Making choices can be hard; at the risk of hyperbole, it can be torturous. The fact that choice-making can be so difficult and stressful raises a question — after all, making choices is just thinking, which we do constantly; what makes the thinking process associated with choice-making so uniquely hard?
Some factors contributing to this hardship are fairly obvious. For example, every choice exposes the choice-maker to the risk of subsequent regret — a unique mental pain we universally, intensely wish to avoid.
More philosophically, making a choice highlights the finitude of our lives — once a choice is made, all the unchosen options are lost forever.
But the primary factor contributing to the hardship of choice-making is the fact that we simply don’t know how to do it: Growing up, we are taught that it is very important to make good choices. However, we rarely, if ever, receive useful training supporting the development of a reliable and practical method for making good choices. At best, we are taught to rely on analysis of past experiences, estimates of the odds of future scenarios materializing, and the guidance offered by “gut feelings,” or intuition. This leaves much to be desired; essentially, we enter adulthood with an unequivocal understanding that it’s important to make good choices but without the knowledge required to do so. The need to perform any act without possessing the required know-how understandably causes tension. Moreover, this tension rises proportionally to the importance attributed to the act that needs to be performed. As this tension mounts, choice-making becomes torturous.
When it comes to the pursuit of happiness, the prevailing approach to choice-making is so woefully inadequate it should be expected that the process would be uncomfortable (or worse). The bottom line is that if making choices is indeed as important as advertised, a better method must be within reach. More specifically — everything needed to make good choices must be available to the choice-maker at the time choices are made (otherwise, the pursuit of happiness would be a fundamentally rigged game, a nihilistic view, incompatible with this work).
The following chapter presents such a method — rational, systematic, and — with practice — readily applicable.
The Choice
The human brain — the most sophisticated object in the known universe — conducts countless operations continuously with astonishing precision. The brain’s operations include monitoring and maintaining parameters such as the body’s core temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, blood pH, and glucose level; tracking the position of each joint, limb, and digit, as well as the whole body’s position in space and its angle relative to the horizon. The brain monitors and constantly assesses the surrounding environment for evidence of threats and attractions, recognizes patterns, stores and recalls memories, generates emotions, produces imaginary scenarios, recognizes potentials, calculates probabilities, integrates new information, and develops new skills. All of these (and many more) truly amazing functions are subservient to the generation of the brain’s ultimate product — the choice.
All of the brain’s impressive activity, up to the moment a choice is generated, has no external impact. It is non-existent to the outside world. The choice is the interface point between a brain and the world in which it operates. Any deliberate impact a brain can have on the world around it takes place through the implementation of the choices it generates.
The choice is the instrument with which our brains exert influence on the surrounding reality. In other words, the choice is the instrument with which our brains influence the two pursuits that matter to us — survival and the pursuit of happiness.
Consequently, a good choice can be defined as a choice that exerts a favorable influence on the choice-maker’s pursuit of happiness (or pursuit of survival). A bad choice can be defined as a choice that compromises the choice-maker’s pursuit of happiness (or pursuit of survival).
Types of Choices
Choices exist on three levels (which overlap considerably; the clear-cut distinctions I make are for the purpose of illustrating the relevant points). First-order choices are choices that protect survival. Second-order choices are choices that support sustaining survival (these include choices designed to minimize pain and maximize pleasure; they are subservient to the greater cause of sustaining survival). Third-order choices support the pursuit of happiness. Before we bring attention to this type of choice, which is the focus of this work, let’s take a minute to examine some of the principles in play in the first two levels.
Circumstances involving literal survival threats are invariably intense and dramatic. For example, imagine driving on a highway and suddenly hitting a patch of black ice and beginning to skid. In a flash (before any physical or mental pain has a chance to register), 100% of your attention is consumed by the survival threat, and your body responds with immediate actions (which may or may not be productive). These actions express instantaneous choices your brain has made; these are your reflexes, or instincts, in action.
