Which path will you choose?
There are 196 countries in the world right now, depending on whose count you use.
With that many choices, it should be easy to pick one country that will let you live the life you want.
However, having that many choices actually makes it more difficult to choose.
Some recent psychological studies have shown that if we have too many choices, we often decide not to act at all.
An experiment was done at a grocery store in 1995.
Part of the time, a table was set up with six different flavors of jam for customers to sample. The rest of the time, there were 24 different flavors available to try. Regardless of how many flavors were available, the average person tried two flavors.
The surprise was with the number of people who decided to buy a jar of jam. When there were only six flavors available to sample, 30 percent of the people bought a jar. When there were 24 flavors, only 3 percent bought a jar.
Having fewer choices made it ten times more likely that a person would act.
If you’re still trying to decide on which country to move to, you may be experiencing this problem yourself.
Here is a technique you can use to help you choose a country to move to.
First, decide on what is important to you
Don’t even think about countries right now. Think about what is important to you.
If you could create a perfect country, what would it have? What wouldn’t it have?
Write down all your criteria.
You’ll have two types of criteria on your list – absolute and variable.
With absolute requirements, the country meets the qualification, or it doesn’t.
With variable requirements, you’ll need to rank the different locations. If you have “lots of museums” on your list, that isn’t an absolute requirement. However, it is one where you can rank locations – London, England would rank higher than Montevideo, Uruguay.
Second, eliminate the places that don’t qualify
To make it easier to select a country, eliminate all the countries that don’t fulfill your absolute requirements.
When I did this, I was almost eliminating whole continents at a time. I wanted to avoid many of the economic problems I expect will be happening over the next few decades – so most countries in Western Europe were quickly eliminated.
Once you’ve gone through your “absolutes” list of criteria, you should have a much smaller list.
Third, compare the remaining countries
With a smaller, manageable list of countries, you can start looking at the non-vital things you’re looking for.
This is where you start ranking countries on the “variable” requirements.
You can build a spreadsheet with each of the countries you’re considering, and each of the qualities you’re looking for. Rank each of them on a scale of one to ten and add up their scores.
Now you’ll know which countries are most likely to give you the future you want – based on your personal desires.
The important thing NOT to do, when selecting a country to move to
Whatever you do, don’t just look at someone’s “Top 10 Countries to Move To” list and pick the number one choice.
The big problem with these lists is that they are written by someone who isn’t you.
If you’re a vegetarian, it’s not going to do you much good to ask a steak-lover for restaurant recommendations. If you’re a surfer, don’t ask a mountain-climber for the best vacation destination. And if you’re looking to live the life you want, don’t ask someone else where they would live their ideal life.
More information on how we choose
To discover more about how our minds deal with choices, get “The Art of Choosing” or “The Paradox of Choice” (aff.).
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