I just heard a YouTube interview with Mel Robbins and she said this almost word for word. She then went on to explain what she meant and it really resonated with me. We make hundreds of decisions every day. TINY DECISIONS. And when those add up, it creates a life we like or a life we don’t.
For example, lets say that I use a different coffee cup every day and instead of washing it, I leave it in the sink. Then I put my lunch and dinner dishes in the sink. Then the sink fills up so I stack them on the counter. Then the counter fills up so I use paper plates. Then the garbage fills up because of all the trash. Then the trash fills up but its cold outside, so I simply put one bag of trash in the garage and start filling a second. Then that starts filling up. Then the bathroom trash can fills up but I have no where to dump that so I start just filling small grocery bags full of trash and placing them around the bathroom. It seems silly but I didn’t “wake up and decide to trash my house-it just kind of happened” and I would be telling the truth. It did just kind of happen. THEN I have to spend HOURS cleaning and tidying and I get into a bad mood. Then I snap at m husband. Then, then then…
It is JUST like that book, “If you give a mouse a cookie”. If you don’t know the book, I highly recommend it. The premise behind it is that if you give a mouse a cookie, he is going to want a glass of milk and then the whole book is what he needs after that-a napkin, a plate, etc…
The two stories above may seem like silly examples but I want to ask you…Do you have a pile of unopened mail somewhere? Do you have a pile of laundry somewhere? Do you have a sink full of dishes? Do you have boxes stacked up in the garage or basement that haven’t been looked at in a while? Do you have items in one part of the house that belong in another part of the house? Do you have things sitting out in your bathroom that need to be put away? Do you have a desk at work that needs to be organized? Do you have bills to pay or accounts to look at to budget your money for the week/month?
If you spend 4.50 a day on coffee/pop/cigarettes/beer/etc… and have it each day Mon-Fri, you spend 90.00 a month. You didn’t MEAN to spend 90 dollars a month, it just kind of happened. Then at the end of the year, you either have 1080 dollars in your bank account or you don’t. you have 1080 paid toward a debt or in a retirement account or you don’t. Now, don’t get me wrong, I LOVE a fancy coffee as much as the next guy, I am simply pointing out these small decisions that affect us long term and when we try to just “survive the day” we sometimes lose sight of how that will affect us in the future.
Another example is my sophomore year in college. I needed to lose the THIRTY pounds I had put on from freshman year. I read an article that said very simply if you cut out 250 calories a day and burn an extra 250 calories a day, you could lose 1 pound per week. In my 19 year old brain, this sounded easy. I left cheese and mayo off my sandwiches and drank water instead of juice. I also biked to my classes (uphill) instead of taking the student bus. I managed to lose about 25 pounds that year. And I felt great! Nothing I did was super drastic, it was merely a couple of tiny steps that changed my entire body.
So here is my challenge to myself and my question to my readers. What tiny decisions are you making each day that are “destroying your life?” I know that one of mine is eating a small piece of candy each day. It doesn’t seem like much and in the grand scheme of life, it isn’t much. However, that little piece of chocolate MIGHT be destroying all the weight loss efforts that I have been putting into place. Its worth a try to see if that helps. We all owe it to ourselves to examine what we are doing and change it in a tiny way if we want. I don’t want pants that don’t fit, so this is the small change I have to make this week.
THANK YOU to my 69 readers and followers! You keep me inspired!
tallgirltinysteps 