Choice Isnt Always A Good Thing | Life Coach Blog: The Discomfort Zone :

Choice Isn't Always A Good Thing

I recently paid a visit to the new Whole Foods store that has opened on Sandlake Rd here in Orlando. As anybody that knows me will testify, I LOVE my food. I also like a wide variety of different types of food. Whole Foods has a huge selection gathered from not just all over the US, but also all over the world. It is in a lot of respects my idea of food heaven.

It’s also my idea of hell.

What do you think happened when I went there for the first time? To start with, I was as I say, in heaven. I drooled unashamedly, copiously and I suspect literally, over the huge selection of cheeses, fish, organic foods, exotic spices, fine wines and prepared meals. At one stage a guy with a mop and bucket was following me from isle to isle as I sampled everything in sight even the stuff I knew I wouldn’t like.

After about 20 minutes of wandering the aisles and tasting samples I suddenly started to feel a tad uncomfortable. It wasn’t the fact that I’d stuffed half a pizza into my face in 19 seconds flat or eaten 4 samples of the same cheese by pretending I wasn’t quite sure if it was exactly what I was looking for. No, it was something more

I hadn’t got long and I was actually starting to stress over what to buy (see, even Life Coaches stress themselves from time to time!). There was so much great stuff I was actually feeling overwhelmed. There was simply too much choice for me to process comfortably.

The net result was I ended up buying a bottle of water, some turkey burgers my wife could easily have made and an egg sandwich. All of the great food that had seemed so tempting and irresistible got left behind for another day. I’m sure there’s a lesson there for marketers because I know I’m not the only person that feels like that.

Feeling overwhelmed is a horrible feeling and one we tend to try our utmost to avoid. The fact that a lot of people turn to their good friend Mr. Procrastination to deal with such feelings doesn’t help either, for obvious reasons.

Probably the easiest way to deal with overwhelm for the majority of people is to chunk down. Chunking is an NLP term and absolutely brilliant at helping people remove the kind of feelings that are usually (but not always) brought on by having too much to do. If you want a full explanation of chunking and a chapter from my up and coming e-book ‘What the **** is NLP?” click here.

Chunking is a brilliant method for a lot of situations but shopping for groceries probably isn’t one of them. I guess I could have bounded enthusiastically into Whole Foods determined just to look at products that began with the letter ‘A’ and resided in isle 14. But I suspect that’s not a great long-term strategy for food shopping, even if it does save a lot of money.

Before anybody tells me I should have just made out a list, that’s not the point. I wanted to explore and immerse myself in all things foodie and I had no idea I’d fail so badly (or so well depending on your viewpoint). I guess putting my coaching hat on I could have done a 30 minute meditation in the parking lot, spent another 30 minutes visualizing a successful shopping trip and then anchored a feeling of sublime tranquility prior to entering the store, but I didn’t. Perhaps next time maybe.

When I decided to offer some free life coaching I suspected I’d have about 15 to 20 people contact me. In no way was I prepared for almost 50 and that same sense of overwhelm hit me very quickly.

How the hell do I say no to so many people? The fact is, if I want to have any life whatsoever that’s what I have to do. I can’t coach that amount of people and still have time to do all the other stuff I do like seeing clients who actually pay me real live money.

So here I am in a position of saying no. I don’t like it, but that’s life. I have had some moving e-mails and I’m very, very grateful to those of you that obviously went to a lot of trouble in putting your case. It brought home to me even more vividly how tough the economy is for a lot of people at the moment. No less than four of the people have lost their job since the New Year and that sucks big time.

I have thrown a lot of the criteria out of the window because I haven’t picked the biggest blogs and ‘m not going to insist anybody blogs about it unless they want to.

Without further ado and before I change my mind for the 37th time, here are the people I’m going to work with:

Jay Frawley from Inner Noodle

Lori Deschene – Launching her blog next week, but catch her on Twitter here

Melissa Averinos – from Yummy Goods

Thanks again to everybody that e-mailed and commented. I feel like I know a lot of you well and that has made this even more difficult. Hope you’ll forgive me ;-)

Join me on UStream again on Monday 9th at 4.00pm and I’ll be talking about fears and phobias….probably.

