Choices.
Maximizing your signal-to-noise ratio and the bliss of choicelessness.
I’ve been in LA the past few weeks.
LA is where my increasingly irrelevant stash of stuff has been in storage since November of 2021.
It’s wild how little of that stuff you realize you actually need, once separated from it.
But as I’m in town for a bit longer this trip, I took a few pairs of shoes out of storage, thinking it would be nice to give them some use.
The first day I went to leave the house, I found myself confronted with an unfamiliar conundrum—what to wear?
I was instantly reminded of something my teacher often says:
“Choicelessnes is bliss. Choices are a working definition of hell.”
—Maharishi Vyasanand Sarasvati
I’ll admit I didn’t immediately understand or agree with this sentiment the first time I heard him say it in 2020. It seemed to me like having more options would surely put me in a better position and provide me with more freedom.
The thing is, only one option is most evolutionary for us at any given time, and the rest are noise.
When nature really wants to move us in a certain direction, it may eliminate virtually all choices but that one. This is a very good thing, because nature always knows best.
In most cases though, we have a modicum of choice, and if we practice Vedic Meditation regularly and have learned to tune in to our fine level of feeling, we’ll always have a sense of which choice will be most evolutionary for us.
But the thinking mind is a horrible predictor of the future, and left to its own devices, it will choose based on the way it is conditioned—for example, by what other people are doing, what happened in the past, or what seems most likely to bring about an outcome it has become attached to.
The fewer choices we have to make, the greater the chance we’ll end up going with what nature is intending for us, i.e. the “signal” as opposed to the “noise”.
Taken to its extreme, this would mean that having 100 choices gives us a 1% chance of going with that which is most evolutionary, and having no choices means we are guaranteed to be going with that which nature has intended for us.
So when we only have one pair of shoes to wear, that pair is the most evolutionary choice.
Having 100 pairs to choose from may seem like freedom, but it’s actually the opposite, because we are burdened with choice and a low signal-to-noise ratio.
According to Psychology Today, too many options, although deemed desirable by our capitalist societies, can actually lead to a modern phenomenon called “decision fatigue,” stemming from the so-called “paradox of choice.”
This is essentially describing how the more options presented before us, the more trapped we feel. In a sense, too many choices make us feel like we have no choice at all, as we can become somewhat paralyzed, and directionless.
Many of the most successful people have figured this out already by eliminating choices in the wardrobe department. Dr. Dre wears the same Nike Air Force 1’s every day, Barack Obama wears only gray or blue suits, and Steve Jobs became famous for his black turtleneck, jeans, and New Balance sneakers uniform.
True freedom is being able to move forward frictionlessly and with clarity in the direction we know is most evolutionary for us, with a high signal-to-noise ratio.
Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday June 23 at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or use the below links to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your calendar.
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Music today is a brand new record from my very talented friend Nicole Miglis, the former lead signer of an incredible band called Hundred Waters I used to work with who routinely received the revered Best New Music on Pitchfork. Nicole is releasing her debut album Myopia this summer on my birthday, August 23, but that’s probably just a coincidence.