Interview With A Friend on Making Decisions (Part IV)

LENTMAN : From my own perspective, I'm beginning to see that I have a problem which stops me from experiencing life on the level that other people experience their lives. I'm not sure how to overcome this.

FRIEND : Can you further describe the problem that stops you from experiencing life on the same level as others?

LENTMAN : Well, there seems to be something about my personality that shuts me down during the decision making process that is not present (or does not seem to be present or is present to a lesser degree) in you and others. It's not just mental but also physical. I get tremendously edgy (my heart beats faster), I get irritable and often depressed. It is a feeling of complete hopelessness. Then I get so caught up in these symptoms that all I want is to not experience them anymore which motivates me to look for the quickest way out. It makes it very difficult to rationally make decisions under those circumstances.

FRIEND : Interesting. I don't think I knew about the physical part that you described. Is this related to the question you posed to me about avoiding disapproval by others?

LENTMAN : Yes. I guess I assumed on some level that other people were somehow able to not feel this way or fight their way through these sensations when confronted with similar situations. I'm starting to see that is not an accurate assessment of reality. What I mean is, I am starting to see that other people do not feel these sensations in the first place.

Switching gears a little, here's something I've been wondering. How do you know what you want? There are decisions I think I want to make but then when I make them they bring me no happiness or worse, lead me to situations where I feel imprisoned. I think sometimes I convince myself that I should make certain decisions but I'm realizing that the reason I thought I should have made the decision was not necessarily because I wanted to but because I thought it was the right thing to do. So I'm really confused about how I even know what I want. I'm pretty good about knowing what I don't want after I get it, but I have difficulty know what I want before I make decisions. Do you have any insight?

FRIEND : I have this problem too. The way I like to make decisions is to experiment with the various options, look at what's out there, try them on for size, and see what seems to feel best. If you have the time, this works well for things like buying a couch. But there are lots of decisions where you don't get to do that... like choosing one wife to be with forever for example. I would have liked to have had thirty girls to choose from, but it's not like that -- you get to say yes or no to just one option. I'm not sure there's any good way to make decisions like that.

Figuring out "what you want" is a different kind of decision, because you don't get any choices really. You have to have some kind of vision of where you want to go I suppose, and you have to know yourself and the kinds of things that make you happy and then you have to be creative with the possibilities. This has not been an area of strength for me either. I've tried to adopt that attitude that you don't have to figure it out perfectly in advance to make improvements. You do need to know what you want to change and have some idea of which direction to go in, but getting it exactly right isn't necessary.

Another thought... What criteria have you used to determine what the "right thing to do" is? Clearly, sometimes we have to do things we may not otherwise do just because it is the right thing, like pick up dog poop for example. Figuring out the "right" choice is not always easy, especially for the big decisions. What are some of your criteria?

LENTMAN : I think I generally consider the right thing to be that which benefits the needs of others.

FRIEND : Which others?

LENTMAN : Anyone who is not me.

FRIEND : This is not always a clear distinction.