Hello.
Welcome to the Own Your Health Podcast.
I'm Cyndi Lynne, and I can't wait to
help you step into your health power.
Now, today we're going to talk about the
paradox of choice and how it relates to
your health and owning your health.
Now, if you're not familiar with this term or this
concept, or maybe you've heard it thrown around, but not
really sure what it means, very simply stated, it means
that the more choices you have in a particular scenario,
situation, in any kind of, in any kind of a
specific situation, the more choices you have, the least likely
you are to make a decision.
So probably one of the most common examples
of this we see, and it's studied.
This is something that's studied in marketing
so that people can market products effectively.
But I'm sure we've all gone through the grocery store
at some point and there's someone there doing a demo.
They're giving samples of a particular product, and the
research has shown that the more types of samples
they have for you to choose from, the less
likely you are to actually purchase any of them.
So if they're giving samples of cheese spreads and they
have a single sample there, a cheese spread, they talk
to you about it, you taste it, you like it,
chances are pretty good you're going to buy it.
If there are two of them there, say
there's a regular flavor and a spicy flavor,
you will probably have a preference because the
two are quite different from each other
and you'll probably still buy. Once they start putting
out three or four or five different samples,
even if you only taste one and you
like that one, you're less likely to purchase.
And there's a lot of thought processes behind this,
but there's the sense of, I can't decide.
It takes too much energy to decide.
Your brain doesn't want to put forth that energy.
You came there to shop and to fill up your
cart and to go home with groceries that you need.
So to spend a lot of mental energy on
something that wasn't even planned in the first place
will most likely result in you just passing on.
The same is true for a lot of us
when it comes time to spend our free time.
See if this sounds familiar to you.
It's a Saturday morning,
You've got the entire day ahead of you, or you've got
the entire day until you have dinner plans at 07:00 tonight
and you can do anything you want with it.
And you get up in the morning and you're sitting with your
tea or your coffee and the whole day is spread before you
and you can't really decide what you want to do.
It's kind of nice outside, so you could
work in the garden. It's great temperature, so
you could have the windows open and work
on that painting project you wanted to do.
Or it's really nice out,
you could go for a walk.
You could just take your time and visit a park
that you've been dying to visit for quite a while.
Maybe you could even pack a picnic lunch.
Go and make a day of it.
Or maybe you should call a girlfriend that
you haven't talked to for a while and
set up a lunch date somewhere.
Or maybe you should check in with
your folks because they've been busy,
you've been busy kind of crossing paths,
you've been meaning to drop some things off.
You get the idea.
Maybe I could. I could. I could. I could.
And have you ever, at the end of
that day, not really accomplished any of it.
And then very often, at an end of
a day like that, I will kind of,
I will, in some ways justify my lack
of choosing by thinking, you know what?
I just needed a day with downtime anyway.
But when I look back at it, it's not really downtime.
And I didn't plan that time with intention.
So maybe I saw the laundry bin was getting kind of
full and I threw in a couple of loads of laundry.
And when I was doing that, I saw that there was
really a lot of dust around in the corners of the
machines and I pulled out the vacuum and I did that.
And you know how it is.
You can kind of go from one thing in the
house to the other, but you get to the end
of this fabulous Saturday, and how are your thoughts different?
How do you feel about it differently at the end
of that day than you did at the beginning of
the day, when it was so full of promise, okay.
If you ended up doing something you love, great.
But if you're like me, chances are good
that the day may have just gotten away
on you because you didn't decide.
You didn't choose something.
And that can happen for all kinds of reasons.
I mean, maybe you do choose to get in
contact with that girlfriend, and then she doesn't.
You send her a text or a
call and she doesn't respond right away.
And then it gets to be noon,
and you're thinking, well, we can't.
We're not really going to meet for lunch.
And then you start thinking about something else.
But again, the day gets away from you
because you had lots of choices and you
didn't choose any and follow through.
So it's not, it's, I'm not making this point to beat
yourself up, although I have been known to do that on,
on the end of a "wasted" and I use my air
quotes here, a wasted Saturday because I had too many choices
and I didn't have any priority on those choices.
And that's where we can make a difference
with just a little bit of planning.
Now, I know very often I hear, you know what? It's not.
I don't want to plan my Saturday.
I want a day without planning.
