Gemma Speck

You haven't made the decision yet, but you're already imagining the

that it's the wrong one or how you might feel if you chose the wrong thing.

You are lying in bed thinking already, you know, you haven't taken the job, but if I take the job and I hate it, I'm never going to forgive myself.

But if I don't take the job and it actually ends up being great, I'm never going to forgive myself either.

So which one am I going to do?

This one, that one, this one, that one.

And then you basically do nothing.

What's actually happening there with this scenario is that you haven't chosen the job yet.

Nothing in your actual life has changed.

You have no knowledge of whether it's going to be good or bad.

You have made this pre-assessment or this pre-judgment that has influenced the decision before you've even given yourself a chance.

you haven't taken the job or you know you haven't moved you haven't quit you haven't said the thing you want to say but emotionally you're already and have already lived through all of these worst case scenarios the more you let yourself ruminate on these scenarios on the worst case scenario the more you believe that it's going to come true

This is a cognitive bias we call the availability heuristic.

Essentially, we inaccurately judge how likely something is to happen simply based on how easy it is for us to recall.

And of course, the emotionally salient disaster regret scenarios your brain is cooking up for you.

They are going to be the easiest ones to recall.

They are going to be the most prominent because they are the most emotional.

The danger here is that you spend so long thinking again or trying to outthink regret, you do not move, you do not act.

This is the paradox of the perfect decision.

The more you chase a perfect decision, one that is, I guess, that guarantees like