Mirage of Choices

3 years ago, I used to be very stressed about the future,

❓️ Will I achieve my dreams

🎓️ Do I have what it takes to be successful?

💰️ But today, I have everything I wanted.

Okay, hopefully, you did not ❌ buy that lie. If you did, I am guessing this is your first time interacting in the online world. In that case, Welcome to the Internet! 🕸️ 

I try to be as vulnerable and candid as I can through my visuals, but still, the barrier of social media and milestones might paint a false picture. Just to be clear, I have the almost same number of breakdowns and self-doubting sessions as you do. Chances are that I have more than you do (my best friend is nodding yes aggressively reading this). And everything circles back to the problem of limitless possibilities and choices. You might be confused here, so let me explain.

I have always been an ambitious person, and thus, I expected the absolute maximum from myself. It was easier during my school years when I had a singular track to focus on.

But things changed drastically after I graduated from school. University life was level up. The juggling between academic pressure, social life, staying fit, and extracurricular activities became an insurmountable task. In those years, your social situations largely define your inclination to pick up new tasks.

The vast array of choices to delve into becomes both empowering and daunting to delve into. The myriad of choices with time doesn’t provide the freedom it should have. The urgency to explore and extract all the potential avenues life offers with a deadline at hand might paralyze you if you don’t prioritize.

However, things get harder when the guardrails are removed once you graduate. The constant need to fit in everything while being responsible for all of life’s necessities becomes overwhelming. We live in a world where many options crowd our every waking moment. Every aspect of our lives, from deciding on a profession to picking a restaurant, is rife with alternatives.

The added layer of perfectionism doesn’t help.

You can do thousands of things to boost your career.

You can pick more responsibilities at your organization,

Upskill yourself to move to a better opportunity or start a side hustle.

If you are pursuing one side hustle, there’s always something more to market it better or add another one which might be taking up pace recently.

There are always more products you can offer, or scale it a little more.

Hell, even when I need to take a break, there are so many options to read or watch. There’s one popular show, another one that has your favorite actor in it, or one show that your friend is pestering you to see for 3 weeks now. The catalog keeps on getting updated at an insanely rapid pace and it’s impossible to keep up. The mirage of choices becomes real.

Mirage of Choices 💥 

It refers to a psychological phenomenon that occurs when people are overwhelmed by possibilities. Instead of feeling liberated and empowered, they experience an overwhelming sensation and stress. Decision paralysis, the inability to choose between several viable possibilities, is a common occurrence when people are forced to weigh a large number of options. This can lead to anxiety and even result in making suboptimal choices.

😵 How to deal with Decision Paralysis? 💫 

The trees filled with all the apples perfectly encapsulate the dilemma. The metaphor of ‘catching apples’ implies that one often feels compelled to seize every opportunity that arises. But you can be only in one place at one time, and your basket can hold this many apples. If you keep focusing on trying to catch more and more apples while your basket is already close to full, there are two ways how it can turn out:

1. Your basket overflows🍎 To catch something new, you have to let a few apples go. You decide which ripe ‘apple’ to replace the bad ‘apple.’ One way or another, there is something you would have to let go of. Willingly or unwillingly.

2. You trip with your basket🧺 If your basket is full, and you still run around to catch more apples, you might trip and fall. Obviously, this as a metaphor indicates you overwhelming yourself and having a breakdown. If you keep on adding more and more things to do, you won’t be able to do anything perfectly. Some anomaly of life and the cascading effect would take you down.

That’s why it’s important to catch ‘apples’ which are closest to you and that is the option the most significant to you. By focusing on what matters most at the moment, we may overcome indecision and make superior choices. Here are some ways how:

1. Prioritize: The key to overcoming indecision is to establish a set of priorities that reflect what is most important to you.

2. Limit alternatives: Narrowing them down might help. Limit yourself to no more than three possibilities, or cross off those that don't mesh with your beliefs and priorities.

3. Embrace uncertainty: Understand that uncertainty is an integral element of development processes, and learn to embrace it. Advice from trusted folks like friends, relatives, or mentors may help you a lot in this aspect.

4. Reflect & Revisit: Take some time to think about the decision you just made and how well it fits in with your long-term objectives and core beliefs.

The paradox of choice is more palpable than ever in today's culture when options abound in almost every sphere of life. Yet we may avoid paralysis by analysis and make better decisions if we focus on what is most important and pertinent to us right now. This entails setting priorities for our beliefs and goals and acting to further them. It also means being mindful of our limits and being okay with saying no to opportunities that are not aligned with our goals or values.

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That's it! I can't wait to hear what you think. Reply to this mail or tweet me at me @mounika_2000 with your own ‘hacks’ to deal with FOMO.

What was your favorite? What do you want more or less of? Just reply to this email. Also, if you have anything interesting to share, I want to know about it.

Thank you for joining me along on the ride, and meet you in the next issue of Swirling Visions.

😊 Have a great week -

Mounika