The quality of instinctive choices can be improved. The brain can be trained to make good choices under such circumstances (e.g., combat training) such that your reflexive responses increase the likelihood of survival (of course, one can come out unharmed regardless of the quality of one’s response, with sheer luck).
Second-order choices sustain survival. These choices are much more common than first-order choices, as, thankfully, most of us encounter literal existential threats relatively infrequently.
In comparison with first-order choices, the process of generating survival-sustaining choices relies less on instincts and reflexes and more on other brain functions such as the analysis of sensory input, recall of past experience, utilization of common sense, and (perhaps arguably) intuition. Let’s examine these factors:
There are two kinds of sensory inputs: Physical sensations — sensations originating from the body, and mental sensations — emotions; both may be painful or pleasurable. Sensory input drives the formation of choices by repulsion from pain and attraction to pleasure.
For example, hunger — an uncomfortable physical sensation that becomes outright painful as it intensifies. Hunger normally leads to survival-sustaining choices, manifested by specific behaviors (i.e., obtaining and consuming food). We are evolutionarily programmed to experience sweet and fatty foods — foods with high caloric content — as more pleasurable than low-calorie foods, and hence, we find them more attractive. Consequently, we are automatically (or “naturally”) driven to make choices that express this attraction by a preference for high-caloric foods. Conversely, bitter-tasting foods are innately repulsive and typically drive avoidance behavior (vividly demonstrated by the typical enthusiasm most children have for broccoli and Brussels sprouts).
The quality of second-level choices is manifested by their impact on ongoing or long-term survival: good choices support it, bad choices undermine it. Choices shaped exclusively by the appeal of pleasure and the avoidance of pain (i.e., by short-term considerations) and that ignore survival-sustaining needs (i.e., long-term considerations) are likely to be of poor quality (commonly referred to as bad choices — hence the typical parental position on broccoli and Brussels sprouts). Addictions and obesity (with some exceptions; there is more than one way to get there) are examples of the consequences of persistent choices driven by preferential attention to pleasure and pain over long-term, survival-sustaining considerations.
Common sense and data gathered through past experience (one’s own and others’) also have a role in generating survival-sustaining choices. Our brains generate a probabilistic assessment of the risk/benefit ratio associated with the various options available to choose from. Under normal operating procedures, options perceived as having a greater potential for cost than for benefit to ongoing survival are likely to be avoided, and vice versa. This approach is effective for generating choices designed to protect long-term survival, but it is not optimal in the pursuit of happiness.
For example, imagine that you deeply disagree with some of the laws in your state of residence. Based on common sense and past experience, the choice to abide by the law, regardless of your feelings about it, is a better choice than the choice to ignore and violate the law. Ignoring the law is likely to threaten your long-term survival (at the very least, it is likely to be a threat to your freedom, which, as discussed in the Freedom chapter, can be considered a requirement for a worthwhile survival). In comparison, making good choices in the context of the pursuit of happiness is more involved. It requires generating and considering more options (such as relocating to a place with laws that meet your approval, becoming politically active in the hope of changing the law, or cultivating tolerance of laws with which you disagree).
Occasionally, survival choices may conflict with choices that support the pursuit of happiness. In principle, meeting survival needs is a higher priority than meeting the pursuit of happiness needs. Usually, when facing an acute threat to survival, this prioritization is readily evident. Since second-level choices, by definition, involve long-term considerations, their occasional incompatibility with choices that serve the pursuit of happiness is unavoidable, potentially raising difficult-to-resolve dilemmas. Awareness of the dynamics of such conflict, i.e., a clear insight into the nature of the competing needs, unquestionably helps to make the right choice. At times, however, it can be a difficult bind. A satisfying resolution of such dilemmas is usually within reach, typically requiring careful contemplation. Since it can be a slow process, it, in turn, requires tolerance for the discomfort associated with ambivalence and the pressure of postponing action (until the right choice becomes clear). Hence, in non-emergent situations, it is essential to keep in mind that, in principle, doing nothing is preferable to doing the wrong thing (as discussed in detail in the First Order of Business chapter).
