Stuck With No Choice? How to Multiply Your Options

When you can’t think outside-the-box, you can at least make the box bigger…

Your mind is a big deal.

Anything you’ll ever build with your hands, and everything that comes out of your mouth, starts in your mind.

Likewise, everything you don’t build, and all the important words you don’t say? That starts in your mind too.

Here is a mental trick I stumbled upon that has helped me realize my own power to work through anxiety, laziness, and self-limiting thinking, to live in accordance with my values and priorities.

Try it on for size. Play around with it. Change it up, make it yours:

The option multiplier method is a visualization technique.

Let’s say you’re having a craving to overeat or feeling pulled toward another addictive behavior, and it feels like you have no choice but to go down that path.

Or conversely, you are laying in bed binging on Netflix when you should be focused on other priorities, but you just can’t be arsed. You just don’t seem to have it in you to rise to the occasion (so again, it’s like you have no choice).

Having no choice is like having only one option (in these cases, giving in to that craving, or stagnating in bed while the world passes you by).

So let’s be creative. Start by imagining a small box in your mind.

This box contains your only option. Due to the box’s tiny size, there is not room for any more options within it.

What would happen, though, if you had a larger box?

Could you fit more options in there?

Would you then free up some space to be able to more easily decide, “There’s a time and a place for Netflix binges, and this isn’t it.”

or, “Instead of gorging myself on comfort food, I am going to make a smoothie”?

In my experience, the answer is, “Yes.” This absolutely works.

Works so well, that I avoided doing it for years, because it removed my excuse for being lazy or tolerating my own mediocrity.

Now I am not avoiding it anymore, for the same reason!!