he number of things you could do right at this moment is functionally infinite. You could stop reading this and clean the bathroom. You could go get a flu shot. You could track down an old friend and arrange a visit. You could drive to the nursery and buy 100 tulip bulbs. You could decide to sell everything you own and start walking toward Phoenix. You could keep reading. But please don’t keep reading without stopping to think for just a moment about how very, very, very many options you have for the next moment in time. I want you to do this because I want you to start feeling compassion for yourself relative to how difficult it is to be a conscientious participant in the present moment when there are simply too many options to choose among and we have received so little training in what to do about that truth.

None of us escapes childhood without realizing that we are supposed to make our own choices. But I would venture a guess that none of us escapes childhood having been taught how to do so. And here is the kicker – as described in the article on our birth curses – we have been given the idea that we have been fully trained in how to be conscientious. Really? Ask any adult what psychological, existential skills underlie making a responsible choice and see what they say. Most will yammer on about strength of character, self-discipline, sagely weighing the pros and cons and other just-do-it attributes. Now ask yourself if you truly know how to behave yourself moment-to-moment. Does your answer have something to do with grit?

Here’s the truth of the matter: there are many, many skills that underlie wise choosing, there are many, many components to each of those skills, and you have been taught only fragments of some of these skills. The vast majority of our “choice” training involved what’s called a “forced choice” – being presented with a fixed menu of options. For example kids are asked “What college would you like to attend?” rather than “What would you like to do after high school?” A forced choice could be charitably called “choice lite” for it protects us from the complexity of an actual choice. True training in making choices would involve that confrontation with the infinite…not something most parents either understand or can tolerate. It’s important to see, then, that when you misstep in the present moment you are doing so because you don’t know what you don’t know about the act of choosing. And this bears repeating – this situation is not of your making. You were an eager little beaver as a youngster, ready and willing to learn difficult existential truths about how to be a potent and effective human. There just weren’t teachers around ready and willing to teach you.

The “Establishing a Responsible Present” section of the website is formulated to fill in all those blanks in your childhood curriculum regarding making choices. This also bears repeating – the completeness of these articles is the result of combining the searing truths described by the unflinching existential philosophers with the balancing compassionate and egalitarian wisdom of the undaunted feminist philosophers, then adding the research and clinical experience of a legion of psychologists. That represents quite a collection of expertise in the domain of choice making, meaning the 14 articles are formidable. But they are also straightforward. Within them you will find the necessary psychological skills needed to take better control of your present – many of which you have already mastered.

Note: Please do not attempt to read this grouping of articles without having first read Shame: The Monster Under the Bed for I guarantee you will not get far in your attempts to restore your natural level of conscientiousness – that second resiliency trait – without having first hacked away at the fiendish tangle of shame that is strangling your ego.

It isn't easy

Before I launch into a description of the articles in this section, I want to take a moment to discuss a little further why it is that the present moment in time can so often make us feel childishly inept.

First of all, as I have mentioned elsewhere on this website, we are all in the habit of comparing the inside of ourselves – with all the doubts, fears and sloppiness, to the outside of others – with the carefully applied veneer designed to demonstrate just how well they are doing. If you can remember that you can never, ever know what someone else is thinking, that fact can remind you that you can never, ever know what messes exist within other people’s minds. With that insight you can more easily imagine that the insides of the minds of others may seem just as harebrained as the inside of yours. No one, in other words, is making wise, perfect choices about how to move through their day.

Second, and this cannot be overstressed, life is annoyingly nonrecursive. It can be seen as more an unrehearsed live performance and less “Groundhog Day.” This heart-stopping reality means that we get only one shot at each moment as we decide which of those functionally infinite options to choose.

Third, the present doesn’t actually exist. Again, if you quiz most folks about the duration of the present, they will regard you with that thousand mile stare and probably try to change the subject. But, think about it. Do you really understand what it means to “be in the now?” Don’t let the mindfulness movement fool you. Being here now isn’t a mindset, it is a fairly involved set of skills.

Fourth, there is a dizzying truth to this dimension of time, for the present is where the chronological riptide of our past to our future tends to disorient and terrorize us. If the strong current of our life to date is a shaming one, it will flow steadily under the surface of our lives and pull us further and further away from belief in ourselves. To swamp this metaphor a bit, a past/future turmoil can simply drown us with misinformation about ourselves. The only solution for this is a psychological curriculum that teaches us how to eliminate shame in order to allow us to view our past calmly. When we are fairly shame free, the data stream from our past runs smoothly at the surface of our day-to-day lives and can thus more effectively guide our present toward our future.

