The Orientation Tool
A freely offered practice for restoring agency in time
This tool is for moments when you feel pressured, confused, reactive, stuck, or compelled to act—but aren’t sure from where the choice is coming.
It is a way to locate yourself in time before deciding what anything means.
Orientation
A tool for locating agency across time — past constraint, present integration, and future cost.
Step 1: Insight
Pause into the integration window
Do nothing for a few seconds.
Not to calm down.
To let sensation, memory, and anticipation register together.
This is not the “present moment” as a point. It is a short window where the nervous system integrates input.
Step 2: Check the past
Locate where you are standing
Ask yourself:
What past experience, habit, injury, loyalty, or unfinished story might be pulling on this moment?
If I act right now, am I repeating something familiar?
You are not excavating history. You are identifying any constraint.
Step 3: Check the future
Identify the cost of action
Then ask:
If I do this, what happens next—not ideally, but plausibly?
What cost would I be choosing to pay?
You are not predicting outcomes. You are feeling simulated consequence.
Step 4: Orient
Hold past pull and future cost at the same time, without resolving them.
Ask only this:
Where is this choice actually coming from?
Do not answer quickly. Orientation is a capacity, not a conclusion.
Step 5: Recognition
At some point—often quietly—something settles.
You may recognize:
“This is fear choosing.”
“This is old loyalty.”
“This is desire.”
“This is my agency, and it’s not clean—but it’s real.”
Nothing needs to be done next. This recognition is the action.
From here, behavior may or may not change immediately.
But your nervous system has updated what it knows about itself and that knowledge is powerful and humbling.