Nine Terrible Ways to Make Choices (That You Probably Didn’t Know You Were Using)

This post blatantly steals ideas from an interesting and unusual little book: The Path of Least Resistance by Robert Fritz.
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There's a saying, often mis-attributed to Mark Twain, that goes "it is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled."

Likewise, it's easier to fool ourselves than it to accept that we've done so.

So if you want to fool yourself--without discovering or accepting it later--one of the most effective ways is to enable conditions where your choices are artificially limited. In other words, we often covertly or subconsciously "stack the deck" in certain specific ways with our choice-making. This causes us to shut off possibilities and solutions that would otherwise be right there for the taking.

Let's consider some examples:

Choice by Limitation -- Choosing only from what currently seems possible or realistic to you. "I didn't think I could really learn to do deadlifts, so I didn't try. I just stuck to the nautilus machines." Or: "I read somewhere this great quote: 'cheap, healthy, delicious: choose only two' ...so it's obvious then that if you want to eat healthy and tasty food, it's is really gonna cost you." Note that reality doesn't care what you think, so why place arbitrary limits on it that you've totally made up?

Choice by Indirectness -- Choosing based on a process rather than by the result. Examples: choosing to go to law school/med school "to have a good career" rather than out of an actual desire for or interest in the subject matter itself. Or, in the domain of consumerism: buying a product or service to "make" you happy, rather than achieving happiness by directly satisfying the true underlying need (which ironically is usually free, or near-free).

Choice by Elimination -- Escalating a conflict such that you force an artificial or otherwise unnecessary choice. "I had to write him off, we argue way too much about politics."

Choice by Non-Choice -- Choosing not to make a choice, such that you give your power away to the situation. This is still a type of choice by the way, albeit a perverse one. Certain lifestyle anti-choices fit into this category, such as not choosing to make fitness, a healthy diet, or high-quality sleep a priority in your life.

Choice by Future Condition -- "When I reach my goal weight, I'm going to finally start on my dream of running a marathon." "When I get married, I'll finally get to..." etc. Sadly, these "choices" will likely never be made: they exist only in the future, never in the present.

Choice by Consensus -- Polling specific friends and framing the question to drive the answer you already want to hear. Examples: A woman asks her already-divorced girlfriends, "I'm no longer attracted to my husband, do you think should I divorce him?" Or: A frugal person asking her most hopelessly consumerist friend, "Should I buy this $300 dress? I really think it's cute." Um, what response did you think you'd get?

Choice by Reaction -- Whenever your situation or environment reaches a level of significant discomfort, making a reactive choice in order to lessen that discomfort. "You know, I never really started to deal with my weight until I started to have heart problems." You could easily argue that most human choices are made this way.

Choice by Adverse Possession -- Assuming if something happens to you, it's because, somehow, subconsciously, you actually wanted that thing. "I have hemorrhoids, therefore I must have somehow chosen them." You could also call this Choice by Law of Attraction.

Choice by Negation -- Instead of choosing to be healthy, choosing "not to be sick." Or, instead of making life choices with an intent to be wealthy, making choices so as "not to be poor." This may seem like merely a semantic distinction, but the negative option is typically a choice borne of fear and powerlessness, while the positive option is a choice based on true agency and power.
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A Final Word
For me, the examples above collectively offer a lens I can use to evaluate the decisions and choices I make. Am I avoiding possibilities, am I needlessly limiting my options? Am I enabling circumstances to control me, giving away my power? Am I unknowingly letting someone else frame my choices... am I playing the game on someone else's terms?

Remember: the consumer marketplace, the food marketplace, the diet and fitness industry, the healthcare industry, the investment industry… all of these domains offer us all kinds of convenient-sounding default choices using systems, cues and various manipulation techniques to make us think we're really choosing for ourselves.

Often, the easy-seeming choices are the ones surreptitiously set for you by default. Don't give away your power and agency.

Readers, what do you think? 






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Don't Fall Victim to False Logic With the Food Industry

I've been extremely happy with the candid and generally constructive dialog here at Casual Kitchen since my last two posts on The Worst Lie of the Food Blogosphere, and The "It's Too Expensive to Eat Healthy Food" Debate.*

But I feel I must respond to the most common objection I'm seeing to these two posts, which can essentially be reduced to the following three-part syllogism. Here's the logic that I'm seeing from commenters:
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1) Casual Kitchen claims that people have power over their decisions about food.

2) However, there are people out there who don't have power, choices or options (examples: schoolkids who don't have a say in what their school serves them for lunch, people who live in inner cities, people with limited means or limited education, etc.)

Therefore...

3) I have no power. I should go back to wringing my hands and feeling bad about the current state of the food industry and take no action.

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This, dear readers, is what they call a false syllogism. Don't generalize from the exceptions. There are exceptions to everything in the food industry, and there will always be people who, for whatever reason, are unable or unwilling to make good choices.

But don't let this fact fool you into giving up your power to help drive the food industry in the right direction. The real question is, what choices are you going to make with the power that you have?

Let's tackle some of the details of this syllogism one by one: First, when it comes to schoolkids, how powerless are they, really? What about this powerful post about middle school students from New Orleans who convinced their superintendent to change his foodservice contract to include fresh, local produce at least twice a month? And what about the high school students from Vermont who advocated for--and got--local vegetables on their menus at school?

Hmmmm. Maybe schoolkids aren't quite as powerless as we assume. And if they can take power into their own hands and bring about positive change, why are we using them as just another reason to whine?

Furthermore, there are lots of people with limited means and limited education who manage to cook exceptionally healthy meals for very little money. I know this because many of these people are regular readers of this blog. And, as commenter Consciously Frugal said, to presume other people are powerless smacks of condescension.

Look, I'm not trying to make the case that the food industry in its current state is some kind of a fantasy land. Anyone can see that it's not.

But my point is this: What good does it do to complain? Instead, ask yourself this: what are you going to do about your food industry, given your situation and the range of choices available to you right now?

That's how to address a situation from a position of power. That's what I'm getting at when I encourage my readers to take power back into their own hands rather than giving it away by whimpering and complaining about Big Food.

If there is any concept that you MUST understand after reading this post, it's that you have the power. You can make a difference in the world by acting on your power and only buying the products that have real value from the stores that you believe are worthy of your business.

I'll say it once again: if we took these steps, the food industry would break its own back bending over backwards to meet our demands.

Until then, however, we will get the food industry we whine about.


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!