Finally, we have been misled to think that there is such a thing as The Right Answer. This lie creates existential brain freeze as we frantically search for our promised yellow brick road. If we don’t find it with respect to every aspect of our lives (professional, recreational, relational, spiritual, physical, financial, political, environmental and so on) we feel childishly inept. As this section will illustrate, rather than asking yourself what is the best thing or the right thing to do now, it may be wiser to ask what is a good thing to try next.

For those of you interested in the underlying theory of self-construction, let me repeat here the second existential, feminist, psychological flight path toward sound mental health:

Present Vector: Adulting demands that we develop an ability to behave conscientiously, an ability that rests on our understanding of the components of willpower. When, more often than not, we act responsibly, we earn both self-respect and the respect of significant others for our thoughtful implementation of integrity.

You can do it

Let’s look, then, at how many psychological ingredients are needed to support our self-discipline in order for it to support our resilience.

• Willpower: This first article reframes willpower, the little engine that could, as a three-step cognitive strategy rather than the shame-inducing concept of strength of character. It also describes the biochemical truth about this most vital of human skills.

• The next article is one of my favorites because I have seen this concept make dramatic and rapid improvements in the lives of many of my clients. Often people come into therapy with an erroneous idea of what needs to change within themselves and they seem befuddled by the fact that all the strategies they’ve used to date haven’t worked to make that change. What to Change About Yourself describes an alternative way to think about where your efforts to grow are best focused. Let me say again – I have found the strategy described therein to be an extremely effect route to healing.

• A New and Improved You: The neurology of growth and change is both easy to understand and impossible to override. If you try to fight the way the human brain is designed, everything you would like to achieve will be that much harder to accomplish.

• Effective Practice: This article is one of those good news/bad news kind of things. While it spells out how you can make positive changes in your life inevitable, it also spells out that there is only one way to do so – the 51% solution.

• Defending Yourself: If you hear a scream coming from my neighborhood, it’s because I’ve heard the phrase “Don’t be so defensive.” thrown at someone one too many times. What I want to accomplish with this article is an understanding of why it is a good idea to defend yourself and how to do so thoughtfully.

• Procrastination: Read this NOW!

• Task Magic: Because so many of us have been burned out by culturally assigned busy work, we often find it difficult to be conscientious about our chores. The mammal brain, however, is designed to reward a task well done and a life well ordered. If we are clever we can learn to recharge using the power of a made bed.

• Accumulation: Within each of our brains are cisterns that collect the runoff from our daily lives. What we want to learn is how to maximize the good that accumulates while minimizing the bad and the ugly. Accumulation of the good – in conjunction with a well curated past – creates the reserves of resilience that we all need. It takes no leap of understanding to see how a robust savings account, a well-exercised body or fifteen excellent performance reviews can give a person an enviable depth of security. The same is true for a reservoir full of thoughtful choices.

• An Intentional To-do List: To-do lists might be ubiquitous in our lives, but existentialism isn't. This article presents a primer on how to deepen your courage and authenticity when making yourself a list in the morning. While not for the faint of heart, the ideas in this piece will absolutely up your game.

• Resisting Temptation: As with so many of life’s crucial skills, the ability to routinely resist temptation has been over identified with strength of character. It is better conceptualized as a battle of wits, for we must gather all the strategies we can to protect ourselves from damaging but understandable overindulgences.

• Psychological Differentiation: Very few people will recognize this concept – proof that very few people receive any education about how to develop it. What psychological differentiation means is this: having the ability to be fully engaged with the world emotionally without letting that hot-bloodedness overwhelm your ability to make wise choices. Sounds important, right?

• Maintaining Psychological Gains: To my mind, nothing beats epiphanic euphoria. But when you take time to reason your way through to one of those wonderful epiphanies, it makes sense to hold on to it. This article helps you learn how to write down codes of conclusions for all the insights you work so hard to obtain in order to integrate them more fully into your operating system.

• Comfort, Discomfort and Inebriation: Humans need comforting breaks from both physical and psychological distress. It would make sense to learn how to soothe ourselves well, wouldn't it?

• Petulance: It is quite reasonable that we tend to vilify petulance, especially because it is one precursor to depression. It turns out that petulance is a poorly understood feedback loop that is trying to help us make wise choices. The upshot is we need to learn to listen to rather than eliminate this odd inner spokesperson.

The present is a very intimidating dimension of time. We will always feel somewhat childlike when we confront it head on. But with practice we can up the percentage of time we conscientiously face the need to make true choices. When you have worked your way through the articles in this portion of the website you will be positioned to do that – to create a present duration sufficient to enact your fully formed choosing skills. You can see how helpful that meta-skill can be when you need to withstand difficult times.