26/08/2026
Do you have an important or big decision to make? This teaching from Ellen Langer has always stayed with me and I return to it often:
"Rather than waste your time being stressed over making the right decision, make the decision right.
Randomly choose.
Now, you can randomly choose if you want an Almond Joy or a Snickers.
Nobody's going to care, right?
It's the exact same thing about getting married or not,
taking the job or not.
You can only live one life!
If there were some magical way that I could live a life
as somebody who's had three kids and somebody who hasn't had kids, maybe I can make a comparison, but you don't have that available to you.
So I say to my students:
"Should you go to Harvard or should you go to Yale?"
So they made the decision to go to Harvard. So let's say it's terrible.
"Oh, I wish I had gone to Yale."
There's no way of knowing that Yale wouldn't have been worse, better, the same.
And that's why regret is so mindless.
Because the choice you didn't take, you're presuming would have been better."
