The $25 Elephant Soap Dish

I recently spent two hours searching online for a soap dish. I started out thinking that anything which wasn’t plastic would do. I just didn’t want something reminiscent of moldy camp showers in the 1980’s. I certainly didn’t intend to spend $25. But it turns out there are a lot of options. Who knew? Certainly not this girl born before the internet was even a twinkle in a billionaire’s eyes.

I ended up landing on a green ceramic elephant, where the soap sits on the elephant’s back, and drains into the elephant’s trunk, which then drains into the sink. It’s a cool design. And you can’t not love elephants. I actually really do like the soap dish, so it wasn’t a totally wasted rabbit hole of an afternoon. Or $25. But truthfully, all I needed was a small plate I could have gotten at a thrift store for 50 cents.

Any decision, even the most mundane, can be a nightmare in this time of information overload. So when you’re exhausted from going to the grocery store, how do you manage the decisions that matter?

For example (a hypothetical): should I go back to school?

A decision like this is complicated because it inherently contains so many other questions and decisions. What should I study? Can I afford it? How would it affect my marriage, partner, or children? Is it worth the investment? Should I reduce my work hours? How much money would I need to borrow? Should I sell my car to offset the costs? What schools should I apply to? Do we need to move?

And what if I make the wrong decision, and it’s all my fault?

Behind this question are several cognitive distortions: 1) that there are “right” and “wrong” decisions; 2) that if I were ___ enough, I’d be able to figure out the right one: and 3) that I should be able to predict the future.

This last one is preposterous, but it’s the one that can trip us up the most.

The truth is that we don’t know how anything will turn out, because things happen at a whirlwind pace, and a butterfly flapping its wings could set off a chain reaction of life-changing events. We can be totally prepared to go back to school when a partner suddenly gets a promotion that requires relocation. Or a parent needs financial support. Or the program to which we applied shuts down.

All we can do is make the best decisions we can with the information we have.

When we’re trapped in decision-making anxiety, what we forget is that we can trust our future selves, who will have learned from our current decisions. Our future selves are wiser than our present selves, as they have more life experience and knowledge.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) tells us about the concept of “Wise Mind,” the intersection of our rational and emotional parts. If you’re a Star Trek fan, think about combining the best of Kirk and Spock. Think Uhura.

With Wise Mind, you pay attention to emotions and impulses, but also analyze and interpret information. If you’re making soup and aren’t sure if it needs more salt or more pepper, you can experiment with small amounts until you find the combination that tastes right. It doesn’t have to be perfect – just intuitively feel “right.” Or you could leave the salt and pepper out entirely, and let people put in their own amounts. If you dump salt into the whole pot you might have to start over.

While certainly stressful, the decision-making process can actually be empowering. It allows for trial and error. It allows you to invest in yourself and your future. You can practice prioritizing decisions that are high-stakes, and letting go of those that don’t really matter. Decision-making can help you learn about yourself. If you’re someone who’s risk averse, you might have to push yourself to take a leap of faith. If you’re someone who’s impulsive, you might have to encourage yourself to slow down.

The elephant soap dish is an example of a low-stakes decision in which I invested too much money and time, but felt happy with the outcome. The outcome of a decision doesn’t have to be perfect to be appreciated or accepted, and a decision that didn’t turn out as you’d hoped isn’t worth blaming yourself over. Move forward. Allow the unreasonable expectations of yourself to pour into the elephant’s trunk. Your future self will keep the drain clear.