What to do when you get stuck between two best choices?

Which best one will you choose?

"I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become."

— Carl Jung

Source: Unsplash

One night, I was called by my family to answer some questions. I was told to answer, "What will you do now?”

They asked me, “You gave your 10th exams. Now what? What will you do now?”

Advised me, “Join the family business.”

I didn’t speak a single word. I stayed quiet. I went mute in the moment.

As I didn’t answer, I got another chance to continue my studies. I filled out the form to study commerce further. I was excited to go to high school again. But in the meantime, Covid came up.

I had to complete my further classes at home in lockdown. Plus, I got quarantined for a month. All the excitement was gone. I thought my decision to continue studying was wrong. I was changing. I was not the same Sumit as I was.

It all turned down when my 12th results came out.

Got stuck between two best choices.

85 percentile on board exams and 2nd topper from the school. After seeing such grades in my 12th, I was again called to answer some questions.

I was again asked, “What will you do now?”

I again didn’t speak a single word. But this time they gave me two options to choose from.

The option they gave me was, “Either you join the family business or go to college for studies.”

Both the choices were good, in fact, the best. But I was stuck in between them. I wanted to study, and somewhere I wanted to run the family business as well.

It was hard to choose one. I can’t put my one leg in college and another in doing family work. I had to choose one.

Which best one will you choose?

I decided to do what my instinct says. I told myself, standing in front of the mirror, “You have to choose one. Choose what’s best for you.”

My mind said, "Think of the future.” But I listened to my heart, and my heart said, “I don't know.” Then I read this phrase somewhere:

Easy choices → Hard life
Hard choices → Easy life

It got stuck in my head. I finally listened to it. It was my gut saying to go with the hard. I picked college. College is what I had to do to build my future from scratch, which joining the family business won’t do. I chose “Hard now, easy later.”

Later now, I came to realise that the decision I took was psychological, and when I dug it up, it came out with a psychological term, “razors.”

A ‘razor’ is a rule of thumb to simplify your decision-making. Basically, it is a mental shortcut to help you with your life decisions.

The decision I took was linked with Uphill (Naval’s) razor, which states when choosing between two paths, choose the one with more difficulties in the short term for long-term gains.

There are 40+ razors to help you with taking decisions in life. And I have curated all of them to make it easier to find whenever you need them.

You can get it here on my page: Life Decision Razors.

Use them whenever required in taking the biggest decision of your life or the tiniest ones. They will help you with your decisions throughout every step of your life.

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Much love,

Sumit,
Curator of Simple Digest