Options

A blog post by Darius Foroux recently piqued our curiosity.

Darius explored the correlation he’s experienced between the number of options he has in life and his happiness. He found that if he can choose what he does with his time, either at work or for leisure, he is able to declare himself happy.

Darius came to realise that it didn’t necessarily matter what he was doing, what mattered most was that he had a choice.

Darius believes that fewer options are restrictive and can sometimes bring with them a sense of unhappiness as we feel restricted with what we can do in life. However, this is easily turned around when we create options for ourselves.

He quoted the work of psychiatrist Gordon Livingston who believes that one of the contributors to positive mental health is the presence of choice – the more choices we’re able to exercise, the happier we’ll be.

As we read his thoughts throughout the post he’d titled ‘The More Options You Have, The Happier You Are’, we found ourselves thinking back through some of the conversations that have been had through All Stitched Up! over our previous 309 issues.

Most recently, our series on UFO’s explored how we feel about our ‘options’ with needle and thread. Like anything in life, there’s not a one size fits all approach. There are those who relish the thought of the almost endless number of projects they have on the go or just waiting to be started. Whilst there are others who find themselves overwhelmed if they have to choose between, or focus on, more than a single project at any one time.

For those of us who fall into the first group of one too many UFO’s, we’re able to take comfort from Darius’s words as they cemented our thoughts that it doesn’t matter what we put our needles and thread to, what matters most is that we have a choice.

Now to get back to all our options with needle and thread…