And that's fine if you don't want to do the
planning on the Saturday, but you have to plan if
you're going to be productive and you're going to be
satisfied at the end of the day.
You do have to do a little
bit of planning ahead of time.
And that planning can be very simple, that planning
on Friday night can be, you know what?
Tomorrow is Saturday.
I am going to move from thing to thing.
I'm going to putz in the house.
I'm going to go from project to project, and I'm just
going to be content with my own pace for the day.
That can be a really satisfying Saturday, right.
But it's intentional so that, you know, you're going to feel
the same about your activities at the beginning of the day
as you do at the end of the day, right.
Because that's what it's really about when
we talk about making our choices. Excuse me.
We want to be satisfied with our decisions.
And in order to be satisfied with their
decisions, we have to actually make them.
So this isn't about what I think you should be
doing on a Saturday, or your to do list on
a Saturday or any other day for that matter.
It's about being happy, about being content
with your choices and your decisions.
And in order to even begin to be content,
we actually have to make those choices and decisions.
So a couple of ways to look at
this whole situation, and we'll start with looking
at our free time on Saturday.
And then I'm going to move this into how
we really own our health with this and how
we can apply these same principles to driving the
activities that we want to accomplish with our health.
But let's start with the basic
Saturday or the afternoon off.
Or if you've ever had an evening where your plans have
been canceled and there you are with an evening ahead of
you and you just don't even know where to start. Right.
Priorities can really help.
So you probably have, and if you don't
you might want to think about, a list
of the things you'd like to do.
Now, this is not a
list of cleaning projects necessarily.
This isn't a list of household tasks.
This can be a list of everything from cleaning
out my dresser drawers to taking stock of my
wardrobe, to starting to paint with watercolors, to reading.
Reading a book just for pleasure.
Any of these activities, right?
Make a list of these go to activities
because in all honesty, I've gotten a period of free time
in front of me and not even been able to think
about some of the things that I've wanted to do or
that I've thought about in the past weeks or months.
That, boy, I'd really like to have time to start this.
Or I'd really like to have time to knit.
I enjoy knitting.
I have two dogs who enjoy yarn.
So my knitting is always put away, zipped in
a bag and set off on a shelf.
And very often it's out of sight, out of mind.
So when I'm sitting watching a tv show, I could
be knitting and I simply don't think of it.
So having a list of activities that you enjoy
or that you really want to do is a
really good first start to preventing that block or
that freeze up of, oh, my gosh, I have,
I have free time
I wasn't expecting.
What do I want to do with it?
The other thing that's really helpful, especially if you
have the better part of a day ahead of
you, is to think about prioritizing that list.
So if it really is a big priority to garden for you,
I really want to get out there and start my garden and
learn to plant things and learn to take care of it, then
that would be at the top of your list, right.
If you really want to spend time learning some new yoga
moves, that would be towards the top of your list.
And you can have contingencies on these.
You can have, it's,
it's nothing written in stone, but it's
something for your mind to work around.
Because when our mind has all of these choices,
it tends to say, that's too much work.
I'm just going to close down.
I'm not going to choose anything.
So if you have some sense of priority,
it's like, okay, these are outside things
it's pouring rain.
That's not going to happen today,
but these are inside things.
I've been wanting to figure out a summer
wardrobe, figure out what's missing for weeks.
Here's my opportunity to do it
where if you're caught off guard.
You may not even think of these things,
so narrowing the choices for yourself is helpful.
Prioritizing the choices is also
helpful. And then picking something.
Because part of the reason we avoid making
choices is that fear of missing out.
What if I pick the wrong one?
Now, if they're all things you want to
do, it can't be the wrong one.
But we tend to want lots of things at the same time.
Sometimes we do that to ourselves without realizing it,
because then it's just easier not to choose.
But if we at least have some numbering,
some priority to this list of things that
I'd like to do, it's a starting place.
It takes some of the choice out of
it for us, in the same way that
deciding ahead of time takes some choice out.
So if on a Friday evening you know you're going to
be looking at a free Saturday, look at your list.
Pick two things.
One, if it's nice outside, excuse me?
One, if the weather's not so good and you want
to do something indoors. Or one thing that's with friends,
if you get responses back from them, and Friday might
be an easier time to get in contact with them.
And one thing you do on your own if
you don't end up having plans with friends.
