Through our work at Stanford we have evolved four general pathways to surrendering: 1) Drop mental striving; 2) Apply yourself to a task; 3) Maintain a spirit of inquiry; and 4) Acknowledge that you don’t know how it’s going to turn out.

9: Choosing Happiness

“The Life Design Choosing Process

In life design, the choosing process has four steps. First you gather and create some options, then you narrow down your list to your top alternatives, then you finally choose, and then, last but not least, you...agonize over that choice. Agonize over whether you’ve done the right thing. In fact, we encourage you to spend countless hours, days, months, or even decades agonizing.

The key is to remember that imagined choices don’t actually exist, because they’re not actionable. We’re not trying to live a fantasy life; we’re trying to design a real and livable life. If we burdened ourselves with knowing everything about our decisions and discovering every option possible (which, of course, you should do if you’re going to make “the best choice”), we’d never decide. In life design we know that there are countless possibilities but aren’t stymied by that fact. We revel in exploring a few possibilities, then taking action by starting with a choice.

Do yourself the favor of getting lots of options, then culling the list down to a short and manageable size (five max); then make the best choice that you can, given the time and resources available to you, get on with it, and build your way forward. Note that if you’re doing this with prototype iteration, you don’t have too much at stake, and you will be able to adjust as you go, before you really reach a significant investment. And once you make a choice—then embrace your choice and go with it. When the questions that lead to agonizing creep into your head, evict the thoughts, and direct your energy into living well the decisions you’ve made. Pay attention and learn as you go, of course, but don’t get caught with your eyes fixated on the rearview mirror of decision regret.

This letting-go step relies primarily on personal discipline. Keep your reframed understanding of decision making handy, and be sure to win the internal argument with yourself when you’re tempted to rehash and ruminate. Put in place the support you need to stick with it—find a life design collaborator or team to help remind you why you made the choice or choices you did; make a journal entry about your decision, and reread it when you get confused. Find what works to enable yourself to enjoy your choices fully.

So the key to letting go is to move on and grab something else. Put your attention on something—not off something.