The Unlived Life: How the fear of choosing one path keeps us from fully living any of them.

Modern culture equates freedom with the number of available options. Yet being able to choose between many alternatives is not the same as being able to author a life.

The problem begins when freedom is confused with the permanent availability of alternatives.

Existential freedom is the capacity to choose, relinquish unchosen possibilities and take responsibility for what one creates. Consumer freedom offers an endless display of options and the reassurance that one never has to become fully bound to any of them.

One creates a life. The other keeps  browsing through possible lives.

Three different problems

Decision fatigue, choice overload and existential paralysis are related, but they are not interchangeable.

Decision fatigue describes the possible deterioration or simplification of judgement after numerous effortful decisions. After a day spent evaluating risks, resolving conflicts and carrying responsibility, a person may postpone further decisions, rely on habit or choose whatever requires the least thought.

The evidence, however, is less conclusive than popular psychology suggests. A 2025 systematic review found that clinical decision fatigue remains inconsistently defined and is usually measured indirectly. Repeated decisions can become burdensome, especially under pressure, but the metaphor of willpower as a battery that simply runs out is too crude. (Grignoli et al., 2025)

Choice overload arises when the structure of a choice makes comparing, selecting or committing unusually difficult. The number of options matters, but so do their complexity and the chooser’s uncertainty.

Existential paralysis runs deeper. A person may be well rested and face only two alternatives, yet remain unable to choose because each represents a different identity, responsibility or future. The difficulty lies not in processing information, but in accepting what the choice will exclude.

Rest may help decision fatigue. A smaller selection may reduce choice overload. Neither necessarily resolves existential paralysis.

When more choice becomes a burden

In the best-known experiment on choice overload, Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper presented shoppers with either 24 varieties of jam or six. The larger display attracted more attention, but the smaller selection generated more purchases. Additional experiments involving chocolates and essay topics produced similar results: under certain conditions, fewer alternatives increased action and satisfaction. (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000)

This study inspired the popular claim that too much choice makes us miserable. Later research revealed a more conditional effect.

A meta-analysis of 50 experiments found that the average effect of increasing choice was close to zero: larger selections sometimes discouraged choice, but sometimes improved it. (Scheibehenne, Greifeneder & Todd, 2010)

Another meta-analysis identified the conditions under which overload becomes more likely: the alternatives are difficult to compare, the decision is complex, personal preferences are unclear or the chooser wants to minimise effort. (Chernev, Böckenholt & Goodman, 2015)

The problem is therefore not simply that there are too many doors. It is that the person may have no principle for deciding which door deserves to be opened.

Twenty options are manageable when one knows what matters. Two can become unbearable when one does not.

When every decision becomes a referendum on identity

Choosing coffee is not equivalent to deciding whether to end a marriage, become a parent, leave a country or change professions. Yet contemporary culture increasingly presents even ordinary preferences as declarations of identity.

We are not merely buying clothes; we are constructing a personal aesthetic. We are not selecting food; we are expressing a lifestyle and moral position. We are not choosing employment; we are expected to discover our calling. We are not entering a relationship; we are supposedly identifying the person who will optimise our emotional life.

The question is no longer simply: Is this option sufficiently good?

It becomes: Does this choice prove that I have understood myself correctly?

When every decision must express the most authentic version of the self, choosing acquires an impossible burden. The search for perfect self-expression can prevent the development of the very identity it is meant to reveal.

We do not always discover who we are before acting. Identity is also formed through commitment, consequence and the experience of living with what we have chosen.

A person waiting for complete certainty may be waiting for a self that can emerge only after the decision has been made.

The cost of searching for the best

Research distinguishes between maximising—seeking the best possible option—and satisficing—selecting an option that meets the criteria that genuinely matter.

In a study following university students through their search for employment, maximisers secured starting salaries approximately 20 per cent higher than those obtained by satisficers. Their intensive searching sometimes produced objectively better outcomes.

Subjectively, however, they felt worse. They experienced more negative emotion, remained preoccupied with unrealised alternatives and reported less satisfaction with the jobs they accepted. (Iyengar, Wells & Schwartz, 2006)

The chosen option must then compete not only with reality, but with every abandoned possibility.

Reality rarely wins. The actual job contains difficult colleagues and disappointing days. The imagined alternative remains untouched by experience and therefore preserves its perfection.

Regret can arise not because a person chose badly, but because they compare one real life with several imaginary ones.

Kierkegaard, Sartre and the burden of possibility

Kierkegaard described anxiety as “the dizziness of freedom”. Possibility is exhilarating because life is not entirely predetermined. It is also frightening because choosing makes one future real while excluding others.

Before the decision, the self appears unlimited. Afterwards, the person encounters finitude: time is limited, actions have consequences and no life can contain every possible life.

Sartre’s claim that human beings are “condemned to be free” expressed the same burden from another direction. We cannot fully escape responsibility for our stance towards life. Refusing to choose is also a choice; allowing family expectations, algorithms or convention to decide merely conceals our participation.

