The magic eraser

There's a tool I've sometimes found useful when making hard decisions, especially in situations where there's a strong social obligation or status quo influence. Sometimes these effects can go beyond just difficulty making the decision, and actually make it difficult to even figure out what you want, or prevent you from recognising that you can make a decision at all. It's like the difficulty of the right outcome stops you from even seeing it at all. This technique is designed to deal with that, and I call it the magic eraser.

Here's how it works: you're feeling bad about something, it's annoying you, making you angry, worried, or otherwise affecting you negatively. Just imagine you had a magic eraser. You think of the thing you don't want to deal with and – boom – erased. Working at a job you hate? It's gone. Event you don't want to go to? Cancelled. Unhappy relationship? You never even met. The magic eraser doesn't just get rid of the thing, it does so without any consequences or responsibility. You can then just enjoy your newfound freedom from whatever was vexing you.

Is this realistic? Of course not! But the point is you should be able to make the two decisions separately. Firstly, if this thing just blinked out of existence, would you be better off? Secondly, if so, how difficult would it be to actually get rid of it? It's very easy to lump those two together and end up not even considering the possibility that you may be better off without something that is costly to change. Still, costly is a different thing from impossible, and it's better to know what what the best outcome would be even if it's not achievable right now.

I think there would be a complimentary tool, a magic wand, for when you are having trouble imagining a positive outcome. There doesn't tend to be as much cultural resistance to that kind of aspirational thinking, though. The eraser is good because it can be very difficult to think destructively, even when it's the right thing to do.