I often make ambivalent clients play that game where you find a hidden object by following the clues "You're getting warmer" and "You're getting colder." Ditherers often stop dead in their tracks and start asking questions: "Where is it?" "Is it under something?" "Can I look up?" These are smart people and the game is extremely simple, but my waffling clients manage to find the one possible way to lose at it: not moving.

The reason I make my clients search my office for a pen, a coffee cup, or my elderly, immobile beagle is because many of us do this with major life decisions. I want to go back to school, but what if I ruin my career? That's a nice house, but what if it burns down? Instead of asking whether one option makes us feel "warmer" (as in happier) or "colder" (unhappier or generally squashed by the universe), we may ponder such questions for ten, 12, 50 years…then, boom! A quail-hunting expedition or liposuction procedure goes awry, and the only determination left is whether we'd prefer to spend the future in a coffin or an urn.

If you're waiting for the Right Answer to end all uncertainty, look no further: The answer to every "what if" question (which I got from a fabulous teacher named Nancy Whitworth, who got it from her special-needs students) is "som'n else." What will you do if you make the wrong choice? Som'n else. If you lose your job? Som'n else. If your fiancé stomps your heart into a pulsating pancake? Som'n else. Using this principle, we can formulate a complete guide to life:

1. Do anything.
2. See if you feel warmer (happier, more alive) or colder (more miserable and dead) if you do X.
3. If it feels colder, do som'n else.
4. Repeat as necessary.

Some people, however, are too baffled to use this method. For them doing nothing is intolerable and doing any old thing is overwhelming, but they have one option left. My favorite.

From the October 2006 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine