S2E31 - You Always Have a Choice

Today on the podcast, McKay chats about making tough choices, the Endowment Effect, and why great risks can have great rewards. Opening up the episode with a story about two men’s dangerous descent down the face of Peru’s Siula Grande, McKay details the hardest decision of one of their lives and what it’s like to work under pressure. From picking flavors at the ice cream shop to a marriage proposal, choices follow us everywhere, even when we think we don’t have any.

Feeling helpless or trapped? There is always a way out, but it isn’t always easy. That’s why this episode is all about forgetting failure, forsaking the status quo, and paying attention to the mood. The most important thing to remember, though, is that nothing changes unless you do. Taking risks can be scary, but you also just might find that your best life may lie on the other side. If McKay’s learned anything in his life, it’s that he’s never regretted making a bold choice, whether it went his way or not. So take a note from the Christiansen book, and listen to what he has to say about decision making and why it’s okay to make the daring one.

The Finer Details of This Episode:

• Mount Huascaran and Yungay’s powerful earthquake
• Simpson and Yates’ dangerous descent
• Making tough choices
• Why life is your greatest instructor
• Status Quo Bias
• Focusing on failure
• Risk and rewards
• How mood affects decision making

Quotes:

“They enjoyed the thrill of their success only for a few minutes before the dread of the descent covered their thinking. Why? Because 80 percent of the deaths and accidents on climbs like this happen on the descent.”

“If he cut the rope, he knew he would be sending his friend below him to a certain death. But if he didn’t cut the rope he would fall along with Joe and likely die as well. There was no good choice. How do you choose?”

“Some of us don’t like to make a choice, because the consequences are hard to live with, and impact us and others.”

“We make bad judgments, lack experience, misread, misinterpret, and mistake the wrong thing for the right thing. And life is tough. Life teaches us there are consequences for bad choices. And, as a result, we may shy away from those choices.”

“What is often true is: you can’t change the cards you are dealt with, but you can change how you play them.”

“When faced with a choice that involves an element of risk, the vast majority of people will choose what they have: the status quo.”

“I get feeling helpless or trapped. I have felt this way before, but there is something liberating and energizing about choosing.”

“And it may be time to make the bolder choice, to purposefully act against mood and the status quo in your life. If you don’t feel like it, that very mood and feeling may be telling you to choose it anyway. Your best life may be found on the other side of today’s difficult choice.”

Links:

https://www.mckaychristensen.org/