your life is the result of your moment-to-moment choices
Your little, everyday choices dictate the course of your life. Jillian Michaels, one of the leading fitness experts of the world and a celebrity trainer of The Biggest Loser fame, once shared in an interview a profound story from her childhood days:
“When I was a kid, my mom would have these elaborate Easter egg hunts for me. I would run around the house, and when I would get close to a hidden egg, she’d say, ‘Oh you’re warm.’ You know, you get closer to it, ‘Oh, you’re on fire.’ And then you move away from the egg and she’d go, ‘Oh, you’re cold, you’re freezing.’ I teach contestants that, on a moment-to-moment basis, I need them to think about their happiness and their ultimate goal as being warm—how every choice and every decision they make in the moment is getting them closer to that ultimate goal.”
[Source: Hardy, Darren. The Compound Effect (p. 48). Hachette Books.]
Our lives are nothing but a sum total of our moment-to-moment choices. And so, as hopeless and helpless you might feel, you do have the power within you to change your life. All you need to do is change those choices. Little by little, your better choices and decisions will guide your everyday actions and steer you on the path of leading a healthy, successful, and meaningful life. And once your positive behaviors and actions become life-long habits, you’ll become unstoppable.
Related essay: how your little everyday choices can make or break your life
Did You Know?
In the early 14th century, Franciscan missionary Friar Odoric brought to Europe the story of an enormous carriage that carried an image of the Hindu god Vishnu (whose title was Jagannath, literally, “lord of the world”) through the streets of India in religious processions. Odoric reported that some worshippers deliberately allowed themselves to be crushed beneath the vehicle’s wheels as a sacrifice to Vishnu. That story was likely an exaggeration or misinterpretation of actual events, but it spread throughout Europe. The tale caught the imagination of English listeners, and they began using juggernaut to refer to any massive vehicle (such as a steam locomotive) and to any other enormous entity with powerful crushing capabilities.
