I like to make smart purchase decisions. I like to read the reviews, the listicles, the blog posts - do it the right way so I buy the right things. Maybe you do too?
There are few things I dislike more than a mistake purchase.But this approach has its limits. What about the decisions where there is no clear right or wrong?
How do you buy the RIGHT dining chair when there are 3,204,395 dining chairs on Google. And 894,381 of them have 4.5+ star ratings?
How do you pick the right piece of art for your living room, when art is so subjective? Furnishing a home can feel like an endless string of decisions just like this. Which is what makes the TikTok “you must buy this now” pitch so appealing. What a relief, to have someone else make the decision. Although it might not lead to a home that feels fully you.
If you’re stuck on making a decision in your home, try this instead:
Do the weirdest thing that feels right
A friend shared this newsletter by Charlie Becker with me. Becker discovered it in the context of choosing what to write in his newsletter, but shares that it can be expanded to any decision. As big as what career to pursue, and as small as what to wear today.
Decisions where there are many good options that feel right - like choosing a dining chair.
But why choose the weirdest chair? It’s not so much about being conventionally weird per se.
“Weirdness is a construct that is a stand-in for other people’s expectations. So if I have a bunch of equally viable options, I should pick the weirdest one, because it means that is the one that is truest to me. It means it has had to elbow its way in past what other people think, other people’s expectations, and any insidious fear I have of being judged for doing what I want or what I think is right.”
For example, if you’re choosing a sofa you might think “I could buy a beige sofa, or a grey sofa, or a plaid sofa. Wait plaid sofa? That’d be weird.”
Listen to that voice.
Listen to the voice that says “what if I turned my formal dining room into an art studio?”
Or in my case, "what if I wear the weird gold boots?"
If you’re in the process of developing your own personal style, try asking yourself “of all these good options, which is the weirdest?” Then listen closely for that kernel of truth.
Because the other voices might be things you think you should choose, or what other people would choose, or what HGTV prescribes for all of us to choose.
And when you think about it, we’ve all made decisions that we thought we should, and they may not have felt so true to us. But the really weird decisions we’ve made, the ones that made NO SENSE to anyone else, but just felt right? Those are golden.
What is the weirdest thing you’ve done in your home that felt right? One of mine is buying a painting - and then painting right over it. Sure some people hated it, but to me it just felt right.
