know which way it is? So we had to stop, stuck in the intersection. And the deeper motivation is that he can use this confusion to forget the fact that he has already lost his way. "I'm OK, my future is OK, just a little bit of a problem at this junction." There seemed to be nothing else important in life. This tiresome wandering was a special respite for him.

An outstanding college student, can not choose the destination after graduation, he repeatedly discussed with people, how to have a brighter future? He didn't realize his deepest fears about graduation: "The things I've used to maintain my confidence will be worthless. I'll be thrown into a highly competitive environment where I won't be able to stay on top. I'll face a lot of setbacks. No way! He doesn't want to accept this part of the pain, so his idea is: All the problem is I don't know whether to go abroad or work.

Another college student is tossing and turning in the "kidney 6" or "kidney 6 big", he has been struggling for several days: "small screen with small screen is good, big screen with big screen is good... He should have spent those days working on his paper, savoring the frustration and anxiety of writing a bad paper.

A woman was in a dilemma when shopping. She couldn't decide whether to buy a long yellow dress or a short blue dress. She tried this one and felt about that one, but couldn't make up her mind for an hour. Her fantasy may be that by choosing the right dress, her life will be better. She may become popular, admired by men and envied by women, and she will no longer have to face the fact that she is unloved.

Another woman in the blind date pick and choose: this family is very good, but with me have no common language; That's interesting, but no house or car; The third one has everything, but the mother-in-law seems to be difficult to get along with. Which one to choose? ! ... She knows that managing a relationship is hard, maybe beyond her abilities. She imagined that by making the right choice, she could bypass all difficulties once and for all.

Now, facing the future direction of work, I am also choosing the fear. I began to develop fantasies and fears to escape the real difficulties in my life. I know there are dangers in this kind of thinking. But I'm finally starting to understand my friend.

"Nonsense, you can be wrong, I can be wrong!?"

"Why can't you be wrong?"

"Because my grades are bad!"

In fact, to solve this problem, there is a saying, although it is too cruel to say:

Do you think you'll get better just because you chose the right question?

Now you know where to start.