About a premature decision

If the individual fully experiences the desire he has to make a decision, or a choice to make.

The decision is the bridge between desire and action. To decide means to take internal commitment to a course of action.

If you do not want any action, I believe that there is no real solution, but there are flirting with the decision, a kind of failed decision.

The play "waiting for Godot" by Samuel Beckett – a monument to a premature decision. The characters think, plan, slow and mean, but not decide. The play ends with such a sequence:

 

Fifty six million three hundred forty five thousand sixty one



 

Vladimir: shall We go?
Estragon: Let's go.
[Stage directions:] don't Anybody move.What happens between intention and binding determination to act. Why do so many people find it most difficult to make decisions? Indeed, when I think about my current patients, we find that almost everyone fights over some decision. Some patients are concerned about a particular life decision: what to do with an important relationship to remain married or to leave, to return to school, try to have a baby.

Other patients say they know what they need to do – say, to quit drinking or Smoking, shedding pounds, try to meet people or try to establish a close relationship; but they can't decide to do it – in other words, to associate themselves with it. Others say: they know that they have not, for example, they are workaholics, too arrogant, or too uncaring – but do not know how to decide what to change and why, in fact, would not respond to therapy.

With all these unmatched solutions there's something extremely painful. When I think about my patients and try to analyze the meaning of (and threat), enclosed for them in the decision, it strikes me first of all the variety of answers. Decisions are difficult for many reasons, some of them are clear, some are not recognized, and some, as we shall see, reaches the deepest roots of being.

Sitting "at the crossroads, not choosing any road, because you can't choose both" – remarkably accurate image of a person, unable to give up the opportunity.

Ancient philosophical metaphors reflect the same dilemma: the Aristotelian story about a hungry dog that can't make a choice between two equally attractive portions of food, or the famous problem of Buridan's ass, poor beast, dying of hunger between two equally nice-smelling armful of hay. In each case a living being will die, if you refuse to deny the possibility; salvation is to trust and desire to take what is within reach.

It's easier than it looks! Decision – a choice! published 

Author: Irvin Yalom's "Existential psychotherapy" P. S. And remember, only by changing their consumption — together we change the world! © Join us at Facebook , Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki

 

Source: yalom.ru/irvin-yalom-pro-trudnosti-vybora/

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