Dr. Ellen Langer

And each alternative is simultaneously good or bad depending on how you view it.

So you can't do a cost-benefit analysis.

So what is a person to do?

It doesn't matter.

Now, it's one thing if you're deciding should you get M&M's versus a Mounds Bar.

People say, okay, yeah, why should I waste all this time?

I'm suggesting that this kind of gets people crazed that if you're deciding should you get married, should you take the job, it's exactly the same thing.

You cannot know.

Should you take the job?

Let's say, well, you'd have to have an option of taking the job, seeing how it feels, taking a different job, seeing how it feels.

But you can't even do that because once you've taken the job, you're already a different person.

So when you start that second alternative, you can't adequately assess.

There's a step before that, which is when you choose whatever you choose, there's some good reason for it or else you wouldn't have chosen it.

If you're aware of that, then you don't, you're less likely to have any regrets.

So let's say I decide, you know,

Today, all I want to do is I've just been traveling.

I just want to relax.

I want a very simple day.

So I'm not going to go to that big event tonight, whatever that big event is.

And then I find out that that big event would have been spectacularly important for the rest of my life.