The rest of this discussion is devoted to making choices pertaining to the pursuit of happiness (which, unlike the survival arena, I audaciously claim expertise in).
As mentioned above, the typical method most of us automatically apply to choice-making is profoundly inadequate for an effective pursuit of happiness. Our brain generally follows these steps: it starts by listing the available options. Next, it tries to predict the future that will transpire after each of the options is implemented. Lastly, it identifies the most attractive imagery — the future in which the imagined ‘self’ is happiest; the option associated with this imagery is then selected and becomes ‘the choice.’
We typically evaluate the quality of our choices (at some point, after we implement them) along the same line: When what materializes after we implement a choice is indeed to our liking, we consider the choice to have been a good one. When we don’t like what follows, we consider the choice a bad one. In general, the more we like what transpires, the better we consider the choice to have been, and vice versa.
Right?
This approach to choice-making is laden with numerous fatal flaws. First and foremost, it is based on future-telling, something no one can do.
Consider the following question: How confident are you in your ability to predict your future accurately? If you are thinking that the answer depends on how far into the future we are talking about, I agree, it does. So let’s break it down. It is likely that your confidence in your ability to correctly predict a future that is five minutes out is pretty high; on a zero-to-ten scale, perhaps eight or nine. How about a future that is 24 hours out? Not quite as high, right? Maybe five or six on the same scale? How about a week out? Probably lower, perhaps around three? The point is that the confidence in the accuracy of a prediction drops as the prediction point is moved further out into the future. At some point, realistically not very far into the future, it nears zero.
Our ability to predict a future that is months or years away accurately is essentially nonexistent (excluding the prediction that the laws of nature will continue to operate as they have in the past). Therefore, realistically, the confidence in the validity of predictions of a distant future should be near zero. By extension, so should be the confidence in the quality of choices that are contingent on the accuracy of these predictions.
The actual magnitude, i.e., the actual future impact, of our choices is also unknowable. Decisions one may consider trivial, such as where to have lunch (or even which side of the street to walk on on the way to lunch), may actually have a huge, transformative impact that is difficult to appreciate; arguably, it may be impossible to appreciate at the time the choice is made, or perhaps ever.
To simplify matters, let’s disregard this issue. Let’s focus on choices that are generally considered important, or “big decisions.” For example, questions such as “should I stay in school or get a job,” “should I get married or stay single,” “should I have a child or an abortion,” and so on.
The consequences of these “big decisions” unfold over years if not generations — i.e., over periods that are way outside a time frame that realistically allows one to have confidence in the accuracy of one’s predictions. Hence, the problem: If the quality of choices really depends on the accuracy of the choice-maker’s future prediction, making good choices is impossible!
It is simply not possible to make good choices by relying on future-telling prowess, because the future can’t be foretold. When we do rely on our ability to predict the future, we, in fact, are just guessing. Denying it is either kidding or deluding ourselves.
“But,” you might be saying, “there is more to my choice-making process than future-telling. I also consider such things as past experience (mine and others’), probabilities, and intuition.” So let’s examine these factors and how they fit into the decision-making in the pursuit of happiness.
The problem with relying on past experience as a source of guidance for choice-making is captured in the familiar paraphrase attributed to Heraclitus (the 500 B.C. Greek philosopher): “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” Given the Law of Impermanence (which Heraclitus’ quote is about), past experience must be applied very cautiously — things are never exactly the same as they were. So, if we are to be precise, every dilemma is unique. This is not to say that experience is irrelevant; of course, it should be taken into consideration, but one must keep in mind that its utility is limited.
For example, recalling that you liked the food you had at a particular restaurant in the past may be helpful in choosing where to eat today. Indeed, it is likely you will enjoy a meal at that restaurant. However, it is important to keep in mind that having a positive experience in the past does not guarantee a positive experience in the future. As per Heraclitus, neither the restaurant nor you is the same.
