Some might say it's a good thing, as it allows you to pick what best suits your needs.
Others contend it can be a bad thing in that it causes you to second guess your decisions, especially if the alternatives are fairly comparable.
We face this type of conundrum on an almost-daily basis. Which job offer should I accept? Which computer should I buy? Which of these two guys should I become exclusive with?
About a month or two before graduating from college, I was hitting the pavement hard in hopes of landing a full-time job. (Mind you, this wasn't long before the global recession began.)
I went on a flurry of interviews and was offered nearly every position I applied for. I turned down the first two because I thought the salary being offered was a tad low. Besides, I didn't want to run after the first opportunity that came my way; I wished to take a little more time testing the job market waters.
Unfortunately, the position I wound up taking at a young start-up lasted a measly four months thanks to company-wide layoffs prompted by the recession. I spent the next couple of months kicking myself for not having accepted one of the earlier job offers. "If only I had accepted the offer from XYZ Company," I lamented, "I wouldn't be in this mess."
Later I realized that coming down so hard on myself was neither fair nor healthy. I made the decision I thought was right at the time. I could never have foreseen that I'd be handed a pink slip in a matter of months. (It's not as if I was provided with company financials beforehand that may have informed my decision not to accept the job.)
A similar scenario plays out in the realm of relationships for many of us. We have a choice of suitors and end up picking the person that, in hindsight, we should not have gone with.
That's called living and learning. Even if we make our choices very carefully, we can never know for sure whether they're the right ones until we've given them a shot, e.g., we've been on the job or with the person for a while.
Thus, it's no surprise that some would rather have fewer choices available to them. The fewer the alternatives, the less likely they are to experience buyer's remorse.
For example, many shoppers become overwhelmed at the sheer variety of brands/products on display at grocery stores, especially when cost, functionality, and other attributes are just about identical. Yet, competition in the marketplace is a good thing; it ensures that one company does not monopolize the market and have free rein to charge astronomical prices.
Bottom line: Having several choices is good -- to a certain degree. A person can have a wealth of options and still make a bad decision. The way to minimize the likelihood of a bad choice is by evaluating those alternatives carefully. But it's really experience, more than anything else, that guides us toward optimal decisions in the future.
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