The Inner Compass, Part 2: Decisions
In this series, I’ve been developing an analogy: perceiving, deciding, and acting in life is analogous to terrestrial navigation. My goal is to give readers a tool in the pursuit of fitness, health, wellbeing, etc.
In the first piece, I introduce the analogy. The second is about perceiving the inner compass.
At some level, perception of the inner compass is only the beginning. Ultimately, the goal is to act in alignment with these signals. Only action (or skillful inaction) can actualize our (individually and collectively) most preferred experiences.
How do we ensure these perceptions influence what we actually do?
Perceive – Decide – Act
Last time, I introduced a common philosophical distinction between “appearance” and “reality.” The specific version that I entertain is between phenomenology and ontology. For clarity, I conceptualize them roughly like this:
Phenomenology refers to the study of experience or being – the “structures,” patterns, and appearances of one’s consciousness (including the appearance of other beings); in a word: phenomena.
Ontology refers to the study of the ultimate nature of reality – the way things really, literally are.
There have been many attempts by thinkers to describe human phenomenology and explain its relationship to fundamental reality. One emerging account uses mathematically precise versions of the concepts of perceptions, decisions, and actions to describe any ‘conscious agent’ (1). This inchoate scientific theory, called Conscious Realism, comes from cognitive scientist and philosopher Donald Hoffman and his colleagues.
Roughly, a conscious agent is any entity which:
maps (in the mathematical sense) world states to experiences,
maps experiences to actions,
and maps actions back to world states.
Respectively, these three mapping processes are “perceiving” (P), “deciding” (D), and “acting” (A). This three-part process that is a conscious agent is the PDA-loop.
This description is intellectually powerful. It elucidates the major patterns of human experience, and it also describes the experience of human agency.
While we are alive, this loop is iterating ceaselessly. In most cases, we are not consciously aware of it. Most of what we are aware of is intentional. In order to both generate and apply deep insight to our lives, it is essential that we become more aware of and intentional about our perceiving, deciding, and acting. This requires metacognition.
Metacognition is the awareness, analysis, and control of one’s cognitive processes. According to Cambridge Cognition:
“[c]ognition is defined as ‘the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses’...in essence, the ability to perceive and react, process and understand, store and retrieve information, make decisions and produce appropriate responses.”
Metacognition is cognizing about cognizing.
According to Arthur C. Brooks, a “happiness” scientist, there are only three forms of metacognition (2). These are introspection, documentation, and knowledge. Introspection is becoming directly consciously aware of one’s experience of cognizing. Documentation is the process of using written or verbalized language to describe cognition. And knowledge involves the discovery and/or application of concepts relevant to one's cognition.
In terms of the PDA-loop, metacognizing allows deciding and acting to be perceptions. Once we perceive deciding, future deciding can integrate insight about our previous deciding. Once we perceive acting, future deciding can integrate insight about acting. More informed decisions can produce superior action (relative to our own purposes).
With deep awareness and self-application, it is possible to rapidly improve the quality of deciding and acting. Awareness generates insight. Under the right conditions, this insight can be applied to deciding and acting. This all begins with awareness of the inner compass, of our available decisions, and of how acting generally relates to deciding.
Deciding
According to Conscious Realism, deciding is the mapping of a being's experiences to that being’s actions (1). Beginning with awareness of our experiences, deciding selects an action to take. Phenomenologically, deciding seems approximately synonymous with forming an intention to act or not. For brevity, I’ll refer to an intention to act or not as an intention.
We can intend to alter the variables that affect our intentions. While obvious, this is both critical to do and easy to forget the power of doing. Taking advantage of this truth requires perception of how experiences associate with variation in our intentions. For instance, if we notice that late bedtimes result in cravings for sugars and fats the following day, we can intend to reduce the magnitude or frequency of late bedtimes.
The inner compass offers critical information for favorable intention formation. Increasing attunement to its signals yields an increasingly specific sense of authentic direction. This direction, in my experience, is precisely direction in selecting actions. As such, it is also critical that one be aware of the whole true set of one’s possible actions. A directional signal that conflicts with our sense of available actions produces dissonance.
According to author and educator Heidi Preibe, persistent misaligned living reliably produces depression (3). This has many implications. One: we must not prematurely conclude that an authentic directional signal is inactionable.
Succeeding here requires a certain cognitive lifestyle. It must be both radically open-minded and exacting. This is a high standard. Thankfully, we have the power to gradually approximate it, and we do not have to do it alone. It seems essential to our wellbeing that we do our best to approximate this standard.
Practicing aligned deciding greatly accelerates aligned deciding. Under the right conditions, optimizing for volume of decisions optimizes rate of alignment. The essential conditions appear to be:
Make every effort in a concentrated period to attune to the core/”inner compass.”
Allow the core’s directional signal to inform intention (to select the action or inaction).
Be open to discovering the formed decision was not the best one that was, is now, or will be available.
Until Next Time:
Pick a domain of your life that seems of real consequence to you and others.
Apprehend the most enlivening intention you are tempted to form. What form does the intention take? A sensation to move? A bit of language? Some idea or belief you have?
What thoughts or feelings follow that apprehension?
Is there some story about how what you really want to do is impossible or impractical? Is the conclusion really intellectual? That is, have you exhaustively verified its accuracy and precision? Or is some of the pressure to conclude non-rational? Is there some emotion(s) that the impossible or impractical conclusion seems to protect you from feeling?
Footnotes:
Hoffman, Donald. 2008. Conscious realism and the mind-body problem. Mind and Matter 6 (1):87-121.
Brooks, Arthur. 2025, October 13. 3 Steps to Managing Your Emotions [audio podcast episode]. In Office Hours with Arthur Brooks. Pen Name. https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Fj6fDtoSYxjrhRyVtTGMw?si=08ad5606d2b04cd4
Priebe, Heidi. 2023, July 4. Emotional Self-Containment: What It Is & How To Practice It. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ao0U0SQWI8&list=PLyY6tIHiyfIAtIUdG_6E6hoKtx1xFDDID&index=26