The point is that paying attention to past experience as part of the choice-making process is, of course, reasonable; but, at the same time, it is important to keep in mind that it does not offer anything close to an assurance of the quality of a choice (especially when facing “big decisions” like the ones listed above). Furthermore, past experience is irrelevant to dilemmas encountered for the first time: If it’s a first encounter, there is no personal past experience to rely on.
Statistical data — the likelihood of something happening (or not) — is another factor pertinent to the choice-making process. Statistical data indeed offer useful guidance to decision-making, but only when dealing with a population. Statistical data can tell us what happens to a population; it cannot tell us what will happen to you.
For example, if you are making decisions for a health insurance company, your choices apply to the population insured by your company. As such, you must rely on statistical data: If you know that a certain surgical procedure has a 75% likelihood of success, it would be a correct choice to include the procedure in what your company covers. If the success rate is only 25%, you may not offer it to your insured population. However, if you need to make the decision in your own life — whether or not to undergo the same procedure — the utility of the same statistical data is questionable. What the statistical data actually means is that if you had a hundred lives to live (in a hundred parallel universes) and you made the choice to undergo the procedure in each of these lives, the procedure would succeed in 75 out of your hundred lives. However, the fact that research suggests a 75% success rate (i.e., that the vast majority of patients undergoing the procedure have a positive outcome) must not be interpreted as an assurance that your (individual) procedure will succeed (and similarly, a 25% failure rate in a population doesn’t say much about the outcome of an individual case). For an individual, if the procedure succeeds, it is 100% successful, and if it fails, it is 100% unsuccessful, regardless of the success and failure rates in the population. It is therefore a mistake — and a set-up for disappointment — to consider a high (or low) statistical likelihood as an assurance of a particular outcome for an individual. When we do so, we are, again, kidding or deluding ourselves.
Looking at the utility of statistical data from another angle, if you drive to work most days of the year, and you need to choose between two routes to get there, if you know that, statistically, one route takes less time than the other, it would be prudent to choose the quicker route every time you go to work. That choice does not guarantee that you will get to work faster on any given day, but over a year, you will save time. The statistical data applies in this case because, while you are an individual, your more than 300 yearly trips to work is “a population.”
Let’s look at another example: Current statistical data suggest that nearly half of first marriages in the USA end with a divorce (moreover, in my professional experience, about half of the marriages that do not end in a divorce are dysfunctional and should dissolve, but, for a variety of reasons, don’t). So, I believe it is a fair clinical estimate that only about 25% of marriages are happy unions. As odds go — not so great. But does this data mean that the right choice for every couple considering marriage is not to get married? Hardly (and if my wife is reading this — I totally mean it!). So, as a factor affecting decision-making, like past experience, statistical data are relevant and shouldn’t be ignored, but they should be applied to the decision-making process with great caution.
Lastly, intuition (thanks, FL, for reminding me to comment on it). Intuition is a somewhat controversial topic — it is difficult to define, identify, and gauge, and it’s definitely difficult to apply systematically. Yet, for some, intuition is very impressive. In my opinion, if intuition has any role in the decision-making process, it is a minor one. I suppose intuition may deserve attention when it is present robustly. But, as long as it remains as elusive as it presently is, as I see it, intuition cannot be an essential factor in the process of making good decisions.
The Problem of Outcome
As mentioned above, the typical decision-making process is based on trying to predict the outcomes that will be generated by the different available options. However, the mere concept of ‘outcome’ is problematic. It triggers two difficult questions: First — when does the outcome of a choice become known (as “the outcome”)? And second — what actually shapes the (perceived) outcome?
