Thoughts About Choice Fatigue.

Is continuously looking for the next big thing actually really bad for our mental health?

As somebody who spent almost a decade jumping from thing to thing, city to city, opportunity to opportunity without ever really committing to anything in particular, coming across this episode from The Happiness Lab podcast brought a fresh new outlook on contentment.

The speaker, scientist and professor of psychology at Yale University Laurie Santos, starts the episode by exploring and analyzing the tantalizing concept of YOLO. 

If you, like me, became of age in the late 2000s then I am sure you remember that period of time when Drake’s incredibly hypnotizing, almost annoying, “The Motto” first made its debut on the international charts and swept everybody off their feet. 

It was October 3rd 2011, I was in my second year of college, and I quickly went from a Drake hater to not being able to hold back when the upbeat melody came onto the radio.
I still remember the trials and tribulations of trying to rap along with the lyrics without getting lost in the rhythm.
The only part I was actually able to spell out with no interruption was the third line of the chorus, probably because it repeated the same word–everyday–over and over. The rest was a mumble jumble. 

As you may imagine, I have never been equipped with the gift of spoken lyricism but, back then, the gap between hearing a word in English and the ability to process it in my brain to then spit it out in a timely manner was yet to be fine tuned. Bilingual problems, I guess. 

The Motto was an ode to the fleeting essence of life. The quintessential soundtrack to living with no regrets. The ultimate symbol of rebellion. A modernist Carpe Diem. The musical version of Just Do It. It was almost impossible to escape that infamous song. The concept of YOLO swiftly became ubiquitous.
YOLO became a hashtag, a youth culture motto, the millennial life mantra. 
Who doesn’t remember tweeting those four letters after saying something outrageous, or finding the courage to go ahead with a tricky move after spelling out the acronym?
It had us in a chokehold. 

Personally, I am a big promoter of quitting, starting over and daring in the name of living for the moment rather than being stuck in a future that may or may not arrive, but as I grow older and enter my “I need comfort” era—to use hip internet terms—I find the action of settling very rewarding.
For settling, I don’t mean becoming complacent or staying in a toxic situation for the sake of not starting over.
Matter of fact, any time I feel it’s getting too relaxed, the impelling need to break free from this self-induced boundary resurfaces and pushes me to the edge.
When I say settling, I mean finding joy in whatever we are currently handed by life. 

I am not a fan of long-term thinking. Yes, I do think that one should prepare for a rainy day and be smart about how they move in the world because our existence is unpredictable, but I think overly planning actually stifles people's progress in life. Yet, I think sometimes finding the strength to make a decision that may seem like a dead weight in the moment will show its benefits when we least expect it. 

The podcast analyzes life as we know it, reflecting especially on the plethora of choices we are constantly being presented with at any given moment.
Reels, Tik Toks, an endless catalog of movies on whatever our platform of choice is; have you ever noticed how you sometimes spend more time trying to pick what to watch than actually paying attention to what is going on on the screen?
Sometimes the time I spend looking for something to watch is so long that it cannibalizes my ability to pay attention to the screen once I make my choice.
Often, this means I don’t actually end up watching what I picked because it was too late at night for me to be alert.
Open my Netlix account and you will see what I mean. There are at least a dozen films waiting to be finished in the “Continue watching section”.

When I moved back to Italy from Dubai in 2018, I had no intention of making Milan my home. It was quite the opposite.
After 8 years abroad–plus a childhood spent across the globe–Milan felt restrictive, almost depressing.
For months, I was in between places. Living with my parents in the province of Modena, couchsurfing at my friends’, traveling cross-continentally.
I just couldn’t pick what would be my home next—the world was my oyster at that point. 

Then, all of a sudden, a bunch of work started coming my way and I had to make a radical decision: will I continue feeling in between or will I settle with what’s being offered at the moment? 
I started looking for an apartment.
The rents had gone up so much since I had first stepped foot in Milan after college that buying was a smarter idea–the mortgage would have been more affordable. 
For my sick little brain, making such an investment meant I was stuck in a city I wasn’t really fond of forever. 

I tossed and turned for weeks trying to convince myself this was going to serve me good in the long run. What long run?
I had never even lived in the same place for more than 2 years. But then, I found the perfect little spot in the neighborhood I had been eyeing since I returned. Everything changed.
The thrill of finally having a place of my own, that I could customize to my liking and where I didn’t have to worry about breaking items and having to pay a penalty for them, subverted my fear of commitment.
All of a sudden, I learned how to appreciate the familial feeling you get when your local barista remembers you or the excitement when a new spot sprouts on your block.
I even became picky about which fruit stand I purchase my weekly groceries from at the farmer’s market.
What felt like a hold back quickly turned into a win. I rewired my brain not to feel like I was missing out by choosing to stay in one place, but rather to rejoice the opportunity to slow down and ground myself. 

2023 marks my fifth year in Milan, and while I am starting to itch for a new adventure, one thing I learned about ditching volatility is that settling down is not boring; rather it provides new ways to experience the mundane.
I know it’s easy to fall victim to another viral acronym, FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), and feel the need to shake things up every other week, but if you sit down and listen to your gut, you will soon realize that always chasing the next big thing only leads to more anxiety and uncertainty. So stop chasing a future that may not exist and focus on your singular experience as a person on Earth. 

Ask yourself why you are compelled to change city, relationship, job, clothes so often. Is it to silence your own thoughts? To run away from problems instead of fixing them? 

As a fan of continuously reinventing myself, this whole essay may come off as hypocritical. But I think there’s a difference between living by the principle of “the grass is greener on the other side” and being an individual in constant flux.

So the food for thought I’d like to leave with you guys today is: am I not settling because of unresolved conflict or am I not settling because I know who I am and when it’s time for change?