Philosophical counseling is not for everybody. Many people see coaches, psychologists, psychiatrists, and spiritual advisors, but rarely do they seek the counsel of a philosopher. Markate Daly, PhD, holds a doctorate in philosophy, specializing in theories of the self and interpersonal relationships. She can help you solve life's practical problems.

A great charge of energy comes with the spring season. A better life will be possible if I make some changes in how I live. But I have been here before—the diet lasts three days, the gym membership goes unused, and I slip back into the old ruts. Sometimes, though, my decisions stick. I have successfully changed jobs and quit smoking. Even more perplexing, there are times when, without any forethought or any conscious decision, I do exactly the right thing.

So what is going on here? My decisions sometimes seem to work, sometimes they clearly don't, and sometimes no conscious decision is involved in what I do. How do I get myself to do what will make me happy, healthy, and prosperous, if my decisions are so unreliable? To do that, we must know what generates an action.

In our highly rational culture we believe that conscious thought processes normally initiate action. A failure of this system leads to irrational actions, driven by base instincts. It is easy to recognize in this theory the hoary old notions of sin and bodily evil, together with the ancient ideal of an orderly universe, all of which are being challenged by new discoveries and new ideals.

The worst effects of a decision-based theory of action are the heavy judgments we levy against those who fail the ideal. The first victim is usually myself. I can't stick to my diet and dig into some comfort food.

Then the judgments start coming in, "I am weak and self-indulgent, a spineless blob with no character, a bad person." The ensuing shame and guilt requires more comfort to relieve the distress. Judgments against others are just as harsh. Overweight people are treated with open contempt when they go out in public. Homeless people hear passing pedestrians mutter "Get a job!" The damage to children and between spouses provides grist for soap operas, novels, and therapists.

All of this misery is unnecessary, because it now seems likely that the rationalistic decision theory isn't even true. In a famous experiment on human subjects Benjamin Libet discovered that the nerves in the arm begin an action 300 milliseconds before the neurons in the cerebral cortex register a decision to move it. This means that my decision to move my arm occurs AFTER my arm starts moving. The existential philosopher Jean Paul Sartre anticipated this modern scientific result. He thought that our decision-making process is just an after-the-fact justification for an action that was initiated subconsciously. But if that is true, who or what is the causal impetus?

Many philosophers and scientists have endorsed a mechanistic theory, that every action is determined by physical or social causes. Not only am I not to blame for my actions, I can't take credit for my accomplishments. When I head to the kitchen for comfort food, I am being pushed by something else.

If I embezzle a goodly chunk of cash, I can't help it. When I am loyal to my family and friends, I was suckered into it.

This nihilistic philosophy is the opposite extreme from the rational decision one. But the personal and social effects of nihilism could be much worse, starting with the loss of the self. If I have no ability to initiate my own actions, I am nobody. I no longer need to consider what I do, because I can't affect an outcome anyway. Ethics is a game for suckers and democracy is a joke. But we all have experienced an ability to set a course of action and follow it. And my actions are neither random nor arbitrary; they are ordered, purposeful, and nearly always aimed at something good for myself or for important others.

To account for this fact, let me propose an alternative that I will call the "Organismic" theory of action. In this theory the person who acts is not a "mind," nor a cog in a causal universe, but is instead a human animal—an organism. All organisms are intelligent about the things that matter: survival, safety, reproduction, pleasure and comfort. Since humans are social animals, the "things that matter" include an ethics of interpersonal relationships and small group politics. A human decision to act arises from an organismic soup of motivations: wanting, revulsion, love, fear, adventure, satisfaction, pride, anger, curiosity, jealousy, comfort and movement. Action initiated from this level is a deep decision.

While an action begins with a deep experience of organismic wanting, there is an element of truth in both the rational decision theory of action and the mechanistic causal theory. Childhood experiences causally engage a mix of organismic motivations to form patterns of behavior that are experienced in adulthood as primeval "wantings." Modern commercial culture targets these same basic motivations to sell products and induce social conformity, again through a direct causal nudge. And we use rational thought processes to interrupt this link when we recognize its manipulative intent.

But is it possible to use rational thought processes to change myself if I don't like what I am doing, if I am making a mess of my life? Thoughts are fairly insubstantial, and the decisions they produce are instantly and infinitely changeable. This is the problem of how to get myself to want what I think would be best for me to want, to make my decision at the deepest level.

As a first step, it is important to know what good thing, what organismic goal, my destructive behavior seeks to achieve. I must acknowledge the goodness and importance of that goal. Then, an active intervention offers another, healthier way of satisfying that goal.

If my pride needs support, satisfaction can come from other methods than putting others down. If comfort is what I need, there are better options than cookies. But for any change to stick, it must occur at the deep level of human wanting.