Difficulty Making Decisions: First Steps to Switch the Mind On

When others used to make our decisions for us and then that support disappeared, a person gets lost — "just sits there, not understanding what's happening." Dr. Saulitis is blunt about it: dragging out a decision is not harmless slowness, it's the start of a serious disorder. This brochure is about the first steps that put you back in control.

Why delay is dangerous

The doctor offers the image of a professor who sat unable to decide on which side of the bread to place a glass of compote — until they had to feed him like a child. It's an extreme case, but the logic is the same: if you don't make decisions on key questions as fast as possible, "intellectual chewing-gum" begins, an obsessive-compulsive looping that exhausts you. Long deliberations over "what to buy" or "what to do" are, in the doctor's words, a state in which a person is "in a delusion," wasting time and energy.

A decision switches the mind on

The core idea: the moment a decision is made, the body "switches on right away." It stops grinding over "two plus two equals four" and starts acting as it knows how. The doctor compares it to how the body simply knows: work day — you go; Saturday and Sunday — you rest. A decision is the "ranging shot"; the main thing is to fire — that is, to act.

Set a deadline

The concrete mechanism the doctor gives his patients: assign yourself a time limit. "By tomorrow at 12:00 I will make my decision" — and meanwhile you calmly gather information, check it against your experience, even rest or take a bath. At the appointed moment — the strike: the decision is made. After that you simply act, with no new wavering.

Measure the result

After action comes observation. You did something, ate something, had contact with someone — and you measure how it affected you. Not raging, not throwing yourself at the wall, but calmly noting: this food, this action, this contact affected me this way. If it caused a bad reaction — mark it "in red," don't do it again. Next time you'll already know how your body will behave. The doctor advises starting with the simplest things — with food — to feel the principle itself.

Where this leads

Once you learn to make decisions, "the force of mental health is already working" in you. Gradually the "compote-and-bread" dilemma stops arising — you simply see clearly, the way a shaman or a doctor sees, and the agonizing choice falls away on its own. The doctor reminds us we are part of nature, where everything knows what to do: a migratory bird flies all the way and returns without any GPS. Once you've made your decision, you too step onto your own path.

Practice

1. State the one key question you're stuck on.
2. Set a deadline: "By such-and-such time I will decide." Until then, calmly gather information and compare it with your experience.
3. At the appointed moment, make the decision — no postponing.
4. Take the action and measure the result: calmly note how it affected you.
5. If the reaction was bad — mark it "in red": don't do it that way next time.