Here’s a (somewhat convoluted, so buckle up) illustration of the first issue. Imagine that you are at a party and have had a few too many. You befriend another guest, someone you have never met before. In your inebriated state, you are extremely chummy and trusting. Your new “best friend” shares with you, in great confidence, that she knows of a once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity that is guaranteed, by the end of the coming week, to yield ten times the value of any investment. You are overwhelmed with gratitude and joy for this information. You pull out your checkbook, write a check for all your savings, and hand it over, profusely thanking her for her kindness and willingness to share the riches. When you wake up the next day, you are horrified as you recall this interaction. You call your bank only to discover that the check has been cashed. You call the person whose party it was, but he has no idea who the person you dealt with is. You have no choice but to accept the loss of your life savings! Clearly, a nightmarish outcome! Undeniably, you made a very bad choice. The following days find you grief-stricken and in shock, as you try to come to terms with the full extent of the outcome of the horrific choice you made. The following Friday, there’s a knock on your door. And, what do you know — it’s the lady from the party, there with ten times your investment! Obviously, a fantastic turn of events. Your joy is beyond words! The story now has a ‘happy ending’ — a completely different outcome. But which is the true outcome? The one that had you devastated, poor, and rendered your choice horrific, or the one where you are joyous, rich, and the choice you made has turned out to be terrific?
The point of this story is that the perceived outcome does not determine the quality of the choice. The quality of a choice is determined when the choice is made, and it doesn’t change from there, regardless of what follows. (This is an important enough point to justify using bold font!) In our story, it was a horrific choice when you made it, and it will remain a horrible choice, regardless of its perceived outcome.
Our convoluted imaginary story continues: As a result of your newfound wealth, you quit your job. Fun at first, but gradually you get increasingly bored and, out of boredom, you start gambling. With that, your use of alcohol gets out of control, and you spend more time with other substance-abusing gamblers. You lose your friends and, before long, your money. So now, six months after that party, you are back to being broke, but now you are friendless, unemployed, and with a substance abuse problem. Is this now the outcome of your initial choice? Does that mean that your choice at the party (which at first seemed horrific and then appeared to be a good one) was even worse than you realized initially?
But wait, there’s more! You start going to AA meetings. Through your participation in the program, you gain insights about life and about yourself that you never realized. You make new, like-minded friends. Before long, you write a book about your experience. It gets published and becomes a best-seller, benefiting countless people. It also puts you back into financial security. Moreover, you have discovered a meaning to your life and are now more content than you could have previously imagined. Should this now be considered the outcome of the choice you made at that party?
If so, based on this outcome, the choice that was at first horrible, then great, then worse than horrible, is now better than good! This is a ridiculous way to go about gauging the quality of a choice. Going back and forth between a positive and a negative assessment, depending on one’s subjective experience at any given moment, robs the idea of the quality of a choice of any meaning.
The quality of a choice is set at its inception. The initial choice (to write a check for your life savings) in the story was a poor choice when it was made, and it remains poor forever after. The reason it is a low-quality choice has nothing to do with what transpired after its making. It is a poor choice because it was produced by an intoxicated brain, i.e., by an impaired choice-generator. Intoxications, by definition, cause a reversible impairment of the brain’s functions and, as such, inevitably lead to a reduction in the quality of the brain’s most important product — the choice.
As a basic manufacturing rule, the quality of a product depends on the quality of the generator that generates it. The quality of a choice is a function of the quality of the state of the mind generating the choice. An impaired brain cannot produce high-quality choices (relative to choices the same brain can generate when not impaired). It may produce lucky choices, but never good choices.
Reality is not a sequence of outcomes, each linearly (or “one-to-one”) produced by a preceding choice. Reality is a continuously unfolding, endlessly-layered flow of events, in which everything is (at least, potentially) interlinked in an infinite network, some, perhaps most, of which is invisible and untraceable.
Therein lies the second problematic issue with the concept of outcome: The invisible causal interconnectedness of all events further weakens the meaning of outcome. Every moment in each of our lives is shaped by countless earlier events (essentially, beginning at the Big Bang). ‘A choice’ is just a single entry into an infinite list of variables that coalesce fleetingly to shape every moment in existence. The notion that any two events (i.e., a choice and an outcome) are linked in an otherwise insulated, exclusive bond is a huge oversimplification. We may need to overlook it for practical purposes, but we cannot deny that this is the true fabric of reality (to borrow David Deutsch’s phrase (Deutsch, 1997)).
