Hi guys! Welcome to episode 187 of the wildly successful Lifestyle podcast. I hope you are enjoying a nice cup of coffee or maybe you’re on a walk or maybe I’m driving along with you in your car, wherever it is, I’m glad to be here with you. We live in a world where we are constantly having to make choices. Hundreds, maybe thousands of decisions every single day. Some of them are little and some of them are big. But they all matter. Every single one of them. Seemingly Little decisions can absolutely move the needle towards creating momentum for your bigger decisions. Which means those little decisions can control which way the momentum is heading. Good or bad.
Friday night I was having a great night. Eric had just gotten home from a trip and we were having a fun evening with his sister and Her guy. And I got a text from my older sister. It’s simply a picture of a beautiful swimming pool at night. The only thing it said was “Our sister’s new pool.” If you have been listening to me for a while, you know that I have a younger sister that has basically shunned half our family because we aren’t in her religion so we don’t ever see her or talk to her which I wish were different but I do not control it so I allow for the feelings to be there. It hurts of course, but I don’t dwell on it. So that’s the sister that obviously got the new pool. I wouldn’t know, I haven’t been to her new house, nor probably will I.
So my older sister likes to create drama, I think it makes her feel alive but I don’t live in her head, so I don’t know why she does the things she does. So here I am. I get this text and I love her. I really do but she has to know I don’t care, I don’t need nor want to know what’s going on in my other sister’s life because that is the way she wants it. So I had a decision to make. Send a text back saying my initial thoughts that were not nice, I could ignore it all together or I could just answer her back in a neutral way. So which one would make me feel the way I want to feel.
Well for starters I have to know how I want to feel. Do I want to have a drama ridden night where she and I go back and forth with texts that aren’t very nice? If I’m being honest, the old me would have kind of enjoyed that. The sad part about that is, the reason I would kind of enjoy it, or the old me is I think is I love my family and in a way I’d rather have negative attention then no attention at all because at least I’m connecting somehow with them.
If I just ignore the text then it still lingers in my mind. It’s active because human nature is to think I hope she is mad because I ignored her and then all the negative thoughts that brings with it. Orrrrrr I could send a neutral text where I simply acknowledge the text by saying something nice about the pool. That makes it where I feel at ease and relaxed and neutral about it and it also stops the conversation because I think she was looking for drama and I didn’t give it to her because I choose not to live in a constant state of drama any more. I work every day to preserve my peace. I recognized I could decide how I wanted to feel and then take the actions that make it so. Here’s the thing: we can do this with any situation in our life.
I get to choose what I make that text from my sister mean. I’m not in her head. I don’t know why she sent it. Maybe she thinks it would make me feel connected to Sarah in some way. Which would be thoughtful. I don’t know and it’s none of my business. It doesn’t matter not one bit. All that matters is what I decide it means to me. And I want to feel peaceful and loving and authentic. So what I sent back to her was simply the word “pretty”. That’s it. The pool was pretty. I stayed true to myself and what I wanted because I didn’t exaggerate or lie or create drama. In the end I just decided to let it feel neutral and that’s where it stayed.
Every day we have hundreds, maybe thousands of little decisions we make. And those decisions add up to make us who we are. Little decisions can move mountains. I moved the momentum in the direction I wanted it by being neutral. Neutral was the best I could do in that situation. I could have been inauthentic and said oh how fun! I’m so excited for her. That simply isn’t where I’m at with it and I’m ok with that. I also could have rallied the troops and talked all weekend about how terrible my family is but now I’m just attracting more of that energy and I don’t want that. I want to move the needle and the momentum towards the good, happy authentic things in life. Drama is enticing but it’s just another way to distract from our real life. The life we are creating. Because that’s what’s happening with every decision about everything we do.
The person we are right now is because of the decisions we’ve made in the past. The person we will be next Friday is a result of all the decisions we make prior to that.
James Clear says every time we make a decision we are casting a vote for who we want to become.
It could be as simple as what you make a text mean.
So let’s say for the sake of this episode that you’re listening to it on Monday. Think for a minute about the person you would like to be Friday. How do you want to feel on Friday? Who do you want to be? And then ask yourself how I need to show up this week so that I am that person On Friday.
We get hooked on goals being too big. When it’s the little things that matter. The little decisions that cause big momentum. The averted drama, the first one mile walk, the morning gratitude journal, any little things you can do consistently that casts a vote for the person you want to be moved the momentum in that direction.
You’re not going to pay off all your debt in a week or lose 30 lbs in a week or completely fix all your relationships in a week but you could certainly get the momentum headed to where that’s the ultimate result and it could just start with one little bitty decision.
After I sent that text to my sister I felt relieved but also just very peaceful. No drama. No lying, just momentum headed in the direction that casts a vote for who I want to become.
My challenge to you this week is to write down one word, one feeling you want to have 4 days from now. Maybe it’s confidence, maybe it’s happiness, maybe it’s peaceful and then frame all your decisions by asking is this gonna make me feel confident? Is this gonna make me feel happy? Is this gonna make me feel peaceful? If it does then yay, if it doesn’t well now you have a decision to make. I love you guys and I’ll talk to you in a few days.
