Theme - Issues That Affect Us All - No. 6- Choice
NEARER Sunday 10th April 2016
Theme - Issues that affect us all - No. 6- Choice
1530 - Mingle Time:
(Three activities, move around or stay with one)
Mingle Time 1 - Colouring In
Mingle Time 2 - Jenga game
Mingle Time 3 - Odd one out game
1550 - Intro:
Welcome
Explain the goal of this group - create a space for us to encounter God
Explain format/Timings
Video - Decision Making (
Intro - Is that a picture of our lives - a constant stream of choices? Some trivial some vitally important. Albert CAMUS, novelist and French existentialist philosopher once posed the question, ‘Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?’ A jarring juxtaposition of the trivial and the essential but which makes the point that decision shape our lives. Life is an accumulation of choices, some trivial, some desperately important.
How do we best handle this essential activity of choosing which defines who we are and which gives shape to our existence?
1600 - Focus Time:
(Two activities, 20 minute slots - move around.)
Focus Time 1 - Choice - Is it real, is it helpful?
Focus Time 2 - The psychology of choice
1640 - Together Time:
Choices are cumulative, a series of small choices makes a large difference in our lives.
What do you take away from today?
As we play this song, which speaks about the choice to follow Jesus, reflect on what have you heard, seen, read, or felt that seems important to you? Has God whispered anything to you today, if so what do you need to do about it?
Song - One way (
NEARER exists to support people in their journey of spiritual exploration and growth. Something, that as Christians, we believe is rooted in a personal encounter with Jesus.
If you would like help, guidance, support in your spiritual journey, or even better, if you have a friend, or a few friends, that would like to explore faith together, then NEARER would love to help you with that.
Let’s meet up and explore where you are and what we can do to help you to move forward!
Distribute Choice Prayer Bookmark - Meditation challenge - DO it every day for a week!
FREE Bible - Where to find help in time of need.
NEARER publicity materials - INVITE people!
Date of next meeting - Sunday 8th May ‘Issues that affect us all No. 7 - Stress.’
Mingle Time 1 - Colouring In
Questions for conversation:
Do you have any stories to share about choice?
When is choice a good thing?
When is choice a bad thing?
How do we know when we have too much choice?
What can we do to avoid choice becoming something negative in our lives?
Mingle Time 2 - Jenga Game
As you play Jenga think about the way in which you choose which brick to pull out.
How do you make your decisions, what criteria do you use?
In life how do you make important choices?
In Jenga our choices are shown to be good or bad very quickly, how can we tell if our life choices have been good or bad?
Mingle Time 3 - Odd one out
As you play this fiendishly difficult game(!) think about the process of making a choice, what guides your choice, what is the process that you follow, how much is based upon knowledge and how much is based upon intuition?
How does this relate to the real life choices we make - what profession to go into, who to marry, what team to support, what faith (if any) to follow - are these based upon knowledge/data, or upon intuition?
Focus Time 1 - Choice - Is it real, is it helpful?
The illusion of choice
Question - What breakfast cereal do you buy and why?
Question - How do you decide?
In the 1930s market researchers made a crucial breakthrough that has defined marketing ever since. They discovered that cigarette smokers could not tell the difference between different brands of cigarettes when they were ‘blind’ tested.
This meant they had two options;
- They could invest in making their product different to those of their competitors.
- They could invest in making consumers think their product was different to their competitors.
Question - Which approach do you think they chose and why?
They chose option two as it was much quicker and much less expensive. It also had the advantage of making the product easier to evolve and re-target for different markets. You could have pretty much identical products but you could market them with different packaging and different advertising campaigns in order to tap into specific markets - men, women, teenagers, sporty types, sophisticates, working men etc.
This approach has pretty much become the guiding principle in most marketing ever since. What we are being offered by advertisers are pretty much identical products, but with very different aspirational images and marketing, what we choose to buy is therefore much more about ‘perception’ than about the product itself.
Question - How may breakfast cereals do you think Sainsburys sell?
Sainsbury’s website currently lists 300 different breakfast cereals that they sell, they all have more or less the same ingredients - cereals - but they are marketed very differently - high quality, economic, high fibre, low fat, for children, for teenagers, for people who are health conscious, for dieters, for people in a hurry etc.
This is not just true for food products, if we look at computers we find that of the 80 million motherboards sold in 2012, 51% were produced by only two companies - ASUS and Gigabyte. So although you can buy 1000s of different PCs from 100s of different manufacturers, all the components are pretty much made in the same few factories.
