How Life Planners Transform Analysis into Awareness
When faced with life’s most important decisions, people don’t struggle because they lack information — they struggle because they are torn between head and heart.
In Mhairi’s Dilemma (Mullin et al., 2008), a ten-year-old girl faced an impossible choice: whether to attend the funeral of her beloved priest. Overwhelmed by grief, she couldn’t make sense of her emotions. Her father, Roger Mullin — a decision analysis lecturer — sat beside her, drew a simple decision tree, and together they mapped her fears and hopes.
Through that act of drawing, Mhairi found calm. The logic didn’t suppress emotion — it gave it form. Each branch represented her inner landscape. By translating feelings into probabilities and values, she could see clearly what her heart already knew: that she wanted to go, and could do so safely with the right support.
Roger’s story showed that formal analysis can be deeply compassionate — structure need not be cold; clarity can itself be a form of care.
✋ The Life Planner’s Alternative: Two Fists and a Point of Balance
In Life Planning, we use a different but complementary approach.
When a client faces two conflicting options — say, to stay or to go, to save or to spend — we hold out our fists, each representing one path.
Then we ask:
“Point to the place between these two where you feel most at ease.”
The client gestures to a point in space — not a number, but a feeling.
We invite them to move their finger closer to one side or the other and describe what shifts inside them as they do.
It’s a physical, emotional exploration of choice.
This practice:
- Externalises emotion, turning confusion into conversation.
- Honours intuition as valid data in the decision process.
- Integrates analysis and empathy — the felt sense becomes the measure of utility.
- Restores agency, as clients literally touch their decision.
Where Roger used a rational model, we use an embodied model.
Both help people move from anxiety to awareness, from confusion to clarity.
⚖️ The Shared Lesson
Whether through numbers or through movement, the aim is the same:
To help a person see their own thinking — to witness the forces within them and discover their point of peace.
In the Academy of Life Planning, we call this the Art of Conscious Decision — the union of reason, reflection, and resonance. It’s the bridge between the measurable and the meaningful.
Decision analysis gives us the structure to think clearly.
Life Planning gives us the stillness to feel deeply.
Together, they create decisions that honour both truth and tenderness.
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Contact: steve.conley@aolp.co.uk
Website: www.aolp.info
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