We really don’t have to be a “Psychic Friend” to predict the future. If you want to know what your future will be like, just take a look at the choices you are making today. Often we find that if we really take a hard look at our life, we will come to understand that if there is some situation in which we feel “stuck,” the trail of suspects on which to lay the blame can be traced right back to our own doorstep. There are no victims, only volunteers. The good news there is that if we got ourselves into the “mess” we can get ourselves out of it.
The first rule of “holes” is – if you are in one, STOP DIGGING! It’s always encouraging, really, to talk to a friend who is at the end of their rope with a situation that is making them miserable. The gift of desperation is quite a motivator to spark determination to make the necessary and difficult changes needed. It is also good to remember that the real work is an inside job. The happiest people I know are spiritual pioneers who approach from the inside-out because they know they make better choices when operating at a higher life condition. Ideally, happiness is a state of life, not a state of circumstances.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog you know that I am a big proponent of the scientific studies about happiness and do a lot of reading about how to make positive choices and training the brain to be “solution minded.”
In my travels around the web, I came across a great blog authored by Jeremy Dean, a researcher at University College London, titled PsyBlog and described as “about understanding how our minds work and why we think and act the way we do.” Great! This is right up my alley so as we are speaking of spiritual development and making choices from our higher selves, not our character defects, here’s a great article from PsyBlog titled:
How to Choose Happiness: Combat 5 Decision-Making Biases
“Life is the sum of all your choices.” –Albert Camus
Happiness is in our hands if only we could make the right decisions in life. Decisions often rely on making accurate predictions of how we will feel in the future. Unfortunately for us psychologists have shown that there are five major biases in the way we predict our future emotional states
The good news is that psychological research reveals that each of these biases can be countered. Understanding and remembering these five biases will help you make decisions that will increase your happiness.
1. The distinction bias
What is it?
Imagine this: you are offered two jobs. The first is an interesting job that pays $60,000 a year. The second is a boring job that pays $70,000 a year. For the sake of argument, imagine that everything else is equal – which do you choose?
The distinction bias predicts that people will consistently over-estimate the importance of the $10,000 compared to how interesting the job is. Consequently, research shows that many will pick the boring job even though it makes them miserable and the extra money might well make little difference.
How to combat the distinction bias
Ignore conventional wisdom – comparing options directly is often too difficult because we’re forever weighing up apples against oranges. Instead focus on the pros and cons of each scenario individually then make decisions on that basis.
» Read more about the distinction bias.
2. The projection bias
What is it?
Going to the supermarket when I’m really hungry, and without a shopping list, is a recipe for disaster. It will take an act of iron will to avoid returning without some kind of junk food. Later, after eating, I’ll wonder how I could have bought junk food but forgotten healthy staples like rice and pasta.
Part of the reason people make mistakes like this is that research shows the projection bias anchors us in current emotional and cognitive states. The present is often like an emotional cage which we can’t break out of to understand how we will feel in the future.
That’s not all! Read the Rest of the article.
