What is a skilful decision?

Decisions are the most basic thing we do. MBSAT exists to help people make them well — for themselves, for the people around them, and for the planet.

A life is made of decisions

Every day, every hour, we decide. What to eat, when to get up, whether to answer the message now or later. Most of these decisions are automatic and harmless; by some estimates we make hundreds, even thousands of them a day without noticing. A few are anything but banal: whom to trust, whom to marry, whom to hire, whether to speak or stay silent, whether to stay or go.
Some decisions are made in a fraction of a second, below the level of awareness. Others are weighed slowly and deliberately. Both kinds shape a life, and both can be trained. That is why decisions, not goals or habits or feelings, are the focus of everything the MBSAT Foundation does.

A skilful decision is one that lowers free energy — fewer surprises, less friction, less wear — for the person who makes it, for their immediate world, and for the planet.

Three circles, one test

The science behind MBSAT — the free-energy principle from computational neuroscience — says that every living system stays alive by keeping surprise low: by predicting its world well enough to act in it without being constantly thrown off course. A skilful decision does that. It reduces unnecessary surprise, friction and wear — not only for the person deciding, but in three widening circles:

  • for oneself — body, emotions, thoughts and the impulse to act (what MBSAT calls BETA);
  • for one’s immediate world — family, work, friends, the people a decision touches first;
  • for the planet — the larger reality that sustains all of us, and that every decision quietly draws on.

The test is not whether a decision feels good in the moment, nor whether it serves the decision-maker alone. It is whether all three circles are left more alive and more able to thrive. A skilful decision-maker looks at the context first, and tries to anticipate the real side effects before they arrive.

A skill, not a verdict

A skilful decision-maker is not a good person, and an unskilful one is not a bad person. Skill in deciding has nothing to do with personality or character; it is a capacity, and like any capacity it can be developed. Kind people make unskilful decisions every day, often out of kindness; difficult people sometimes decide with great skill. MBSAT does not ask who you are. It asks how you decide — and offers a way to decide better.

Deciding with the whole person

Decision-making is often taught as a technique: list the options, weigh the criteria, choose. That has its place, but it leaves out the person doing the deciding — the tense shoulders, the quickened breath, the half-noticed emotion that is already tilting the choice. MBSAT takes a different stance. Decisions are made by an embodied person in a real situation, and skill begins with noticing what the body, the emotions and the mind are doing while the decision forms. The practices of the MBSAT Path train exactly this: a clear perception of what is happening inside and outside, before acting.

Becoming a skilful decision-maker

Nobody is born one. It is practiced, decision by decision, in the five dimensions of a life — work, family, social life, free time and our relationship with the planet — which MBSAT calls SOPA. The MBSAT Path is where that practice begins.
Discover The MBSAT Path

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