Returning to the seemingly never-ending story (one last time, I promise), to illustrate the point: The lady who took your money at that party intended to disappear with it. However, she abandoned her devious plan because of an unusually vivid dream she had the following night, in which her beloved, dead grandmother appeared and ordered her to mend her ways. The dream, in turn, would not have happened had she not had some mildly spoiled leftover food before she went to sleep… The day after you quit your job, a friend was going to offer you to join a start-up venture that eventually became a huge success, but on the way to meeting you to make the offer, she got into a serious car accident that forced her to postpone her plans by six months, at which time you were already into gambling and substance abuse… The accident, by the way, was caused by another vehicle that failed to stop at a red light; that, in turn, was a result of a shoddy brake job performed earlier that day by a mechanic distracted by an earlier fight with his girlfriend… The book that you eventually published and got you back on your feet would have never gotten the publisher’s attention had it not been for a DUI his teenage daughter was charged with, eventually leading to him accompanying said daughter to an AA meeting where he heard about your work… And so on.
Obviously, a lot more than one’s choices takes place for any outcome to materialize. Most of the relevant variables are invisible and therefore impossible to appreciate and gauge. But they must exist and inevitably play a role in shaping reality.
In addition, if all that isn’t enough to convince you that there’s a major problem with the typical way we gauge the quality of an outcome — and therefore the quality of the choices we make — there’s the fact that once a choice is made, it is impossible to know what would have transpired had an alternative option been chosen. If you choose to take a right turn at the crossroad, you will never know what your life would have been like had you chosen to turn left. Once a choice is made and implemented, the impact that the rejected options could have had is forever unknowable. This renders a comparative analysis (which is necessary in order to assess the relative quality of the choice) impossible to make.
Choices and the Pursuit of Happiness
If not the outcome, what then connects our choices and the pursuit of happiness? I eventually learned the answer from several patients I saw over the years who shared a number of common features: They all were gay men raised as devout Catholics (additionally, each of them had received a series of psychiatric diagnoses before we met, and none of them derived any benefit from the variety of treatments they tried). As I gradually understood, the core issue for all of them was the conflict between their biologically driven lifestyle choices and the Catholic dogma that they embraced. This incongruity (rather than an elusive psychiatric diagnosis) devastated their pursuit of happiness. The key lesson I learned from these patients, which was confirmed repeatedly over my years of clinical practice, is the fundamental truth that, subjectively, we are all defined by our choices. The choices they made as normal, healthy homosexual men defined them — through their own devout Catholic lens — as vile and unacceptable. The gap separating who they actually were — as manifested by their lifestyle choices — and who they wished to be — as prescribed by the dogma they embraced — was unbridgeable, and ultimately, unforgivable. What these patients ultimately taught me is the true power of choices: Choices have the power to define the choice-maker, not the choice-maker’s future.
The expression ‘a defining moment’ points to this important principle. In a defining moment, a person is defined, not the person’s future. Consider the following abstract example: “The general gave the command to charge, and that was his defining moment.” It is the general who is being defined, at the moment he made the choice to give the command to charge. What the future holds for the general, the armies, and the peoples involved is way outside the scope of his decision.
The choices we make say a lot more about who we are than about what will happen to us in the future. As such, every choice is an entry into the life story of the choice-maker.
In other words, each choice you make is an opportunity to make an entry into your own story — the story that tells who you are. Every choice is an opportunity to tell your story the way you want it told.
For example, the choice to rob a bank defines the choice-maker as a bank robber. This is so even if the person backs out of the plan at the last minute. Even if no bank is robbed, once the choice to rob a bank is made, the choice-maker is defined by it — at least in his/her own mind — as a bank robber.
