Every decision you make shapes your future, whether you realize it or not.
Every day, you and I make a number of choices throughout our day. Some of these choices will move you closer to your goals or the life that you want in the future. Other choices will find you moving further away from what you profess to want. The quality of your life is determined by the choices you make.
There are many types of choices that you and I make. There are small choices you make every day. You don’t think about these, because they seem to be inconsequential, as they don’t harm you in the moment.
There are other choices you make that are consequential, the kind that you need to consider before you choose. For big decisions, you are likely to spend time considering your choices. You may also research the decision or ask others to help you think it through before you make your choice.
When you were a child, others made choices for you, as you were not capable of always making a good choice. Your parents sent you to school. They may also have chosen to send you to college, talking to you about getting an education more often than you needed to hear it.
Later, in your teenage years, you may have made a long list of poor choices, though I doubt you could have matched me when it came to making poor choices. Some of your friends may have continued making choices that set them on a trajectory that found them in a bad place later in their lives. Others chose to swerve away from their earlier trajectory and blazed a different path.
Impact of Small Health Choices
There are a large number of small choices you may make without considering them. But the size of the decision may have a greater impact in the future. Every day, I drive by a fast food restaurant. The line of cars is often long enough that it blocks the road. There is the choice of bringing something from home, like a salad with protein, or paying for something that, over time, may harm your health in the future. Some of you may be better off fasting rather than eating fast food.
It is also a small choice to avoid exercising. You know that you need to move to be healthy, but it is easier to get to work instead. If you have avoided exercise, it’s easy to take a walk. You don’t have to get giant muscles that prevent you from being able to scratch your back, but you do need to lift weights. Before you choose to exercise, you really should speak with your doctor to ensure what you are doing is safe.
Influence of Small Wealth Choices
When you are young, you want to buy things you believe you need. But this is a small choice. Most of us didn’t come from money. The bad part of not coming from money is that you don’t know how money works. Money is better at making money than you are. But no one tells you how interest and dividends work. You lose a lot of money by not knowing early enough.
The things that you own end up owning you. A healthy choice when it comes to wealth is to invest as much as you can as early as you can, as the more time you give money in the right vehicle, the more your money will grow. If you can live without certain things, you can bank money. This is especially important if you have debt. Debt steals your money, as you are giving giant banks your money in the form of interest.
Managing Relationship Choices
Relationships are a lot like health and wealth. There is something important about relationships you may not know. Relationships are expensive. They take time, attention, and effort. You have more relationships than you might think you have. You have family relationships, friend relationships, and work relationships. Robin Dunbar has studied the number of relationships you and I can manage. The number for most of us is 150 relationships.
You might want to make a list of your 150 relationships. It is a small choice to not have a way to manage your many relationships. I use Notion to manage my list of relationships. We use a CRM to manage our commercial relationships, but we don’t have a PRM (personal relationship manager).
It is also important to know that you should do your very best not to destroy a relationship. You sometimes see this in families, long-time friends, or people you work with every day. If you can avoid a conflict, avoid it. This is a bigger choice. You may need to be diplomatic and learn to listen to understand, rather than blow up an important relationship.
Evaluating Your Daily Choices
You should leave this article by recognizing that small choices may have a larger negative impact over time. This tends to be true when it comes to your health, your wealth, and your relationships.
Make a list of your small choices and do your best to make bigger choices. If you have burned in small choices, by making big choices in these areas, you can burn the better choices in, just like the habits that are not healthy.
