Choices

Choices...

No matter how big or small they shape our future.

How fitting for a day like to day?  I spent this past weekend in St. Louis and one of the key nuggets for me was CHOICES.  We all have those big choices that we know effect our life in some way or another. They cause us to stress and take time to actually think and rationalize the pros and cons between each decision but what about those small choices?!

The choice to spend $5 dollars on a pack of cigarettes or save it.  The choice to eat crappy food or the choice to go with a glass of water instead.  The choice to hurt some one's feeling by a rude comment or to keep your mouth shut in order to not cause pain upon someone else?  These choices all seem small and insignificant at the time but when you stop and think about it they have a huge impact on ones future.

Say instead of buying 2 packs of cigarettes a week they put that 10 dollars in a savings account.  That is 520 dollars a year. If a person started smoking when they were 16, they would have 13,000 dollars in savings by the time they were 40, just by not choosing instant gratification. As a society we choose instant gratification over long term satisfaction.

When choosing a doughnut or a piece of chocolate cake over fruit or a glass of water we don't think about how those ten pounds are going to creep up on us in a month or two.  Instead we go ahead and proceed with the instant gratification, where as if we would choose water or something a healthier not only would our bodies perform better in both short term and long term we would feel better and not have to wake up one day wondering how did all this weight or aches come about.  Think back to those small choices.

What SMALL choices have you made lately that is some how going to effect your life in the future.  See while one choice may appear to be what we want instantly later down the road it is going to be something we wish we would have done differently.

Over the past year I have made the choice to improve myself.  To create a journey filled with positive choices for my future.  I choose to workout so that I can stay young and healthy, I choose to do what others want and sacrifice so that I can stay forever young and life a life where I get to make my choices  with out someone else making them for me.  I choose to put away money so that if a rainy day comes I will have something to fall back on...it is to late when you wake up and realize those small choices have  caused you to wake up with no way to pay the bills one day.  While we never really stop and weigh the pros and cons of our decisions maybe if we stopped and thought about those small choices of instant gratifications vs long term satisfaction things would not creep up on us so badly.  You did not become 50-100 pounds overweight by night, your credit card, and house hold bills, as well as your unhappiness did not just happen overnight, it was a pile of small unthought out choices that piled up and eventually came back to kick you in the but.

So I urge you to stop and think are your choices hindering or enabling you? If you cant pay your bills then what do you need to do so that you can? If you are unhappy why? what is missing? what is it that you want out of life? If you are over weight have you curbed your appetite? The only way things will change in YOUR LIFE, is if you start making smarter, and wiser decisions on the seemingly insignificant SMALLER CHOICES.