Learning how to make choices is one of the most neglected areas of our education. Teachers often believe if they let students make choices, they may not choose what their parents or teachers would want for them.
Students might not choose to be in school at all. Would our children choose to do homework rather than watch television? Clearly, there are many alternatives to any given choice. But the
process of choice-making itself is often neglected.
My third grade teacher taught me that choosing less than what I wanted was desirable. Such choices demonstrated my ability to compromise, and compromise was taught as a virtue. What compromise actually teaches children is to limit their choices and be satisfied with less than they really desire. Compromise is a different process than choice-making.
How do we choose? How do we learn to make choices that are in our best interests? How do we learn to trust our own ability to make choices? How can we practice making choices so as to improve our choice-making skill (it is a learned skill)? All of these questions are rarely addressed in our formal education. They are often totally ignored in our repertoire of parenting skills.
When one has little or limited experience in making choices, desired results usually give way to immediate pleasure or ease. It is easier to watch TV than to do homework. It is more pleasurable to take illicit drugs than to fully experience the difficulties and complexities of life. It is both easier and more pleasurable to respond to the heat of the sexual moment than to consider your long-term goals and the impact having sex may have on them.
Ineffective choice-making is very common. Here are a few ways we practice making limited and ineffective choices.
We choose only what seems possible or reasonable. When you choose to become a nurse, when you really wanted to be a physician, you have made a choice by limiting it to compromise. organizations and industries are full of people whose enthusiasm and high spirits simply do not support their choice of work because it is a compromise of what they would really enjoy, but they continue to do their job with little satisfaction because it is reasonable to do so or not possible to get another one.
We often choose the process, rather than the result we want. People choose to be in therapy rather than be healthy; they choose to go to college rather than become well educated; they choose to eat healthy foods rather than be well; they choose to be trained in a workshop, rather than become an expert. Without a clear vision of the desired result, we tend to continually choose an activity, sometimes with no awareness of any desired outcome.
We may choose by the process of elimination. This is a passive process. Typically, we tend to make matters worse, or tolerate lousy situations until we have no choice but to move to another situation – town – job – marriage – because the current situation has become intolerable. We then feel controlled by circumstance” rather than being responsible for, and an active influence in, choosing our life’s situations.
We may choose by default. In this case, we choose to not make a choice. By not choosing, we are in fact, making a choice to defer any influence on the outcome. We wait and see what happens. When we choose this mode of choice-making, we gives up our own power and assigns it to the unknown future.
Another type of common, but ineffective choice-making is by depending on conditions. I will choose this if… or when something else happens. When I get more money, I will choose to go to Bermuda. I’ll move to a new home, if and when my mother-in-law moves out. These kinds of conditional choices again place the power to choose on some vague or unknown future. hey rarely bring satisfa
