“The alternative to maximizing is to be a satisficer. To satisfice is to settle for something that is good enough and not worry about the possibility that there might be something better.” – Barry Schwartz
When I started studying hypnotherapy, I browsed the web to see what kind of trainings existed in London. I compared a few institutes and ultimately went for a small boutique school that taught hypnosis in a therapy context, along with some elements of neuro-linguistic programming, cognitive behavioural therapy and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing.
It wasn’t the best school. It wasn’t the most prestigious. I wasn’t the most well-established. It surely wasn’t the most endorsed. In fact, I started with a 3 months foundation course to hypnotherapy before I chose to join the one-year clinician course. We were only 6 people in the class. It was basic, unconventional and fun.
But this choice, which was probably not the “best” option in terms of quality, turned out to be perfect and priceless for me. This particular institute and its teacher taught me a lot on the nature of working with people’s minds and emotions, and using hypnosis as well as a range of solution-centered therapeutic approaches. It built my confidence. It gave me a lot of practice hours.
More importantly, it helped me retrain into something different than investment banking where I was spending most of my days. And in the end, I learned what any other institute would teach in a one-year clinician course. The path was all that mattered.
Inversely, when I went to business school before that, I had the opportunity to go to HEC, the most prestigious business school in France. I was blessed to be given this chance after 2 years of really intensive studying and taking some high pressure exams. Some of my friends at the time had decided to repeat their second year of study just to get in this particular school. Of course it was highly prestigious and could open a vast number of doors professionally.
But in terms of the content taught, I didn’t learn more than any of my friends who ended up in other business schools across France. The knowledge imparted was the same, the subjects were similar, and the teachers were not particularly above average. They were researchers and publishers (that’s a big part of what contributes to the school’s ranking).
Moreover, because I left France right after graduation, I hardly if ever “used” the brand of my business school to my advantage. The investment bank I went to work for in London cared way more about British and American universities than they did about HEC. And more so after I left banking and started working with people in a coaching context. Nobody looked at my education. Nobody really cared. All my clients care about is whether I can help them.
I don’t want to seem ungrateful. I loved going to HEC. I’m not saying it didn’t add massive value to my life, because it did. I’m also not saying that it will never contribute to some doors opening professionally, or that some clients didn’t relate to me because I went there. Of course they did. But had I gone to another business school, other people would have related to me in the same way. Other doors would have opened up.
What I’m trying to do is show a more realistic view that ultimately, obsessively attempting to go for the “best” option is more often than not just a waste of time. It doesn’t yield tangibly better results. It just provides certain consequences and outcomes, but these are not necessarily better than other consequences and outcomes that would have been obtained with another option.
Choosing is what has you move forward.
My wife has the tendency of wanting to choose the absolute best place to stay in, the best restaurant to eat in, the best dish to eat, or the best yoga class to attend. I must acknowledge that this leaves her with great taste and an ability to discern quality better than me. And sometimes, we do have some extraordinary experiences.
Simultaneously though, it regularly leads her to be paralysed in action because she “doesn’t know” which option is going to be the best - and I help with the last decision. Notwithstanding the time she spends researching the various options… And even with all that care, she sometimes is disappointed because the reality does not match the expectations.
Looking for the “best” option has a big pile of drawbacks attached to it. Be sure to look at that before you choose to operate this way.
I have to laugh. We all have this friend who spends hours online looking for the absolute best deal possible, right. The best flights, the best sofa, the best bedside table lamp, the best aloe vera cream, the best vacuum cleaner, the best self-inflating mat, etc… “Best” often meaning highest quality at a lower price than anywhere else.
And fair enough, they do get some pretty awesome deals sometimes. But at what cost? Spending dozens of waking hours looking for a flight that will be over in less than a day, or purchasing an item which we won’t care about in a few years.
In the grand scheme of things, I believe that time is our most valuable commodity. Everything else is secondary.
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