We all make thousands of choices every day.
Most of them are completely insignificant.
Tea or coffee.
What to wear.
What to watch on Netflix.
Whether to answer that email now or pretend we haven’t seen the bastard until tomorrow.
But underneath all those little decisions are some much bigger ones.
What we eat.
How much we move.
Who we spend our time with.
What we watch.
What we read.
What we listen to.
How much we drink.
Whether we look after ourselves.
Whether we keep repeating the same patterns we’ve always repeated.
And here’s the uncomfortable bit.
At some point, you have to choose.
You Don’t Choose Where You Start
So, let’s get down to the nitty gritty.
Life isn’t fair.
We don’t all start from the same place.
Some people grow up surrounded by sport, decent food and parents who encouraged them to be active.
Others don’t.
Some people have money, time, supportive partners and jobs that allow them to look after themselves.
Others are working twelve-hour shifts, caring for children or elderly parents, worrying about money and trying to hold everything together with caffeine and increasingly creative swearing.
Some people have illness, injury or disability to deal with.
Some people have had experiences that shape their relationship with food, exercise, alcohol, money or themselves.
And sometimes life simply kicks you squarely in the bollocks.
So no…
We don’t all have the same choices.
And we certainly don’t all have equally easy choices.
But that doesn’t mean we have no choice at all.
That’s the difference.
Your Past Explains You. It Doesn’t Have To Decide Your Future.
Your upbringing matters.
Of course it fucking does.
The habits and behaviours we grow up around become normal.
If nobody exercised in your family, exercise probably wasn’t something you naturally learned to value.
If food was always used as comfort or reward, that can follow you into adulthood.
If everyone around you drank heavily every weekend, that can become your definition of normal.
If your family never talked about feelings, relationships or mental health, perhaps you learned to bottle everything up.
None of that is your fault as a child.
You didn’t choose the environment you grew up in.
But eventually we become adults.
And at some point we get the opportunity to ask:
Do I want to keep doing this?
Sometimes the answer is yes.
Sometimes it’s:
Actually, no. This stops with me.
Breaking a pattern isn’t easy.
But somebody has to be the first person in a family to do something differently.
So, Why not you?
We Choose What We Consume
And I don’t just mean food.
We spend an enormous amount of time worrying about what goes into our mouths while paying considerably less attention to what goes into our heads.
Think about what you consume every day.
Social media.
News.
Podcasts.
YouTube.
TikTok.
Facebook groups.
Influencers.
Friends.
Colleagues.
If your feed constantly tells you that you’re not thin enough, rich enough, productive enough, young enough or successful enough…
That’s going to affect you.
If every health account you follow tells you your food is toxic, your hormones are broken, your cortisol is fucked and you need seventeen supplements before breakfast…
That’s going to affect you too.
You can’t control everything that appears in front of you.
But you can choose what gets your attention.
Your mental diet matters as well.
Sometimes unfollowing someone is an act of self-care.
And considerably cheaper than fucking supplement stack.
We Choose Whether To Move
Again, circumstances matter.
I’m not suggesting everyone has two spare hours every day to spend in a gym.
But exercise doesn’t have to mean that.
Walk.
Lift something.
Take the stairs.
Go for a bike ride.
Do twenty minutes at home.
Train twice a week.
Play a sport.
Dance.
Garden.
Whatever.
You don’t have to become an elite athlete.
But our bodies were designed to move, and increasingly modern life gives us the option not to.
We can work from a chair.
Order food from a chair.
Shop from a chair.
Socialise from a chair.
Be entertained from a chair.
Then drive somewhere while sitting in another chair.
Being sedentary has never been easier.
Which means movement increasingly has to become a deliberate choice.
The Better Choice Doesn’t Have To Be The Perfect Choice
This is probably where most people fuck it up.
They think there are only two choices.
Perfect or terrible.
Gym or sofa.
Salad or pizza.
No alcohol or twelve pints.
10,000 steps or pointless.
Perfect week or failed week.
Life doesn’t work like that.
Sometimes the better choice is training for 30 minutes instead of the hour you’d planned.
Sometimes it’s having the pizza but ordering the smaller one.
Sometimes it’s going for a ten-minute walk.
Sometimes it’s having two drinks instead of six.
Sometimes it’s going to bed half an hour earlier.
Sometimes it’s eating the fucking cake and enjoying it because you’re sat with friends having a great catch up over coffee.
Context matters.
You don’t need to make the best possible choice every time.
You need the better choices to win more often than the shit ones.
That is considerably more achievable.
You Are Going To Make Shit Choices
I do.
You do.
Everyone does.
Sometimes I know exactly what the sensible choice is and think:
Nah. Fuck it.
Because I’m human.
Knowing something is good for us doesn’t magically make us want to do it.
Sometimes the sofa wins.
Sometimes the takeaway wins.
Sometimes another drink wins.
Sometimes scrolling absolute nonsense on your phone until midnight wins.
Fine.
The problem isn’t one shit choice.
The problem is when one shit choice becomes permission for another fifty.
“I’ve missed training today, so this week’s fucked.”
No it isn’t.
You missed Tuesday.
Wednesday still exists.
One decision doesn’t have to become your identity.
Make another one.
Blame And Responsibility Aren’t The Same Thing
This is important.
Taking responsibility for where you go next doesn’t mean blaming yourself for everything that happened before.
There are things in life you absolutely did not choose.
Illness.
Bereavement.
Redundancy.
Injury.
Other people’s behaviour.
The family you were born into.
Plenty of other stuff.
Personal responsibility doesn’t mean standing in front of someone who’s struggling and shouting:
“WELL YOU MADE YOUR CHOICES!”
That’s not personal responsibility.
That’s just being a twat.
It means recognising the difference between:
What happened to me?
and
What am I going to do next?
You may have had absolutely no control over the first question.
There is often something you can choose about the second.
Stop Waiting To Feel Ready
One of the biggest choices we make is deciding when to start.
And we’re fucking brilliant at delaying that one.
Monday.
Next month.
After the holiday.
When work calms down.
When the kids go back.
After Christmas.
January.
When I’m fitter.
When I’ve lost some weight.
When I’ve got more confidence.
There will always be something.
At some point you have to decide:
I’m doing something about this now.
Not everything.
Something.
Book the session.
Go for the walk.
Cook the meal.
Make the appointment.
Delete the app.
Have the conversation.
Go to bed.
Ask for help.
Say no.
Say yes.
Whatever the thing is that you’ve been avoiding.
Your Choices Become Your Normal
This is perhaps the bit we underestimate.
One workout doesn’t change your life.
One decent meal doesn’t change your life.
One early night doesn’t change your life.
One walk doesn’t change your life.
But choices repeated often enough become habits.
Habits repeated often enough become your normal.
And your normal, repeated for years, has a fairly substantial influence on where you end up.
That’s why I don’t particularly care whether you have a perfect Monday.
I’m more interested in what your average Tuesday looks like six months from now.
Because health isn’t built through occasional acts.
It’s mostly built through incredibly boring decisions repeated for a very long time.
So, What Are You Choosing?
Not next year.
Not when life gets easier.
Not when you’ve got more motivation.
Now.
Because whether we like it or not, doing nothing is still a choice.
Staying where you are is a choice.
Repeating the same pattern is a choice.
And choosing differently is a choice too.
You won’t always get it right.
Neither will I.
That’s not the goal.
The goal is simply to notice when you have a choice…
and gradually get better at making the one that takes you towards the life you actually want.
Your past matters.
Your circumstances matter.
Your starting point matters.
But they don’t necessarily get the final fucking vote.
At some point, you just have to choose.
