How to make good choices

Grocery shopping can get pretty stressful nowadays. Not only because of the new normal of distancing and masking and the fear of getting exposed to a disease-causing virus but because isle after isle, we have to make decisions of what to buy. There are seemingly hundreds of choices for salad dressings and 50 different types of bread and more for drinks.

I find myself attracted to labels, packaging colors and familiar feel. Then I start reading labels, ingredients and calorie counts.

I should not be holding anything in the store that I am not buying, but after reading the ingredients and calorie count per serving, I have to put some back.

Sometimes I wish there are only two or three choices. It would make grocery shopping easier and less stressful. More choices in not always good. It makes it harder to make a decision.

I started thinking about making choices — easy ones and hard ones. Why some choices are easier to make and others are harder. Why some people seems to make good choices and others don’t.

I find that if there are many choices, our expectations go up and making a decision that could possibly be not the best decision can cause regret and anxiety. I should have chosen the healthier choice of salad dressing or the less sugary drink or the nonfat yogurt because they are better healthy choices. I should have paid off my debt first before I bought a new car. I should have chosen one job instead of the other.

The stress level can go up and up. We want the best option out of the hundreds of choices. And if we feel we did not make the best decision, we are disappointed in ourselves. Some people do not deal well with disappointment and ruminates well into sleepless nights and paralyzing days.

Choices becomes even harder when there is no best option. When there is no best option, the fear of the unknown can freeze us into non-committal. I find that if you make the choice based on what you really desire to become, without fear of other people’s opinion or agreement, your choice will be in alignment with your true self.

Let go of conditioned expectations. Get the salad dressing that you think will satisfy your desired outcome and see what happens. You can always buy a different one next time.

Let your innermost desire of what you want to become in the future inform you when you have to make hard choices. What direction do you want to go with your life? Do you want to be an artist, or do you want to be an engineer? Do you want to get married, or stay single? Do you want to have children or do you want to adopt?

There are family and societal norms that could blur our choices. These norms can throw us off to a wrong decision pathway. Increase your awareness. Dig deep to find out what you ought to do and what you really want to do.

Depression is on the rise, according to the health reports, especially among our teenagers and young adults. Compared to other countries in the world, we have it good here. But why are we not happy?

Being happy is also a personal powerful choice. Practice accepting what is and check your expectations. You could be setting yourself up for daily disappointments. Daily doses of disappointments and perceptions of unsatisfactory choices are potent ingredients that can make anybody depressed. The choice really is yours.