If a robbery does take place, the robber may live in riches, happily ever after, or end up miserable in prison for years, or something in between. But it is not the choice to rob the bank that determines this future. Multiple factors must coalesce to shape what eventually transpires (such as the quality of the robbery plan and its execution, traffic conditions during the getaway, police officers’ proximity to the scene at the time of the robbery, the involved attorneys’ level of competence, the jury members’ attitudes, and the judges’ state of mind, to name a few). The undebatable consequence of the choice is that it defines its maker as a bank robber.
The link between the quality of our choices and the pursuit of happiness, then, is this: Choices support the pursuit of happiness by defining the choice-maker as they wish to be defined. The further a choice defines the choice-maker from the way they wish to be defined, the more it undermines their pursuit of happiness.
As discussed in the dedicated chapter, the intent behind a choice is crucial: The intent defines the choice (which, in turn, defines the choice-maker). The general’s choice to charge defines the general one way if his intent was to protect his people’s freedom, values, and way of life. The same general making the same choice would be defined in a very different way if his intent was to amass financial profit from the ensuing battle. Similarly, the bank robber would be defined one way if the intent behind her choice to rob the bank was to raise money needed to pay for a child’s life-saving operation, and in a very different way if her intent was to finance a drug habit and an ostentatious lifestyle. Hence, clarifying and verifying one’s own intent is a critical part of a mindful choice-making process.
Choices and the Ideal-Self
To fully understand how the self-defining power of choices impacts the pursuit of happiness, I need to bring up the psychological construct of “The Ideal-Self,” i.e., the best imaginable version of oneself. The Ideal-Self, at least in part, may be held in consciousness and be readily accessible, or it may be kept subconsciously and remain largely out of reach. But it is always there, part of the terrain of the normal human adult mind.
The quality of a choice is a function of the compatibility, or overlap, between the (internal) Ideal-Self and the (external) self in the real world, as it is defined by one’s choices. The closer these two versions of the self are, the better the associated choice is, and vice versa (as proposed earlier, by definition, a good choice is a choice that supports the pursuit of happiness).
When a choice creates conflict between the internal Ideal-Self and the external self, it generates inner tension, i.e., it undermines inner peace. Conversely, when a choice aligns the external self with the internal Ideal-Self, it supports inner peace. This is a crucial point because (as discussed in the Happiness chapter) inner peace is a prerequisite for pursuing happiness effectively.
The “blueprints” of the Ideal-Self are stored in one’s value system (therein lies the connection between values and the pursuit of happiness). The quality of a choice depends on how well it aligns with the choice-maker’s values. Good choices express one’s values accurately and thus support the pursuit of happiness. Poor choices fail to express one’s values and thus undermine the pursuit of happiness. Hence, awareness of one’s value system is essential for making good choices.
The connection between values, choices’ quality, and the pursuit of happiness exists, implicitly, at the foundations of all human religions. Every religion offers its followers a “canned” value system that is supposed to guide their choice-making, with the (overt or covert) promise that its application will support the pursuit of happiness. Research suggests that ‘true believers’ (as opposed to the more superficial, or casual, participants in a religious practice) find making choices easier than their less invested counterparts. This, in turn, may be associated with an observed lower prevalence of both anxiety (i.e., more inner peace) and depressive disorders amongst true believers (Koenig, 2012). I’m convinced that the same rationale applies to secular morality and ethics.
Evolution, in my view, has addressed the fact that the quality of a choice is determined at the moment it is made (i.e., independent of an undefinable outcome) with an amazing psychological device — the sense of ‘dignity.’ Dignity can be defined as the sensation that automatically follows acting righteously. It is a subtle, yet oddly powerful, positive sensation linked to the conviction that one has done the right thing.
Given the unquestionable positive nature of the subjective experience of dignity — and the equally unquestionable bitterness of its loss — it’s not a stretch to consider dignity as a built-in reward for making a good choice, allotted at the time the right choice is made, disconnected from its (dubious) outcome.
