(Buridan’s donkey, that is.  Let’s keep it clean round here)

The Paradox of Buridan's Ass goes something like this:

If you place a hungry donkey halfway between two identical bales of hay, the donkey will be unable to decide which bale to eat. 

After a while, the donkey will give up on both bales…

And starve to death!

A cheery story if ever there was one.

Now, I don’t know if this is true.

(any farmers out there?)

But it doesn’t matter one way or t’other.

The idea is certainly true. Having choice isn’t always a good thing.  Not by a long stretch.

I mean, it feels like it should be.  I enjoy going to an Italian restaurant and being handed a menu overflowing with pasta and pizza choices. 

But if all this choice leaves me staring blankly, befuddled & overwhelmed and wondering why I didn’t just stay at home and plonk a jacket potato in the oven, this gluttony of choice has backfired. 

I’ll also add:

It’s not just food where this “overchoice” effect takes place.

Whenever I switch on the TV I face a selection of such immense variety (Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Now TV & Apple are all trying to entice me down their rabbit hole – not forgetting the humble offerings of the old school BBC & ITV) that sometimes I give up completely, switch off the TV and go lie down in a dark room to recover.

And this is just TV!

I haven’t even got started on some of the bigger choices in life.

Like “what’s the right career path for me?”...

Or even “what do I want to do with my life?”.

What hope is there answering questions like these if we can’t even decide whether to order a Meat Feast or Quattro Stagioni?

It does make me wonder:

What’s the solution to seemingly never-ending options and choices?  Especially when it comes to the bigger questions in life?

Well, perhaps none of us have as much choice as we think we do.

Let me ask you this:

Have you ever simply just known the right choice, even if you didn’t know why that choice was right?  And even if that choice surprised you?

In my experience, the more we start to pay attention to what our heart or gut is telling us - and what we already know - the easier these choices become.

You could even say that, if we take the time to tune in, these choices have already been made for us.

Think this sounds ridiculous?

If so, I get it.  Woo-woo ideas like this are streets apart from the mainstream sciency beliefs which dominate society today.  And I’ve spent enough time behind a desk to know that trusting your gut is never going to cut the mustard when it comes to solving a set of simultaneous equations or writing a report for your boss.

But I’m not talking about stuff like this.

I’m talking about living your life.

And it's my contention that those who grasp this idea could, over time, find that tough & agonising choices become as straightforward as deciding what socks to wear each morning.  

All while the die-hard analysts keep scrambling around collecting more data-points for the Excel spreadsheets which run their life. 

If you want to tap into this "superpower" for yourself:

https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com

That's all for today.

- Tom