Choices

Hardly seems fair, but sometimes you have to choose between two goals.


One of my goals at the moment is to avoid spending those little bits of cash that make the money float out of your pocket. Drinks, snacks, etc. So drinking tea in the office instead of going out for coffee, taking the remains of last nights dinner into work to save on lunch. Great.


Another goal is to eat more healthily. Im generally pretty healthy, but I have a definite sweet tooth, and I find the best way to minimise the amount of sweet stuff I eat is to avoid starting. Once I get the taste...


So, its Wednesday afternoon and I'm hungry. I have no food with me, but there's a fruit stall 'round the corner. Alternatively, there are biscuits in the office. What to choose?


Its deeper than it looks. The key to successfully sticking to your goal is to make them habitual. Habitually keeping your money vs habitually eating healthily. Which habit are you going to break first. 


It seems to me that it will come down to one of two things


1) Which goal is clearer or stronger for you - if you would like to save money, but your major focus is staying fit, fine, simple.


2) Where your weaknesses lie - If you compulsively spend money, you'll nip out and buy fruit and justify it by saying you're staying healthy. If you compulsively eat sweets, you'll eat the biscuit and say that you're saving money.

Same outcome, different reason. So if the outcome is the same, does it matter?


Abso-friggin-lutely. 


Habits remind me of entropy. If you dont keep putting energy into the habit, it eventually falls away. 


Life gives you tough decisions, but if you consistently see that there are choices, and try and navigate the best you can between the difficult options, then in the long term you're going to be headed the right way. the decision will stick with you and remind you that "I really need to take some healthy snacks to work with me"


If you allow the good habits to be a tool to reinforce the bad habits, you're gonna have one hell of a job shifting em in the future. You're gonna deliberately ignore the ways to get round both problems, using one of them to justify your decisions.


So, fancy a biscuit.