Choice is generally good.

Choice is what gives us autonomy and a sense of control over ourselves. But choice can sometimes fail to make us feel happy and fulfilled. Having too many choices, or even just one more choice than we can reasonably handle, is enough to throw us down a negative spiral of analysis paralysis.

This is known as the paradox of choice.

I recently faced this paradox with the choice of moving countries.

My wife and I ultimately decided to move closer to my wife's hometown in Hiroshima Japan for several years away from our current home in the U.S. But this decision induced some serious feelings of doubt in our own decision making ability. We could not come up with clear answers for questions like:

• Was it really a good idea to uproot our family and move so far away?
• Will this ultimately benefit our kids?
• Will we even like living in Japan?

While we had a pretty good idea as to the outcomes of these unknowns, there was no guarantee that our best guess would indeed be accurate.

It's not always a good thing to have such drastically different life paths present itself in front of you.

Each choice seems to lead to such varied outcomes that it was impossible to read into which one would ultimately be better. These things can only be referred back to with insight and wisdom. This is going to be a case of hindsight 20/20 and I'll just need to bet my chips and hope for the best in making this move.

Here is the decision making technique that helped me overcome my paralysis.

Trust yourself to make the right decision given the right information.

First, we must trust our own decision making abilities. Ultimately, that's the best we can do for ourselves.

If armed with information, you wouldn't sabotage your own outcomes, would you?

There's no point in doubting your decision making ability.

Focus instead on arming yourself with the right information.

Self doubt is not productive in these situations because doubt does not produce any useful information.

You're better off spending that effort gathering as much possible information on the situation.

• What are the core benefits to each? What are the drawbacks?
• What is the worst case scenario in both?
• What is the financial price you'll pay in the worst case scenario?
• What is the psychological price you'll pay?

With these major questions answered, all you can do is pick the one that makes most sense to you at the time of deciding.

You can't read into the future or know for sure what may come, so you might as well do as good of a job informing what may happen once you decide, and simply move forward with the acceptable choice.