Increments

Recently, as in, the last few weeks, I have come to the conclusion that life is not made up of huge choices. It’s not big moments that define you; it’s not deciding what course at Uni to study, what trade to apprentice in, or even what person you spend your life with (or the choice to spend it on your own).

No, I truly believe these choices, at the end of your life do not matter as much as the little ones. The ones that you make every single day.

Think about a day. I’m going to use mine as an example. This is the start of an average work day for me:

3:03am – My alarm goes off on my watch. I have a few choices now. I can snooze it and try to sleep or I can get up straight away or I can turn it off, and wait, laying awake for the next one.

Three choices that can determine how I start my day. If I wake up and spring out of bed I have momentum, I’m more positive. I brew coffee, eat breakfast, shower etc. all with gusto and before 3:35am.

If I choose to snooze it until my 3:08am alarm then I might still wake up with energy, it’s possible, but even if I do I will be rushed. I will either skip breakfast or coffee. Neither truly necessary but I start my day on the backfoot. Most likely, I will wake up five minutes later feeling groggy and gross and not have the energy to make coffee or breakfast.

Little choices all within seconds of waking up that effect my whole day.

Now, I’m not saying that skipping coffee will impact my life in a huge way but that small hesitation, that small stutter at the start of my day could make me react poorly to a co-worker, make a decision at work that could effect a result. These then have flow on effects that can roll into multiple days.

Life is little choices. What clothes you where, or you talk to, the words you choose to say.

These tiny things, the way you choose to go to work, deciding to call in sick, deciding to go into work sick, eating out or eating in.

It all matters, it all adds up.

Then, imagine for me, that every choice you didn’t make branches off into another reality where a version of you made that choice.

Tomorrow morning I will wake up and if I choose to get up straight away there will be a version of me that chose not to.

If you could, would you look at these other lives? Would you want to view them? Trace them and look back at where you branched off?

Would you, if you could, swap lives with them? Are they any less or any more you?

Or is it those little choices that make you who you are?

I don’t know.

But I do know that the little choices we make every day matter.