🔬  Research shows: Less Freedom = More Happiness?
Two things & then juicy info morsels:
1. 💡   If you’re not listening to the NPR One app -FOMO to the max!
2. 👏   Hidden Brain on NPR One is the bomb!

👉   Here is an astonishing fact of research:
💡 We are happier after making a decision that feels irrevocable.  In other words, we are actually happier with decisions that cannot be changed, that we can not go back on. ✔

😕  More freedom DOES NOT equal more Happiness??? 😕

✨  Hey -Try it out and see for yourself  -what would you choose in the following example/research study?  🔬

Image you are one of these students from the study and see what you would choose:
Each student has two photographs they took during a photography class they were apart of.
They have to choose between the two photographs.
-In the First group they are told “we will hold onto the other picture and you can always trade”.
-In the Second group, the decision is final -”we will destroy the other picture”.

Which group would you want to be in?

According to research---
-Everyone, if given a choice, wants to be in the group that can change their minds later.
However, when tracking the happiness of the groups, overwhelmingly people are happier when the decision is irrevocable. But Why??

The mind immediately rationalizes why what it got is better than what it lost.  But when a decision isn’t irrevocable, you ruminate about it. If you buy a sweater and they have a return policy you think maybe it’s not a good color, maybe it doesn't fit, maybe i should bring it back. On the other hand, if bought at place that won’t take it back you look in mirror and think, gosh it looks good.

For the researcher, it helped him realize, maybe this would be good for his relationship with his girlfriend who he had been living with for five years. They got married and they have both been much happier.

So how do we make better decisions about our future?  You should listen to the whole episode, but the summary is this.  
--Don’t try to imagine what it will look like. Ask someone people who are already in the future you think you want how they feel.  

“Almost anything you're imagining - should I move to Hawaii? Should I become a trumpet player? I wonder if I should subscribe to The New York Times. Almost any decision you're debating, large or small, many people have already made it, and they've made it in both directions. There are people who are doing the things you're only imagining.

And it turns out that if you can simply measure their happiness, you can get a pretty good guide about how happy you will be in the future.”

Listen to the full story on NPR Hidden Brain

#choices #happiness #decisions #innerpeace