What we think we want. It is an interesting concept and something many of us know all too well.
Unhealthy Food
One of the most relatable ways to express this concept is to refer to what we eat. For example I was out shopping for my lunch today at the local supermarket. I saw they had Big M Chocolate Milk reduced from $3.25 to $1 so I thought I would purchase one because who doesn’t like chocolate milk? Just in case you were curious I also bought 2 strawberry yoghurts, 1kg of watermelon, a cheese and bacon roll and a banana.
When I got back to the office I checked the label for the chocolate milk and it had 58grams of sugar in the carton. I only realised this after I finished it, if I had of checked that earlier I would have poured some of it down the sink. Within 5 minutes of finishing the Big M I immediately started feeling sick. I also immediately started regretting the decision of ever buying the Big M in the first place. It didn’t taste that great, it made me feel horrible and for what?
This is the same with soft drink, you will rarely see my drinking any form of soft drink. I will always have water. Changing my eating habits for the better is a constant evolution and we all need to take the steps necessary to make it a permanent change.
What other aspects of our life do we enjoy at the time and then come to the realisation shortly after that you either completely wasted your time or you could have done without it?
Television
Sometimes I’ll sit down to watch TV as a way of procrastinating over what I should be doing. After watching people sell antique goods for an hour you start to realise that these types of shows provide no value to you at all and are just a time filler and I straight away start thinking of more productive ways I could have spent that last hour.
Other times you just get stuck watching a TV series you really couldn’t care less about but it’s something that seems to be on in your household. The biggest culprit in my house is Neighbours and I hate to admit that but it’s just transparency. I honestly could go without ever seeing that show again and the only thing that would change in my life is I would have 30 minutes to make better use of that time. Throw in a few games shows and a couple of other shows you could do without and you could easily free up an hour or 2 just by simply turning off the TV.
The Snooze Button
I mix up my snooze button depending on what day it is. But I am starting to realise just what a huge time waster it is. The only thing stopping me from getting up the first time it goes off is pure laziness. Take this morning for example, my alarm went off at 6am and I pressed the snooze button until 7:20am. That is 1hour 20minutes I wasted where I could have been working on having a good start to the morning. A morning ritual is something I want to work on going forward but I need to take the little steps to get myself in a position to do so first. Starting with getting up when my alarm goes off the first time. It isn’t that hard it just takes some commitment to the cause.
This is all about making the right decisions. When I look back at just the 3 aspects mentioned in this blog I feel like I am only skimming the surface for what I could cover. Unhealthy eating the decision is simple, you either choose healthy or unhealthy, television you can either choose to sit on the couch and watch it or do something more productive and the snooze button you have the decision to start your day off strong or wait till the very last moment to get yourself out of bed.
These decision although small when you start making the right decisions for you across the board you can already start to see the bigger impact it can have.
Start making the right decisions today instead of looking back and wondering ‘did I really need that?’
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