Contemporary choice culture offers unlimited selection while quietly weakening authorship. Algorithms organise what we see. Rankings tell us what is best. Reviews provide other people’s standards. Trends supply desirable identities.

The individual appears sovereign while increasingly borrowing the criteria by which decisions are made.

Existential unfreedom is therefore not always the absence of options. It may be the inability to recognise which desires are genuinely one’s own—or to accept responsibility for choosing among them.

Autonomy is not optionality

Self-Determination Theory makes a distinction that supports this existential perspective. Autonomy does not mean independence, individualism or access to the largest possible menu. It refers to volition: experiencing one’s actions as congruent with an integrated sense of self.

A person may autonomously accept an obligation because it expresses a deeply held value. Another may choose from hundreds of alternatives while feeling alienated from all of them.

The theory also places autonomy alongside competence and relatedness. Wellbeing depends not only on self-directed action, but also on feeling effective and meaningfully connected to others. (Deci & Ryan, 2000)

This challenges the hyperindividualistic ideal of preserving maximum personal optionality. Many meaningful choices—parenthood, loyalty, friendship, professional duty and love—deliberately restrict what we may do next.

A promise matters precisely because it removes certain future options.

Every genuine choice contains loss

People often postpone decisions to keep their freedom intact. But an indefinitely open door is not necessarily freedom; it may be an avoidance of entering.

Choosing one profession means not developing every other capacity equally. Building a relationship means relinquishing certain romantic possibilities. Living according to a value means refusing actions that contradict it.

This loss does not invalidate the decision. It gives the decision substance.

A choice that excludes nothing changes nothing.

When a person refuses to choose, time chooses silently: opportunities expire, relationships weaken and unpractised abilities diminish. Indecision preserves imagined possibilities while gradually destroying real ones.

Maturity is not the ability to choose without regret. It is the ability to grieve an abandoned possibility without interpreting that grief as proof that the decision was wrong.

From optionality to existential agency

Existential agency does not mean choosing quickly, following every desire or refusing advice. It means making decisions one can consciously recognise as one’s own and accepting responsibility for what they create.

This requires an internal hierarchy.

Not every preference is a value. Not every desire deserves equal authority. Not every possible life corresponds to the person one wishes to become.

An existentially grounded decision asks:

• Which values would this choice embody?

• Which responsibilities would it create?

• What would I have to relinquish?

• Who else would be affected?

• Am I choosing what is meaningful, or what temporarily relieves anxiety?

• If no option is perfect, which imperfection am I willing to accept?

• What kind of person would repeatedly making this choice allow me to become?

  
  

These questions do not eliminate uncertainty. They replace the impossible search for certainty with a responsible basis for action.

Reducing choice without surrendering freedom

The answer is not to reject opportunity, but to recognise where choice serves agency and where it merely consumes attention.

Establish criteria before examining options

If the criteria change whenever a new alternative appears, comparison never ends. Decide first what is essential and what is merely desirable.

Distinguish reversible from formative decisions

Minor, reversible choices do not deserve existential intensity. Decisions that shape identity, relationships and responsibility should not be approached like consumer purchases.

Choose what is sufficiently right

“Sufficiently good” does not mean careless. It acknowledges that the objectively best option cannot be established when future consequences remain unknowable.

Stop comparing after choosing

A job, relationship or life direction cannot acquire meaning while remaining permanently on trial against unrealised alternatives.

Use structure deliberately

Routines, defaults and pre-established rules preserve attention for decisions that require genuine judgement. Structure can protect freedom from being exhausted by trivia.

Freedom becomes real through commitment

We do not become free by keeping every possible self available. We become free by deciding which possibilities deserve to become real, which values deserve loyalty and which consequences we are prepared to carry.

The main question to ask yourself is:

What is worthy of being chosen, even though choosing it means relinquishing something else?

Freedom is not the ability to remain untouched by commitment. It is the capacity to commit without pretending that the choice was made by someone — or something — else.

The person who keeps every door open may appear free, but only the person who enters one begins to live.

Anastasia Domanska

Existential Psychologist

Selected sources

• Chernev, A., Böckenholt, U. and Goodman, J. (2015). Choice Overload: A Conceptual Review and Meta-Analysis.

• D’Angelo, J. D. and Toma, C. L. (2017). There Are Plenty of Fish in the Sea: The Effects of Choice Overload and Reversibility on Online Daters’ Satisfaction With Selected Partners.

• Deci, E. L. and Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “What” and “Why” of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior.

• Grignoli, N. et al. (2025). Clinical Decision Fatigue: A Systematic and Scoping Review With Meta-Synthesis.

• Iyengar, S. S. and Lepper, M. R. (2000). When Choice Is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?.

• Iyengar, S. S., Wells, R. E. and Schwartz, B. (2006). Doing Better but Feeling Worse: Looking for the “Best” Job Undermines Satisfaction.

• Scheibehenne, B., Greifeneder, R. and Todd, P. M. (2010). Can There Ever Be Too Many Options? A Meta-Analytic Review of Choice Overload.

• Jean-Paul Sartre and Existentialism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

• Søren Kierkegaard, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.