Sheena Iyengar Quotes About Choices

Quotes about: Choices

• When we speak of choice, what we mean is the ability to exercise control over ourselves and our environment. In order to choose, we must first perceive that control is possible.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Mean, Exercise, Order

• We have the ability to create choice by altering our interpretations of the world.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Choices, World, Interpretation

• 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.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Uplifting, Meaningful, Responsibility

• In order to 'hold fast' to something, one must allow oneself to be held to something. That commitment may be one of the hardest things to practice in a world of so much choice.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Commitment, Order, Practice

• It's always a thrilling experience to go into a place that offers you a lot of choice. You know it's like it reminds you of when you're a kid and you go to the amusement park and whether it be Disneyworld or Six Flags you know that thrilling moment when you first enter and you know you've got all these possibilities for the day and it's really a... it's a wonderful feeling.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Kids, Choices, Feelings

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• First-generation children were strongly influenced by their immigrant parents' approach to choice. For them, choice was not just a way of defining and asserting their individuality, but a way to create community and harmony by deferring to the choices of people whom they trusted and respected.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Children, Motivation, Inspiration

  "The art of choosing". TED conference, www.ted.com. July, 2010.

• [Americans] think that choice, as seen through the American lens, best fulfills an innate and universal desire for choice in all humans. Unfortunately, these beliefs are based on assumptions that don't always hold true in many countries, in many cultures.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Country, Motivation, Inspiration

  "The art of choosing". TED conference, www.ted.com. July, 2010.

• The less control people had over their work, the higher their blood pressure during work hours. Moreover, blood pressure at home was unrelated to the level of job control, indicating that the spike during work hours was specifically caused by lack of choice on the job. People with little control over their work also experienced more back pain, missed more days of work due to illness in general, and had higher rates of mental illness-the human equivalent of stereotypies, resulting in the decreased quality of life common to animals reared in captivity.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Jobs, Pain, Home

• What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing. —Archibald MacLeish

  Sheena Iyengar

  Freedom, Men, Choices

• We are sculptors finding ourselves in the evolution of choosing, not in the results of choice.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Choices, Evolution, Results

  Sheena Iyengar (2010). “The Art Of Choosing: The Decisions We Make Everyday of our Lives, What They Say About Us and How We Can Improve Them”, p.95, Hachette UK

• The expansion of choice has become an explosion of choice.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Choices, Expansion, Explosions

• Life hands us a lot of hard choices, and other people can help us more than we might realize. We often think we should make important decisions using just our own internal resources. What are the pros and cons? What does my gut tell me? But often we have friends and family who know us in ways we don't know ourselves.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Thinking, Hands, People

• We do the same thing in our own lives, embracing information that supports what we already prefer or vindicates choices we previously made.After all, it feels better to justify our opinions rather than challenge them, to contemplate only the pros and relegate the cons to the back of our minds. However, if we want to make the most of choice, we have to be willing to make ourselves uncomfortable. The question is, if we are willing, how exactly do we go about fortifying ourselves against these biases?

  Sheena Iyengar

  Feel Better, Choices, Support

• I don't know if I approach choice any differently than the sighted people do, but what I am very cognizant of is that choice does have limits and because of that I really try to take advantage of the domains in which I do have choice.

  Sheena Iyengar

  People, Choices, Trying

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• What we share with animals is a desire for choice. It's a desire to have control over our life and a desire to live and use choice as a way in which we can facilitate our ability to live and that is something we really were born with.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Animal, Choices, Desire

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• So most of the time when we are confronted by more, rather than a few, choices we're often novices and so we don't really know how to differentiate these various options.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Choices, Novices, Know How

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• I mean we might even go to war as to whether we love Coke or Pepsi and our whole identity is wrapped up in that choice. You know, for the Russians they felt that these minor differences between these various sodas was just hyped up and irrelevant.

  Sheena Iyengar

  War, Mean, Differences

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• 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.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Heart, Mean, People

• The saying goes that history repeats itself; personal histories do the same. We can gather the lessons of others' lives through observation, conversation, and by seeking advice. We can use the automatic system to find out who the happy people are, and the reflective system to evaluate how they got to be that way. Pursuing happiness need not be a lonely endeavor. In fact, throwing in our lot with others may be a very good way of coping with the disappointments of choice.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Lonely, Disappointment, People

• When I do have choice I try to be very picky about... or shall I say choosey about when I choose. I don't automatically decide that I must be the one to choose or that it's important for me to make every choice in my life.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Choices, Important, Trying

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• You know, whether it be humans or animals. So even humans - before we can speak or we can understand a baby's cognition - they're already showing us signs that they want choice.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Baby, Animal, Choices

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• People don't put as much of an emphasis in expanding their choices, so that, you know, one of the things that I learned when I was in Japan way back in the 1990's and there were all these quarrels happening between the U.S. and Japan about allowing more American products into the Japanese market.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Japan, People, Choices

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• You know give me choices that are truly different from one another, otherwise they don't regard them as meaningful choices.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Meaningful, Giving, Choices

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• If we ask for more and more material for the construction, i.e. more and more choice, we're likely to end up with a lot of combinations that don't do much for us or are far more complex than they need to be.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Choices, Needs, Construction

• One could even argue that we have a duty to create and pass on stories about choice because once a person knows such stories, they can't be taken away from him. He may lose his possessions, his home, his loved ones, but if he holds on to a story about choice, he retains the ability to practice choice.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Taken, Home, Practice

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