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I spent most of last week in Seattle, which is why my posts were so sparse. I was there for both a conference on experiential education and some personal meddling. My significant-other, Gregg, had taken the initiative a few months earlier to begin co-coordinating our conferences. We had one methodology, decide on a city first then conference second. Which of course we mixed up priorities. Then this is where he and I are different. Conference search, for me, meant days online looking at all the options possible. Cities first, then maybe find time to see what conferences were there. Plus I had some ideal, that nagged me during the search, that this was an opportunity to find a conference that had topics that I was really into (I scraped our strategy basically to look for the most perfect option) I’m exhausted all over again just thinking about it, aren’t you? As my list grew, Gregg’s list got smaller and he really was only considering the city because he thought, if someone else is paying why be so concerned. You can start to see a trend.
It might begin to look like I’m heading down the road of dissing the “open-minded-free-spirited” bunch but I am in fact pinning the tail on a much larger donkey. This post is for all of us and all those times when we find that “going with the flow” is really a guise for being indecisive. This causes tension in most everyone because being completely narrow-minded or open-minded isn’t really ideal, yet our society rewards making the most perfect “right” decision but only after being open minded enough to consider every option. We are destined to fail, how can we be both at the same time?
Through my whole process of looking, looking, looking, I exemplified my tendency to wander. While I was looking, Gregg forced us to make some decisions on his ever shortening list. In the end, my tactic led nowhere. City first, conference second had us removing more options from his list. We were left with one, Seattle, which was on both of our lists since the beginning (a slap in the face). Plus the conference was applicable to both of our work positions. I grumbled at the decision.
Part three of all of this was the beginning phases of looking at graduate programs. I thought, wouldn’t it have been better to have chosen an area with more college options? Quite the opposite was true, at least for me. Since the Seattle area didn’t have the plethora of options of say Boston, I was able to satiate my desire to look at all of them. I ended up visiting all applicable programs offered in my broad areas of interest at each of of the institutions.
There is a growing lesson from this. I could over analyze this whole ordeal but I’ll keep the lesson simple. Settle more often. Settling for Seattle led me to find the first graduate program that seemed to take into account all my interests, plus the institution is highly rated. I discovered an article in Psychology Today while in the beautiful Seattle library, just as I was wrapping my own head around this conclusion. Click here and check it out!
Here are some tips they suggest:
How to Make Options Your Allies
You can outfox your evolved emotional makeup.
* God is not in the details: Practice making decisions quickly about small things and routine purchases. Limit the time you spend comparing specs. Build confidence in your “gut” by attending to it.
* Don’t dwell: Refuse to spend too much time regretting a decision or blaming yourself for a poor outcome. Instead learn from your mistakes and determine to do better.
* Keep your expectations realistic: Needing it all is guaranteed to make you unhappy.
* Risk a wrong decision: Fight emotional paralysis by seeing that even making the “wrong” choice is often better than making no choice at all; you still learn through trial and error. It is better to blunder your way through life than to avoid making decisions.
* Don’t look back: Engineer your decisions so that they are binding and irreversible: Force yourself to buy final sale items or draw up a contract with family or friends stating that you will not reverse course on a larger decision.
This whole topic relates right back to a previous entry about focusing your options, specifically regarding those close to you. It seems like although settling has a negative connotation we must settle and focus in order to actually have time to experience something. Play to your evolutionary strong points and keep it simple stupid.
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