A Simple 3-Question Test for Every Decision

Most decisions don't need a pros-and-cons list. Field Project offers a shorter test: before you say yes to something, ask three questions — is it friendly? Is it beautiful? Does it bring a sense of peace? If the answer to any of them is no, that's worth pausing on, whatever the spreadsheet says.

Shifting the Standard for "Yes"

The Companion introduces this as a direct alternative to however you're currently deciding things: "One of many powerful Field practices is to shift the standards we apply for saying 'yes' or 'no' to something. To be sure, many of us don't seem to embody our standards wittingly at all, and since, 'if we don't make up your mind, something else will make it up for us,' this often leaves us perpetuating habitual responses and old choices that we may have long ago outgrown."

That's the problem being solved: not a lack of decision-making tools, but decisions running on autopilot — old defaults nobody re-examined. The fix offered is specific: "One standard we recommend comprises three criteria: friendship, beauty, and peace. To use this standard, ask yourself three things before you agree with something: First, is it friendly? Second, is it beautiful? Third, does it promote a sense of peace?"

Why Any One Criterion Is Already Enough

The Companion makes a claim that's easy to skim past but is actually the load-bearing part of the whole practice: "Actually, applying any one of these criteria would bring about seeming miracles in any life where none of the criteria are being met." You don't need all three to fail before something's wrong — one missing criterion is already useful information. And the reason it works isn't mystical, it's structural: "Invoking all three is an act of self-regard that moves us immediately into alignment and away from contradiction, which is the sole aim of Field practice."

Self-regard here doesn't mean self-indulgence. It means refusing to agree to things that quietly work against you, which is a smaller and more honest ask than most self-improvement advice makes it sound.

What Tends to Fall Away

The Companion is candid that this standard isn't just a mental exercise — it has real consequences once you actually apply it: "Taking up the resolve not to participate, inwardly or outwardly, in anything that isn't friendly, beautiful, and peaceful — and, of course, remaining true to this standard — may lead to some things falling away." It gives concrete examples rather than staying abstract: "You likely would no longer agree, for example, to be part of an abusive relationship in any form, a job about which you feel half-hearted at best, or any condition that has required you to be less than your own best friend."

Some of what falls away doesn't even require a decision at all: "Even situations that have dogged us for years fall away effortlessly and naturally when we are no longer sustaining them through our having identified with them." The friction, in other words, was partly coming from us — from tacit agreement we never examined — not only from the situation itself.

The Companion closes with the plainest possible statement of the standard: "Setting the bar at friendship, beauty, and peace means that we're no longer willing to settle for less."

Using the Test This Week

Before your next yes — to a request, an obligation, a plan, an invitation — run the three questions in order: friendly, beautiful, peaceful. You're not looking for a perfect score. You're looking for the one answer that gives you pause, because that's usually the one worth listening to.

This pairs naturally with the Art of Agreement, since a standard this direct only works if you're also willing to withdraw agreement from what fails it — and with the distinction between wanting and willing, since the three criteria are really a fast way of testing whether you're actually willing to have what you're saying yes to.

Friendly, beautiful, peaceful. If a decision can't clear one of the three, that's the answer — not a technicality to argue around.

The full framework behind this idea lives on our Conscious Creating page, and more on the philosophy's origins is on our About page. If you'd like help applying this standard to a specific decision, a one-on-one session is a direct way to work through it, and The Field Project Course covers this practice and the others like it in full.