[Sidebar: The term dignity is often coupled with the term ‘grace,’ and for a good reason (beyond the fact that both are on that long list of concepts recognized as crucial but are poorly, if at all, defined, I keep referring to). Grace can be defined as the trait displayed when one acts deliberately without deliberation. It can be manifested both physically and mentally. For example, a galloping horse, a dancing ballerina, or Michael Jordan going for a layup readily elicits an appreciation of grace in their observer. The speed with which they move doesn’t allow time for deliberation, yet each of their movements seems deliberate, with no wasted motion or effort.
Mental grace is the same phenomenon, without the use of muscles; i.e., it is the deliberate operation of the mind without deliberation. In other words, the impression of mental grace arises when a person is observed making the right choice deliberately, without deliberation. For example, I was in my car stopped at a light, when I noticed across the intersection an elderly man collapse on the sidewalk. Then, in an instant, a young man, clearly unrelated, materialized seemingly out of nowhere, next to the man on the ground, doing everything he could to help. It was obvious the young man did not have the necessary training to offer medical help, but that did not matter — he was graceful — he made the right choice, deliberately, without deliberation.
Hence the coupling of grace and dignity: When a right choice is made without deliberation, the choice-maker experiences dignity while observers perceive grace.]
Putting It Together
A mindful, rational choice-making method involves examining how the choice being made defines the choice-maker as well as the relationship between the choice and the choice-maker’s value system. (A step-by-step Choice Making protocol is presented in the Practice section.)
Implementing this method requires a sincere examination of two features of each option being considered. The first feature is the intent behind each option, which reveals where it belongs on the selfish to selfless continuum. As discussed above, a choice driven by an intent that is less than fair will not support the pursuit of happiness.
The second feature to expose is how each option would define you if you were to choose it. For example, you might ask yourself: “What would it say about me if I were to choose this option?” Or, “What would I know about a person if the only information I had about them is that, in a similar situation, they made this choice?” The option that most closely aligns with how you wish to be defined is your choice.
The option that best aligns with your values is the right choice. When done correctly, the option that best expresses your values will be the same option that defines you the way you wish to be defined, thus confirming the validity of your choice.
At times, the answers to these questions will be readily apparent. But they can be elusive and difficult to capture. Regardless of how obvious the answers turn out to be, following this method automatically elicits more confidence in the quality of one’s choices than the typical alternative (i.e., making choices through future-telling), which, I think, makes solid sense.
As a species, we have been making survival-related choices (both immediate and long-term) for much longer than we have been making choices about the pursuit of happiness. This explains (at least in part) why our ability to make good choices in the pursuit of happiness is so rudimentary. Moreover, the human condition is rife with obstacles that hinder making good choices. These include brain disorders (some are recognized, e.g., specific psychological, psychiatric, and neurologic pathologies; many others, in all likelihood, are yet to be recognized), addictions (and secondarily, intoxications and cravings), ignorance, fanaticism, and simply, bad habits. The practice of mindfulness aspires to neutralize all of these factors and create a path toward effective choice-making, which is synonymous with an effective pursuit of happiness. Of course, it is a formidable aspiration, and fully accomplishing it may be unrealistic (in line with the aspiration for full enlightenment). However, any movement in the right direction is valuable and, in principle, well within reach of each of us; not surprisingly, it does require effort. Specifically, it requires a commitment to the practice of cultivating mindfulness. Based on both my professional and personal experience, I am convinced that making this commitment is rewarding.
(This chapter is complementary to the Choice Making chapter in the Practice section, which you may want to read next.)
The chapter was kindly edited by S.G. Raphaely, M.D., for which I am ever so grateful.
REFERENCES
Deutsch, D. (1997). The fabric of reality. Penguin Books.
Koenig, H. G. (2012). Religion, spirituality, and health: The research and clinical implications. ISRN Psychiatry, 2012, Article 278730. https://doi.org/10.5402/2012/278730.