I WAS in a supermarket, standing in front of a large range of coffee products.

I was joined by another women and we stared at the variety available.

I said: “Do you remember the days when it was just a choice between a jar of Nestle and Maxwell House?”.

She laughed and replied that she did and had just wasted five minutes trying to choose the right stock cube.

A small, time consuming decision involving type, price, brand name, flavour, family dislikes etc: What if it’s the wrong decision?

Therein lies the problem with decision making. What if we get it wrong? Can we manage the consequences?

There’s a hint of fear and of being out of control. And that’s only foodstuffs.

We spend our days making decisions from the seemingly easy, everyday to major life-changing ones.

Making decisions has logical and emotional elements. Emotional reasoning often hijacks logical thinking, with resulting consequences. Recently, my life has been spent thinking about moving home. Where to and when? Decisions involving property is one of the top five life stresses. In 2023, financial and legal problems involving owning or renting a home seem to increase every month and it is of little surprise that people’s anxiety levels are rising.

On moving to our present home, and if we were fortunate to make it through the years, we knew another move would have to happen one day, to a home more suitable for our future needs.

That time has arrived all too quickly.

Emotionally we are happy where we are and moving involves a great deal of upheaval and uncertainty. Logically we know a decision needs to be made sooner, rather than later. It’s too easy to put that decision off for another week, month, year, until we’ve left it too late to manage all that a move involves.

Other people’s behaviour with regard to house moves and ageing provides lessons to learn. Denial looms large in people’s lives. Not wanting to face the reality of the present and future situation, unwilling to be honest about physical and cognitive decline, including hearing and sight. Feelings of fear and being out of control. Forget thinking about doing anything today and put it off - again. Short-term gain, long-term pain.

We’ve started to declutter with the mantra - keep, recycle, throw.

Visits to the local recycling centre and charity shop are surprisingly therapeutic.

Rita Leaman is a writer and speaker on emotional health. As Alison R Russell, she published Are you Chasing Rainbows?. As Rita Leaman she published a compilation of The Press York columns 2014 -19 in ‘Wise Words’. website: chasingrainbows.org.uk