Six ways to be happy with your decisions for higher education
Like many parents, I have spent the past several years trying to figure out why so many of us and our children fret over getting into college when there is, at least in the United States, a surplus of good schools to choose from.
Like many parents, I have spent the past several years trying to figure out why so many of us and our children fret over getting into college when there is, at least in the United States, a surplus of good schools to choose from. It's like being handed tickets to a sporting event and, instead of enjoying the game, worrying that the seats might not be close enough.
It never occurred to me that this contrary reaction to our collegiate riches was a metaphor for the poisonous nature of choice in modern life.
But I have just read a little book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz that argues this thesis convincingly.
As any parent knows, we are much more anxious about the college admissions process than we ever were before. That is the paradox of choice.
Schwartz is Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore College, and he knows something about selective schools. He describes the difficulties faced by the bright young people who agonise over where to go to school, and what to do once they get there.
Swarthmore "attracts some of the most talented young people in the world," he says. "Unconstrained by limitations of talent, the world is open to them.
Do they exult in this opportunity? Not most of the ones I talk to. Instead, they agonise: Between making money and doing something of social value.
Between challenging their intellects and exercising their creative impulses. Between work that demands single-mindedness and work that will enable them to live balanced lives."
The wisdom of their choice of college or major or career has less to do with the objective results than with their subjective experiences. "What matters to us most of the time, I think, is how we feel about the decisions we make," he says.
"I have interacted with college students for many years as a professor, and in my experience, students who think they're in the right place get far more out of a particular school than students who don't. Conviction that they have found a good fit makes students more confident, more open to experience, and more attentive to opportunities."
It is relationships with other people that seem to be the key to happiness, the research shows.
How do we deal with a world that gives us more choices than we can handle?
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less authored by Barry Schwartz has many suggestions, which I have whittled down to the six I think work best for me. Read the book to find more. It is important to remember that we are all going to have bad moments with some choices, but there are healthy habits of mind to get us through:
- Listen to your viscera — Feelings matter more than facts, and an unexamined emotional response is often a better guide to our long-term needs than careful analysis of our thoughts. Schwartz cites a study in which college students were asked to evaluate posters for their dorm rooms. Some were asked to write down their feelings about the posters. Some were not. And then both groups were told they could keep the posters they preferred. Those who analysed their thinking before choosing were less happy with their posters weeks later than those who went with their instincts.
- Count your blessings — Schwartz says gratitude has been proven scientifically so powerful in enhancing happiness that people should write in a bedside notebook each day five things that happened for which they were grateful.
- Satisfice — Your spellchecker, like mine, may complain about that word. But it means to settle for something that is good enough and not worry about the possibility that there might be something better.
- Regret less — My favourite mental exercise, when worrying over a choice, is to concede that if I had taken the alternate road, a bus might have hit me. Schwartz endorses this vehicular approach to mental health.
- Anticipate adaptations — We get used to things, and then we start to take them for granted. Adaptation sucks some of the thrill out of good things, like marrying your sweetheart or winning the lottery. If you recognise that this tendency is going to affect you, you are less likely to misinterpret it as a sign you made the wrong choice.
- Avoid conversations about choice with maximisers — Maximisers are people who obsess over every decision, who don't know how to satisfice.
— Los Angeles Times-Washington Post
