Don't Worry, Be Grumpy

Should I? Shouldn’t I?

At the end of my lecture in Oslo, a young woman I had never seen before asked me a question on how one should make important decisions in life.

In order to ground her question in reality, I replied, “Well, suppose someone were trying to decide whether to marry her boyfriend?”

The poor girl blushed bright red, held her head in her hands, and turned in extreme embarrassment to her boyfriend sitting next to her! The audience didn’t help by their bursting into laughter.

After apologizing, I introduced an old method for making decisions with an unexpected new meaning: Toss a coin! Heads I marry him. Tails I don’t.

The new meaning, which I had only heard of recently, comes from paying close attention to your emotional reaction at the result.

Suppose it comes up heads, meaning, “I marry him.” Do you react with a “Yeah!” and grin happily or with “Hmm! Maybe I’ll try two out of three” and frown with disappointment? The reaction tells you very clearly what you really want to do. Whatever that is, you follow it.

Tossing a coin is simply a very effective way of finding out what your heart is telling you.