🔵Choosing vs Deciding🔴

Why they are fundamentally different

Over the past couple of years I’ve realized that his has become the example that I give people when I say that there is a fine but fundamental difference between some terms. I’ve gotten to a point where I can do it in Spanish (escoger vs decidir), Italian (scegliere vs decidere) or German (auswählen vs entscheiden). So what’s this fundamental difference?

Here we go

Choosing

Picture this: you’re in a situation where you have to choose between this thing or that thing. Between this action or that action, or perhaps even between doing and not doing. What do you do?

It can obviously be a bit paralyzing. On the one hand… on the other hand…

The problem that I see here is that it’s a binary, It apparently can only be this or that. And the paralysis becomes worse when there are more than two options (in case that was going to be someone’s counter-argument here). The problem that I see with “choosing” is that it is inherently external. You are given these options. Presented with them. Yes, you can be the one who presents two or more choices, so they can in that sense become internal, but the issue is that choices are something that you have to dig deeper into. You have to analyze each and every aspect of this option, that option, or those choices. Again, it’s paralyzing.

Deciding