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21 Comments So Far.

Comment by Jay on 7 February 2009:

Wow Tim. I am so excited! Thank you so much!

Jays last blog post..Life Lessons from a Japanese Tea Master
Comment by Laurie on 7 February 2009:

I can’t wait to hear about all this. I like your choices Tim! :o) Good luck to all of you with your coaching sessions. My hope is that you all, including Tim, get out of it what you need!
Comment by Lori on 7 February 2009:

I second that, Jay! I’m thrilled and honored to be chosen, especially alongside such powerful people. Love both your blogs Jay and Melissa! Thank you again Tim. I look forward to learning how not to be miserable from you ;)

Loris last blog post..BeMeaningful: "The fearless are merely fearless. People who act in spite of their fear are truly brave." -Unknown
Comment by Willo Keays on 7 February 2009:

I’ve been wanting to try that Whole Foods out too – but it’s a bit of a drive for me. Now though … I’m not sure if it would just be sheer torture. Perhaps if I go in from a research standpoint without the intent to actually BUY something. Then … I can work my way up to buying just what I NEED. Hmm … go in with a plan. Yes. That’s what I’ll do!

Willo Keayss last blog post..Catching Up With Life!
Comment by Tim Brownson on 7 February 2009:

@ Jay & Lori – Looking forward to working with you both and I know we’ll get some great results.

@ Laurie – Well there should be enough places to read about it – lol

@ Willo – It is great and worth the trip, I just think you need to have at least a vague idea of what you want. BTW, love your blog theme, very clean and professional.
Comment by Doug on 7 February 2009:

Tim,

Whole Foods is a great store. Very progressive. I used to shop at the one in C’ville all of the time. It’s a shame there isn’t one nearby me now.

Choices. I’m not sure how this relates to NLP, but one great way for me to narrow my choices when I shop is price. Whole Foods can be pricey on a lot of items, but if you look hard enough, you’ll find some bargains. Things like their own bread. Wonderful bread, great price, and the ingredients are all natural. Actually, better than just all natural. The natural stuff they use is good for you. No natural hydrogenated oily oil in there, etc.

And their organic food is really organic. For instance, their beef cattle all do Yoga, drink green tea, and wear Che T-Shirts. Again, it’s a really cool store.

;>)

Dougs last blog post..A Fine Frenzy
Comment by Tracy on 7 February 2009:

I’m so excited for the people Tim picked! I have not had the pleasure of meeting Lori & Melissa yet, but Jay is one of the nicest people I’ve met on Twitter and my heart just went “YAY!!!” when I saw his name.

Tim, you really are a great guy and I’ve been recommending you all around.

Thanks for the link on chunking, somebody else told me I should look into that recently, so I guess this is a sign that I need to chunk up.
Comment by melissa@yummygoods on 7 February 2009:

thank you so much, tim!

melissa@yummygoodss last blog post..300: not yet
Comment by Bamboo Forest – PunIntended on 8 February 2009:

I think that’s great that you’re coaching these three people for free. Really great.

“as I sampled everything in sight even the stuff I knew I wouldn’t like.”

Too funny.

Bamboo Forest – PunIntendeds last blog post..7 Reasons Bill Cosby is a Superior Being
Comment by tom on 8 February 2009:

Interesting article, i do agree that there is so much choice and this is where people become overwhelmed, stressed and they end up not buying, buying too much or buying the wrong thing.
In a way it is like a trick the marketers are playing but this can also backfire when no one buys their stuff.

toms last blog post..What would you do with $1 Billion?
Comment by Tim Brownson on 8 February 2009:

@ Doug – LMAO – I like that they do that with their cows, I hope they give them saffron robes too.

@ Tracy – Thanks a lot for that, I appreciate it.

