About The Book "The Paradox of Choice"

The Paradox of Choice is an influential self-help book by psychologist Barry Schwartz. The book talks about the wide variety of choices made available to the consumers today, which is both a boon and a bane. About how this system of excess alternatives and variety challenges both the satisficers and maximizers in today’s market. He explains why too much of a good thing has proven detrimental to our psychological and emotional well-being. Synthesizing current research in the social sciences, he makes the counterintuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives. In accessible, engaging, and anecdotal prose, he offers practical steps for how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on the important ones and ignore the rest, and, ultimately, derive greater satisfaction from the choices you do make.

The paradox referred to in the title is all about how (offering) more choice can sometimes mean fewer sales. How did the book help you? The book has helped me understand my problem of regret. Of how my decision making skills are highly influenced by terms such as anticipated regret and post decision regret. It made me understand how I am constantly a target of my anticipated regret that what if I make a choice for myself now and sometime ahead in the future I am presented with a better opportunity but I would miss out on it due to my prior decisions. Or of how post decision regret makes it harder to enjoy. Is there a particular character you could relate to? It’s a self- help book which doesn’t necessarily have any characters, but I could relate to the author in the first chapter Let’s Go Shopping. How is the book contributing to your self-understanding?

The book talks about concepts such as autonomy and freedom, decisions and choices, regrets, both its preface and aftermath, social comparison, depression etc. All of these topics and their detailed analysis helped me recall my life experiences, the decisions and choices I made, the mistakes, made me realize the thought process that was oncoming at the time of decision making. It made me understand my fears and apprehensions, my thinking patterns, my perspective and take at things. How much of choice and freedom I practice and how it contributes to my personal growth. This book’s prospect made me understand the reasons behind my confused state of indecision and has enlightened my understanding of self. How did you relate to the book? I related to the book from the first chapter itself where the author goes for shopping and finds himself lost in the wide variety of jeans available for him. When all he was looking for were regular jeans. I could relate to his confused state of mind when he was presented with the different variety of jeans he could choose from.

All my life my dad brought jeans for me, but lately I started trying shopping by myself I found myself lost in the jungle of jeans. All I wanted were non-skinny regular fit jeans but when I went out to shop I found types of jeans such as skinny jeans, high-waisted jeans, bell bottoms, flare jeans, sequined jeans,mum jeans and boyfriend jeans and I felt absolutely clueless regarding what I had come to get and what I actually wanted to buy. What topic of Self- Awareness does this book address? Autonomy and Freedom are the topics of self-awareness this book addresses. The book states that autonomy and freedom of choice are critical to our well-being, and choice is critical to freedom and autonomy. How have you benefited from reading this book? This book has proven to be extremely beneficial for me because it gave me an insight into the power of choice in determining happiness.

How my happiness and life satisfaction cannot be determined by the standards of success, satisfaction and happiness artificially constructed by the society. I don’t need to have a Mansion when a medium sized comfortable independent house would be just fine for me and also within my financial capability. I would be just as happy drinking orange juice as someone would be having red wine. Because these are my choices and I have all the autonomy to make them without being restricted in anyway. Who else would benefit from reading this book? I would say anyone and everyone would benefit from reading this book because this book has something for all. But reading it myself and understanding its concepts I would like to think that this book would be especially beneficial for empowering women coming from patriarchal households where all their lives they have been trained to be obedient daughters and complaint wives.

Where girls and women have had guilt tied to every decision they make for their own betterment and their value has been tied to how good they are at following instructions. This book could inculcate that sense of autonomy and enhance their attitudes towards making choices that make them happy and express themselves better without any apprehension.

5 Statements from the book I would use in the future:

• “ Any time choice is restricted in some way, there is bound to be someone, somewhere, who is deprived of the opportunity to pursue something of personal value ”
• “ People who are married, who have good friends, and who are close to their families are happier than those who are not. People who participate in religious communities are happier than those who do not. Being connected to others seems to be much more important to subjective well-being than being rich. ”
• “ Those who value freedom of choice and movement will tend to stay away from entangling relationships; those who value stability and loyalty will seek them. ”
• “ People often talk jokingly about how “creative” accountants can make a corporate balance sheet look as good or as bad as they want it to look. Well, the point here is that we are all creative accountants when it comes to keeping our own psychological balance sheet. ”
• “ We feel compelled to articulate—at least to ourselves—why we made a particular choice. This need to search for reasons seems useful; it ought to improve the quality of our choices. But it doesn’t necessarily. ”