Words matter. These are the best Sheena Iyengar Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
We’re born with the desire, but we don’t really know how to choose. We don’t know what our taste is, and we don’t know what we are seeing.
There are times when the presence of more choices can make us choose things that are not good for us. For me the clearest example is that the more retirement fund options a person has, the less likely they are to save for their old age.
If you have the feeling of choice, if you feel free, you will be better off. And when I say better off I mean that if people feel they have control over their lives, they call in for fewer sick days from work. They have a lesser probability of having a heart attack or stroke. They live longer. They’re happier.
When companies try to guess what consumers want, they essentially make the choice for consumers.
The expansion of choice has become an explosion of choice.
Being a Sikh meant having to do what Mom and Dad said, and going to temple, and Mom and Dad choosing who I would marry. But going to an American school taught me that I was the one who’s supposed to make those choices.
What leads us astray is confusing more choices with more control. Because it is not clear that the more choices you have the more in control you feel. We have more choices than we’ve ever had before.
In America we tell our parents to bring their child home and put him or her in a crib; as they get older, children sleep in they own room not in Mom and Dad’s room. What are we training them for? It’s independence, because that’s what being empowered is all about.
Choice is more than picking ‘x’ over ‘y.’ It is a responsibility to separate the meaningful and the uplifting from the trivial and the disheartening. It is the only tool we have that enables us to go from who we are today to who we want to be tomorrow.
Knowledge should be a public good, and I want my ideas to have as much exposure as possible.
As we get older, we get better at choosing in ways that will make us happy. We do a better job at picking activities that make us happy, and at spending time with people who make us happy. We’re also better at letting things go.