But by narrowing, the more we can narrow
the choices for ourselves in that moment, the
more chance we will have of actually performing,
completing, doing that activity and feeling that satisfaction.
Because of course what we're going
for is the feeling. The feeling
of satisfaction, of contentment, of completion.
So long lead up.
What does that mean for our health?
Well, it means the exact same thing.
Many of us listen to podcasts, read interesting articles,
seek out information about our health, because we're interested
in not only the information, but how we can
apply it, how we can use it.
But sometimes it gets a little bit overwhelming.
So there'll be weeks where I hear lots of
things about sleep. Making you sleep better, sleep hygiene,
sleep practices, interventions, how you can get better, sleep,
tips and tricks, all of these kinds of things.
And then the next week, or maybe the same
day, it will be all about ways to increase
your vitamin D, getting outside time you need to
spend, when is the best time to be outside?
How much skin do you have to expose?
And then the next week it
will be something completely different.
How is yoga different than pilates?
When should you do which one?
And all of this information is fabulous,
but it can also become overwhelming.
And it also can give us this paradox of choice
where there's so many different ways that we can intervene
or there's so many different ways that we can improve
our health that sometimes we choose none.
It's just too much work.
It's just overwhelming.
What am I supposed to do first?
And this is where, again, a list is super helpful.
Prioritizing that list and then picking one thing
and allowing yourself to choose one thing.
And maybe for the entire month of April, you focus
on sleep and you can continue to gather information.
If you're like me, you have folders, I have file folders,
I have electronic folders, I have places where I can keep
the resources that I think are valuable so that I know
where they are, but they aren't busy cluttering up my brain
and my thoughts at any given moment.
So, say you pick a month and you say, you know what,
this is all about sleep.
What's the first practice?
What's the first thing I want to do?
Okay, I want to get to bed by 10:00 every night.
That's what my choice, that's what my decision
is going to be for this month.
And I'm going to do my best and I'm going to track
it and I'm going to see how I did on that.
But I've made a choice to prioritize sleep.
And within each of the choices we make, there
is going to be a lot of sub choices.
But by focusing on one thing at a time, by
giving yourself permission to not lose the other choices for
your health, certainly you can keep track of them,
you can have your list, you can keep your resources,
but pick a period of time to focus on one.
And I'm guessing that if you're like me, the one
that you need to focus on is probably the one
that's been cropping up the most in your world.
The most.
It's in this podcast and it's in this article.
And then I saw this on Facebook and
I saw this, you know, memes about this.
And if it's the one that's been, that's been
popping up a lot in your vision, that's a
good indication that that may be a good time
for you to address that aspect of your health.
The same is true if it's yoga, or if it's
pilates, or if it's weightlifting, or if it's ways on
how to cut sugar out of your diet.
Any one of these things can become
part of an overwhelming paradox of choice.
Or you can give your permit, you give
yourself permission to take a select amount of
time and pick one to start working on.
So as you look through your books, as
you look through the resources you've collected.
I encourage you to not allow yourself to get overwhelmed
by all of the things I have to do for
my health, because that's how it starts to feel like,
oh, my gosh, this is so much work.
But I can promise you it's a whole
lot more work to not be healthy.
So pick something.
Make a choice, know that it can't be the wrong one.
And then pick a period of time, like a month,
and know at the end of that
month, you get to make another choice.
And when you make another choice, can it
be to continue your sleep practice, for example? Yes.
Can it be to dive even deeper into yoga?
Absolutely.
But it also gives yourself permission to look into
your other resources and say, you know what?
Now I want to try this. All right.
I think I'm ready to start tackling
a few supplements, doing that research, figuring
out what would be best for me.
Or you know what?
I think I'm ready to get some help.
I think I'm ready to ask somebody to bounce
some ideas off of somebody and to bring in
a personal resource and give yourself permission for that.
So all of this is to tell
you it's really in your hands.
But recognize how many choices you have.
Narrow them for yourself and for your
own self, and then just pick.
And don't let the paradox of choice
keep you from actually making decisions that
will help you own your health.
Now, if you would like some help
with this, I'm absolutely here for you.
Grab a time with the link down below in the show notes.
Show nuts.
Show notes.
And we can absolutely get together and do that.
Until then, go out and own it.
