Tag Archives: making choices

Reality Check: Ratios and Relationships

I’ll bet you were hoping for a math lesson today, so here you go: A ratio is essentially a pair of numbers that defines a relationship. And we all know that the value and quality of our relationships plays a … Continue reading

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Reality Check: Our Best Selves

What comes to your mind when I refer to our best selves? Is our best self when we “put our best foot forward?” Perhaps so. However, if putting our best foot forward is only to make a good impression—essentially, to … Continue reading

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Reality Check: Tension

In his book, Counseling with Choice Theory, Dr. Wm. Glasser describes his first meeting with a guy he calls Jerry. When Jerry walked into Glasser’s office for their first session, he avoided walking on the lines in the carpet. Then … Continue reading

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Reality Check: The Tradeoffs in our Choices

Choice-making can be difficult. When you choose one thing, you close the door on something else. Giving up options can be painful. If one option offered only benefits and another option offered only risks, then the choice hardly qualifies as … Continue reading

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Reality Check: Choosing Your Advisors

Whether we ask for it or not, we are often on the receiving end of advice. For example, when your mother-in-law tells you that you should have put your snow tires on two weeks ago, you might not have identified … Continue reading

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Reality Check: Upsides and Downsides

Is there such a thing as too much optimism? Does optimism have a downside? My general belief is that there are upsides and downsides for most everything. Thus the process of making choices is pretty simple, in theory anyway. All … Continue reading

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Reality Check: Helpful Habits

What are your habits? What actions have you practiced so much that they are now a regular, perhaps even a mindless, part of life? Some habits are deliberate; we’ve consciously initiated them. For example, perhaps you practice the beneficial habit … Continue reading

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Reality Check: Strategies for Choice

Previously, I discussed a theory popularized by Barry Schwartz in, “The Paradox of Choice” that there are two choice-making approaches. Some people are maximizers; intent on making the absolute best choices they possibly can. Others are satisficers, who stop looking … Continue reading

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Reality Check: Do your choices satisfy you?

We make many choices—some consequential; others trivial. Does your choice-making process satisfy you? Or aggravate you? Or does it depend on the choice? Barry Schwartz needed a pair of jeans. In the big scheme of things, picking out jeans isn’t … Continue reading

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Reality Check: The Reality of Imperfection

There’s plenty in society, culture, politics, education and life in general that’s not perfect. I don’t believe that it’s ever been perfect. I highly doubt that it ever will be perfect in the future. Furthermore, my views of what constitutes … Continue reading

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