Have you ever been in a dilemma of two choices and not sure which option to go for? Maybe you can’t decide what to eat for lunch, or which restaurant to go to. Happens with most of us, doesn’t it? If only we had someone who could make this decision for us. If only there was a fairy mother god who could help us choose one of the options. Well, there is! It’s right in your pocket or on the shelf near you.
Don’t worry, there isn’t a literal fairy in your pocket. We are talking about a coin, which more or less helps you make decisions.
Various studies have proved that flipping a coin when you can’t choose one of the options, can not only help you decide which option to go for, but also can lead to a happier fulfilling life.
At different points in our life, we are bound to face different choices, which can be as simple as what to have for lunch to as complex as whether to quit your job. We come across different choices like to buy or to rent, to propose or not, to buy a car or not, whether to move houses, or to shift to a different country.
Some of these decisions can be overwhelming and we just need someone or something to validate it. Flipping a coin, by assigning one of the options to heads and the other option as tails, makes you go for the option on the face of the coin that lands on top after flipping.
For example, if heads is assigned to pizza and tails is assigned to burger, you flip the coin and it lands on heads, you go for pizza for lunch. It’s as simple as that.
One of the various experiments that helped understand this individual behaviour is explained below.
Study author Steven Levitt from the University of Chicago in the US created a website (Freakonomics Experiments) where participants answered a series of questions.
On the website, he lists out a few options that would be a life changing decision like moving out or quitting your job. It also had simpler options like whether to go on a dating site. The participants were asked to flip a coin and decide on one of the choices. They were also given options to add in their own choices and decide on one.
These participants were then interviewed after 2 months and 6 months.
There were people who had stuck to the original choice, those who didn’t flip the coin and stayed where they were, and people who had taken a step forward and made a decision that might or might not change their life.
The first category people were happy when interviewed 2 months later, thinking what they have done is for good, while the second category people were not so happy after 2 months, as they were still in the transition phase and adjusting to the new life.
However, when interviewed after 6 months, the scenario was completely different. The orthodox group were regretting their decision thinking life could have been a bit better, if they had taken that leap of faith, while the other group who actually took the leap of faith were way happier about their decision.
This does not hold true for every single individual, but a majority. There are many factors that would influence such decisions and such life changing moves.
“Society teaches us ‘quitters never win, and winners never quit,’ but in reality the data from my experiment suggests we would all be better off if we did more quitting,” Levitt said. “A good rule of thumb in decision making is, whenever you cannot decide what you should do, choose the action that represents a change, rather than continuing the status quo.”
Life Decisions will result in consequences. It has to be a very smart move by looking at the best possible ways in 360°. One has to understand how important it is before choosing one from the different options they have before taking a decision rather than tossing a coin and waiting for luck to come to their doorstep.
Coin toss just acts as a decision through which games are decided.
Our life is not a game which should depend upon a coin toss, it should depend upon how much our life is valuable for us and how much it stands as priority to live our life as we want to.
Being connected to person whom we love and adore, being happy in a place where we feel safe, being positivity around us in our day-to-day life, Being grateful to have our loveable family, being surrounded by a bunch of crazy or family like friends is so mesmerizing and can be said as “lucky” too and decision based on such lovely and valuable thing a coin cannot do.
Because we are emotionally connected, we are not connected by a silly coin which has to family or feelings indeed
We should design life as we want it to be no matter how hard it is. Then only a person can be happy in his life. So, leaving a life decision for a toss is not always the best decision to make. Your decision should be analysed, scrutinised, and then followed.
Coin toss is just a justification to the choices you make.
What is the right decision you know?
When you flip the coin and, in that moment, when the coin is in the air, your heart says it should be heads or tails, that is your answer.
The decision is made not when the coin touches ground, it is made when it is launched into the air.
Whether you flip a coin or not, whether you take a decision after a coin has landed or while it’s in the air, whether you decide to go for the first flip or keep on flipping until you reach your desired result, it all depends on you. You are the decision maker of your life and nobody else is going to decide that for you.
