As I have been thinking about this topic lately, I am constantly wondering what is the deciding factors that people choose to do certain things / choose not to do a thing. Obviously there are many factors to be considered, and in this article I am going to give my two cents about it.
When it comes to many deciding factors whether we want to do something or not, we should break them down one by one. In the above logic tree, I have separated them into two categories. First thing first, we are living in this society, bounded by rules and regulations, and the most basic and important category to be recognized is whether this activity is legal or not, if it is not legal, by all means do not proceed with it. The next deciding factor to look at after its legality, is whether we have done it or not. It might seem weird how I set up the logic tree like this, but I will explain in details in a second why I did so.
Once we know an activity is legal, and we look at whether we have done it or not, it is very simple to determine which branch we are proceeding to next. If we have done such activity before, most likely we would have a clue to whether we like it or not. Unfortunately when it comes to liking, it is a very subjective and personal opinion based, for example: Drinking alcohol, while it is a legal activity to do after age of 21, if one proceeds to next level branch of the logic tree, and one noticed how he / she likes the idea of getting tipsy, and the increased dopamine release, he / she might proceed to like alcohol thus continue to drink. On the other hand, if one is allergic to alcohol, or dislike the smell / taste of alcohol, one might dislike such activity and not proceed to do it again.
The next category is the last and most important category to look at, when we are examining whether an activity is worth doing or not. When we have never done something before, we tend to seek out advices. Whether it is an online research about such activity, or word of mouth from others, we tend to form an opinion of whether we like it or not; whether we should try such activity or not. Notice how I did not put like / dislike in this branch of logic tree, it is simply pros / cons. While it is good to seek out advices from experienced experts on the subject matter, it is also very important to distinguish that the advices given are based on others’ experiences / likes or dislikes, we cannot say so for sure about such activity for ourselves, because we have never done it before. Now you might say: hey look, I don’t need to try something to know it is bad, therefore I won’t do it. While that is a strongly opinionated statement, it has not much logic behind it. That is why when we try to examine something that we have never done, we can try to weigh out its pros and cons using online research and others’ personal experiences, to form a more educated guess or whether we want to try such activity.
Let us use our previous example of drinking alcohol to demonstrate. In this case, I am a person age of 21, I am legally capable of drinking alcohol, while I have never drink before. To determine whether I want to drink or not, I would do an online research about drinking, what are the positive / negative effects of alcohol, how does it impact my body, and how much should I drink? We can easily find out that excessively drinking can lead to a damaged liver and deteriorating skins, while it might also boost crime rates after being excessively drunk. Now let us look at the positive side of drinking, drinking advisable amount of alcohol can reduce the risk of heart disease. Rumor has it, drinking half glass of red wine before bed time can help our body produce some serotonin and improve our sleep quality. (Now don’t quote me on this, because I don’t know how true this is exactly!) We can also seek out advices from other people who have experiences on drinking, they might proceed to tell us that drinking makes them feel happy (increase of dopamine), some might tell us the hangover is really bad, getting drunk can cause nausea / vomiting, others might even say the taste / smell of alcohol is simply disgusting and not worth trying. Using all of the above as a judgment, I can decide whether I want to try alcohol, and forming a more educated guess of how much I should drink. After trying it for the first time, I can decide whether I like it or not, and how often and how much should I drink.
In conclusion, there are so many deciding factors in life when it comes to an activity that we want to do, but we should take our time to consider them, and use logics and reasoning to consider such activity, and take our time to decide whether this activity is suitable for us. Thank you for reading, and feel free to discuss with me about your ideas and thoughts regarding this topic! Have a wonderful day!
