These 4 ‘Small’ Choices You Make Every Day Are Either Hurting Or Defining You

Choice is a fundamental power of the human experience. Everyone knows the power of the choices you make have infinite consequences.

We have no idea, however, what’s a little choice or a big choice. We believe that big choices are obvious ones — buying a house, getting married, changing careers. These are the ones we pay attention to, stress over, put all our effort into. In reality, those are actually insignificant choices.

The choices that actually matter when it comes to your health, healing, positioning yourself, empowering yourself, are the tiny choices that you think have the least power, that you make in the privacy of your own company.

Those small choices that you think are the most insignificant are actually the most powerful choices of your life — have the most powerful impact on your biology, soul, and sense of who you are.

Caroline Myss believes these small choices are the ones determining your “life map.” They are the ones affecting your health, your fate, your overall happiness and well-being. Myss believes that it’s because people overlook these small choices that they’re so unhappy.

It’s not the so called “big choices” in your life that are affecting your stress levels and your health it’s these four small ones:

Here’s a list of choices that matter — that make a difference:

The Choice: To Always Tell The Truth

Saying one thing and doing another are two very different thing. You’d be surprised, however, how many people don’t follow through on their words. This is the basis of living a life of integrity.

I’m going to walk the way I talk. I’m actually going to do it. I’m going to actually tell the truth. I’m going to live with integrity. I’m going to make my choices according to what I say I believe.

I will not betray myself. I’m no longer going to do things that don’t bring me joy. I am going to say ‘no’ when I don’t want to do something.

I’m not going to compromise myself. I’m not going to put myself in a position or won’t force another person to be in a circumstance where I know they’re uncomfortable in order to please me. — because that has no integrity.

Liars don’t heal.  Dishonest people, people who blame others for things that they do, people who make choices and they know another person is going to pay for the consequence of that choice, your body knows you did that. Your mind knows you did that.

Your heart and soul knows you did that. So don’t tell yourself that your depression comes from your childhood. The decision to live an interiors life means: get this act together.

The Choice: To Not Pass My Suffering On, But My Wisdom

It’s so easy to whine and complain. It’s the easiest thing in the world. When we’re upset it’s so easy to take it out on others, to unload our pain on anyone who will absorb it.

Everyone has a choice. You can complain about your life or you can empower others with what you’ve learned. We all have grief and pain. But if we look at life, there are certain things that all spiritual religions and traditions have in common — is that life is, and never will be, fair.

Nothing can make your suffering go away and the model of healing we have is that healing isn’t about never forgetting, it’s about looking at what has happened to us and saying “this will never defeat me.” But I will not live in this. I have to somehow turn this into my source of wisdom, but I will not live in woe. And that becomes this choice. I have to choose: wisdom or woe.

3. The Choice: To Take Risks

Take risks in your life. Don’t wait for proof. Don’t bother asking, what if I’m humiliated by this? What if I can’t take the consequences? What if it’s too much money?

Go home and ask yourself how many of my greatest fears have actually really happened. And then, actually calculate how many of the most wonderful things that have happened to you — did you have anything to do with? Probably less than two things.

Because if you really look, most of the best things that happen to you, you didn’t have anything to do with. And if you think ‘how did this happen” you’ll realize a lot of good things were actually really risky and you didn’t even realize.

DON’T TAKE THE SAFE PATH. Don’t look backwards for guidance. Because there’s nothing “back there” The reason you are where you are is because that part of your life is over. Don’t look for over to chart new. When it’s time to make a decision about ‘I don’t know what to do next” don’t go to who you were or what you did because it will pull you back to places that don’t exist anymore.

You are not that person. And one of the ways to weaken you is it causes you to long for things that are no longer appropriate. What builds vitality is for you to say “It’s time for something new”.

4. The Choice: To Choose New Words

Every word is a universe unto itself. What are the words you say to yourself? Words you should never ever use? Vocabulary can be toxic. If you had to rate your vocabulary, would you rate is as hostile? Towards everyone you see, yourself? If your first thoughts are angry, your first reaction to everything will be critical. Clearly you need to look at the words you’re using.

Blame and deserve are power words. These are lethal words. If you could extricate those three words from your head you have no idea how much better you would feel. Because you’re not entitled to anything.

Blaming others, blaming anything, will take you out of your present and put toxic perceptions in you. Choose to get up every day and bless your day.

Don’t base your gratitude for your life on what you have or how you feel, but just because you are. And then hold in your heart this prayer: This day of my life will never come again. I will never see the sunrise again. I will never see these people again. I will never see this person having breakfast with me again. Nothing in my life like this will ever come again. That choice alone should take out of your heart every bitter taste there is, it will shape the life around you with grace and beauty and make you only want to see the present.

So spend the day and come back tomorrow with one word tomorrow you will never use again. NEVER. If you really had to yank a word out of your head, which means you have to take the whole universe of that word, what would you choose?

**Caroline Myss is an American author of numerous books and audio tapes, including five New York Times Best Sellers: Anatomy of the Spirit , Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can, Sacred Contracts, Invisible Acts of Power, Entering The Castle and Defy Gravity (2009). Her most recent book, Archetypes: Who Are You? was published in 2013.

A regular on The Oprah Winfrey Show, in 2001 she hosted a TV series titled The Journey With Caroline Myss on the Oxygen (TV network), co-owned by Oprah Winfrey, exploring the spiritual and psychological roadblocks of life in an intimate workshop setting.

What word are you going to give up? Write it in this forum.