So what are you actually buying when you choose one brand of PC over another? Mostly it’s just about brand image and the styling of the box that the components are housed in.
Question - Which supermarket do you choose and why?
Question - How do you choose?
The illusion of choice continues even to the companies from whom we buy. Around 10 companies produce nearly all the food we buy in supermarkets.
So I might feel that I’m buying a ‘traditional British product’ like Quaker Oats or Lipton’s teas, but I am actually buying from an American company, Pepsico.
I might decide that I want to support something independent and quirky, like Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, but in fact I am actually buying from the giant multinational Unilever.
So how real are our choices?
We can apply this also to the area of faith, should churches adopt a similar approach?
Question - Is this a good idea or a bad idea?
Question - Does the principle of identical content but different packaging apply?
Question - What are the positives and negatives of this approach?
Question - Is the fact that there are 40,000 different Protestant denominations a good or a bad thing?
Focus Time 2 - The psychology of choice:
Some Choice is Important:
Some choice is important for a sense of freedom, self-determination. The absence of all choice is slavery. Slaves have no choices, they can’t choose what they do, where they live, what they eat, who they marry etc.
‘Healthy people want and need to direct their own lives’
Some choose to give up the possibility of choice e.g. monks and nuns, but this is a choice made consciously in order to divest themselves of something that is a distraction for a single-minded focus on God. They do not waste, times, energy, or effort in thinking about unimportant things, they are released, freed to focus entirely upon God.
Video - Jeans Story ( from 12:26 to 14:24)
Question - How do you react to that story?
Too Much Choice is Unhelpful:
A psychological experiment was undertaken in a delicatessen. An array of gourmet jams was offered for tasting. One week they offered a choice of 6 different jams, the next week they offered 24 different jams. In both cases all 24 varieties of jam were available for purchase.
The researchers discovered that in both cases people tried the same number of jams, but there was a massive difference in their buying activity.
30% of those who only had a choice of 6 jams bought some, but only 3% of those who had the larger selection did so.
‘A large array of options may discourage consumers because it forces an increase in the effort that goes into making a decision. So consumers decide not to decide, and don’t buy the product. Or if they do, the effort that the decision requires detracts from the enjoyment derived from the results. Also, a large array of options may diminish the attractiveness of what people actually choose.’
Question - Does this ring true for you?
Research has shown that;
‘a majority of people want more control over the details of their lives,
but a majority of people also want to simplify their lives.
There you have it - the paradox of our times.’
Question - Do you agree with that statement?
Video - Conclusions ( from 15:06 to 16:50)
Question - How do you react to Barry SCHWARZ conclusions?
The Golden Rules for Handling Choice:
Barry SCHWARZ the psychologist who wrote the book “The Paradox of Choice” has identified the following ‘Golden Rules’ for handling choice in our lives that he believes lead to the greatest happiness.
- Choose when to choose - not all choices are important, decide when to invest in the effort of choosing.
- Don’t be a Maximiser - Maximisers are always wanting the very best and constantly seeking new options, alternatives, even comparing choices that they have already made with the options they rejected. This leads to unhappiness. Embrace and appreciate the ‘good enough’. Choose the first option that meets your minimum requirement and then stop thinking about it.
- Make your decisions non-reversible - The very option of changing our minds makes it more probable that we will. Knowing that you have made a choice and there is no going back allows you to pour you energy into enjoying your choice, rather than into second-guessing whether it was the best one.
- Practice an attitude of gratitude - Focus on the positives of any choice you have made rather than on any negatives. Develop a lifestyle of gratitude, rather than dissatisfaction, for it is dissatisfaction that focuses our thinking on possible alternatives that undermines our sense of happiness and life satisfaction.
- Don’t Regret - It poisons our thinking and eats away at happiness. Focus on the positive.
- Anticipate Adaptation - Most new acquisitions bring us joy, but this is always short-lived - we adapt to the new thing and it becomes the ordinary, the new normal. Accept that this is how things are, acknowledge the joy and thrill of the new but don’t expect it to last. Practicing gratitude will help us feel positive even after the initial thrill has gone.
- Control Expectations - Reduce the options you consider, go for the ‘good enough’, embrace and enjoy unexpected pleasures.
- Don’t Compare - Comparing yourself to others feeds dissatisfaction. Focus instead on what makes YOU happy, what gives YOUR life meaning.
- Learn to love constraints - Embraced ‘rules of life’ limit your need to make choices - you don’t have to think about what to do because you’ve already decided this once and for all. This can free you from the tyranny of choice.
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