How do we overcome ambiguity about going ahead in a relationship?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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learned in the past.
So, you want to develop a relationship eventually, which we want to lead to but then when we are exploring a relationship, we look at the good, but then when some other aspects start coming up, we start holding ourselves back. And then how do we move on at that time? Yeah, this is the burden of freedom. That means that so, now that that is when I will talk from a different perspective, I will come to this perspective.
There is a psychologist, Barry Schwartz, he has written a book called The American Paradox. No, The Paradox of Choice. That is the book he has written.
What he says is, there are two kinds of people broadly. There are optimizers and there are maximizers. So, maximizers are the people, suppose they want to buy a new cell phone, they will want the best deal.
And they will want to look at all the possible cell phones that are there. And finally, okay, what are the best specifications? What is the best value for money? What is the best guarantee? Or what is the best brand? And they will arrive at a cell phone. But for in this, to get one cell phone, they may spend six months just exploring, searching, searching, searching.
On the other hand, there are optimizers. Optimizers are those who decide, okay, I cannot get the best in everything in life. I will optimize.
See, maximize means the best in everything. Optimize means it is more like a holistic picture. So, okay, these are the important things in my life.
And okay, a cell phone is important, but I have many other important things also in my life. So, they may decide, okay, for the next one week, I will explore. I will ask people, I will read, and I will take one.
Now, in general, researchers have found that maximizers get a much better deal for their, they might get a much better worth for their money than the optimizers. But in general, optimizers are happier with their products than the maximizers. Why is that? Three reasons.
There can be many, but three broad reasons. One is that the maximizers, they have invested so much time, energy, thought in getting that product. That product is possible.
I will come to that point a little later. So, that they have a huge amount of expectation from it. And the reality, when there is a small problem in the product, they are just so frustrated.
So, there is over-expectation. So, there is because the amount of effort that is invested that causes over-expectation. And then, second is that even after that, so there is over-expectation, so there is disappointment, so no product can live up to that hype.
But if somehow the product gets spoiled, then there is too much frustration. And even if that does not happen, even if that nagging doubt, if I had searched more, I might have got a better product. And eventually what happens because of that is that especially with products constantly being developed, although the new product sooner or later comes up, that is why they end up dissatisfied.
So, we all in our life, even with respect to products, we need to be optimizers. What to speak of it? Relationships with people. See, some of us may be more emotional, some of us may be more rational.
So, emotional people rush too fast into relationships. Rational people do not enter into relationships. So, we have to avoid both extremes.
So, we may decide that like, okay, this much time I will be spending and this much time I will be analyzing, I will be exploring and then I will arrive at a decision. It is never that we are going to get a perfect decision. We do not want to make a very bad decision, but in trying to get the perfect, which will never come.
So, we need to always move in our life. So, to a large extent, we can, if we make the decision too important or too unimportant, both are problems. But if we use our intelligence, I think one way we can use our intelligence is to write things down.
When the thoughts are in the head, they are always congesting the head. You get the thoughts out, analyze them, then decide, okay, for a particular amount of time, one month I will think about this, I will pray about it, I will take a decision. If you have done it that way, whatever decision we take, we will do it with conviction.
And in life, we really cannot say that, in some cases we can say, it is not that really there are wrong decisions and right decisions. We could say there are less good decisions and more good decisions. But in a few cases, we can say there is a radically wrong and right decision.
But in many cases, life does not come with such black and white. So, if we have done a decision thoughtfully, then even if that turns out to be not a good decision, we will have grown through the decision making process. And because we have understood our reason why I made the decision, we will make the decision work.
If we have not gone through our decision making process thoughtfully, even if we make a good decision, we will still be half-hearted. And even a good decision also requires work. So, if we do not put in that work, even a good decision may turn out to be bad.
So, it is best to be an optimizer, get the thoughts out of the head, write them down, pray about it, and set a particular finite time and then move on. Now, people say that there is no such thing as right or wrong.