THE VALUE OF CHOICES

Life is full of choices. We therefore make various choices every day. In fact one of my mentors once said that the greatest gift God gave to human beings is the gift of choice. I do not agree less, because imagine a situation where man had no right of choice over what he does in life. Life would be boring. It would have been a life of gathering to receive orders and execute them. This is not so, because God has given us the power of will. The ability to make choices and to prefer something over another per time is something that clearly makes humans different from other creatures.

Now it is one thing to have this power; yet it is another thing to deploy it effectively for the benefit of oneself and for the good of humanity. As already mentioned, we make choices at every moment and choices range from big to small as well as significant and less significant. Whichever is the case, making choices may require some skill. This is so because it is not just enough to make choices; it much more important to ensure that choices made would stand the test of time. It is important to ensure that reason prevails over emotion when approaching choice making.

Experts say that it is more difficult to choose right when options are too many. They also say that it is not good to think about choices when there is only one item, because at that point there will be nothing to compare with. Their recommendation is that there should be two –four options for one to consider choices. Therefore when there are many items, it is better to first reduce it to a few, before embarking on choice making. So what role does value play in choices?

Value determines our choices in various degrees.  When there are options to choose from, it is the option that is of most valuable to the person that prevails. When there is a struggle between career and family, a man who chooses family communicates that he values family over career; while the one who chooses career shows he values career over family. When it comes to career alone, someone who is more comfortable with financial security which employment tends to offer, would not be as motivated as someone who desires to fulfill potential to the fullest and become a person of significance when it comes to entrepreneurship and leadership.

Another angle is that choices are made based on anticipated value of what is to be chosen. People would definitely go to places they were sure they would add value to themselves depending on what they considered valuable per time. Here people’s personality would come into play. A Sanguine who has options of attending a meeting; attending a gala night and reading a book at home, will definitely choose to attend the gala night, because she would prefer where she can interact with people and possibly make new friends to an activity like meeting or reading that would be boring to her.

This therefore means that making choice in any area of life requires a good knowledge of self and certain knowledge of what to choose from. Knowledge of self in order to know what you truly value, what would make you happy and ultimately give you satisfaction. Certain knowledge of what to choose from is relevant to ensure that the right quality is chosen.  This requires that the end user is directly part of the final choice making decision. She is the one to truly define what she wants and not a proxy.

Whenever we are faced with a condition of choice making, we should check our motive to ascertain that we are sure of the application of the choice we are making. Many choices are irreversible in the sense that we do not have the chance to reverse them immediately we make them. We may only be advised to choose an alternative in extreme situations.