@ Melissa – You’re welcome

@ BF – Too funny for you maybe, my wife was mortified ;-)

@ Tom – Malcolm Gladwell did a whole talk at Ted.com about spaghetti sauce and what happened when manufacturers started introducing lots of different varieties. Fascinating stuff.
Comment by tom on 8 February 2009:

thanks for the info Tim, I will check out Malcolm Gladwell.

toms last blog post..What would you do with $1 Billion?
Comment by Bill Skrips on 8 February 2009:

I don’t have much of a problem in doing the chunking out process-I guess I’m sort of good at it. But what I’m not good at is NOT ACTING OUT when feeling overwhelmed…I go through a dramatic scene (of course, only when there is someone around-namely my wife-to hear me) and become an absolute shit-beast (really) for about an hour. Then I buckle down to business to the point where you’d ever know i had a freak-out about it. It would be great if I could subvert that initial exploding steam valve into something constructive OR even go into a closet and blow, but it seems that I need an audience (specifically, someone I’m close to) to act out on….otherwise, you might call be quite capable of handling anything this side of humanly possible.
Dear Tim, Advice, please.
Comment by Pace on 8 February 2009:

Tim,

This is a very important point! If you say yes to everyone, you’re effectively saying no to everyone, especially yourself, because it’s more than you can carry. By saying no to some, you can say a meaningful yes to the others.

So… thank you! (:

Paces last blog post..Passion doesn’t require attachment; it requires engagement
Comment by Tim Brownson on 8 February 2009:

@ Bill – What if you just went with it? What is you explained to your wife that’s it’s no big deal and you need her there to allow you to vent and move on? we all react in different ways and some people seem to think there is a right way and a wrong way when there’s really only your way. I have a feeling that your actions are more productive than you think they are.

@ Pace – Spot on, thanks a lot Pace!
Comment by tom on 8 February 2009:

Well lets look at it this way, saying yes to everyone is just horrible.
But the point I want to make is that most of these people that come to you expect someone else solve their problems.
Once you realize this, you realize just how much time you are saving.

tom

toms last blog post..Art of business
Comment by Sue on 9 February 2009:

Tim,

It’s very generous of you to have picked three people instead of just one.

Life coaching is a bit of a mystery to me. I’m very interested to read about the different ways that the three bloggers are sure to benefit from your help.

Keep us posted.

Sue
Comment by Alex Fayle | Someday Syndrome on 9 February 2009:

Kelly over at Maximum Customer Experience had a great post about this last week and how she couldn’t order just plain old envelopes. http://maximumcustomerexperience.com/2009/02/03/but-can-it-protect-me-from-whale-attacks/

I agree that too much choice is a problem and this is what I said on Kelly’s blog about what I offer on Someday Syndrome:

My readers tell me they need concrete tips on breaking through procrastination habits and clutter habits, and many of them also mention being unsure of where they want to go if they did stop procrastinating.

So, while the blog talks at a philosophical level, the newsletter gives slightly more concrete tips and the upcoming paid service will give highly concrete tips. With few choices. Everyone will be free to choose their personal project, but they won’t get the mentoring version of the envelopes. They’re going to get sturdy (environmentally-friendly) plain envelopes that they can customize if they feel like it.

In a service business where clarity is my key deliverable, options just make a mess and dilute the service. No?</blockquote

Alex Fayle | Someday Syndromes last blog post..Carnival of Personal Development: February 9, 2009 edition
Comment by Tim Brownson on 9 February 2009:

@ Tom – Sorry bud, I’m not really sure what you mean!

@ Sue – Thanks.

@ Alex – Shameless plug ;-) Go for it man!
Comment by tom on 9 February 2009:

What I meant Tim is that if you start saying yes to everyone and wanting to solve their problems, that is all you will do, all your time will be used up.
While you will not get anywhere.

When you learn to help those that really need it, or that can at least help themselves, then you save lots of time.

toms last blog post..Take full advantage of all resources
Comment by Tim Brownson on 12 February 2009:

@ Tom – Ok gotcha, that mes sense.