Holistic Decision Making.

Last night while in that strange no man's land between waking and sleeping(a great place for ideas, I've recently discovered), I realized something.  I've been smoking cigarettes more or less for the last 6 years. I shudder when I think that that much time has gone by, but indeed it has. One thing I've noticed in my quitting stints is if you fail once, you're back to square one. Go 5 days without a smoke, awesome! Friend comes over and offers one and you say screw it, you're screwing yourself.

As much as I've kicked and screamed and searched for loopholes in this simple and painful truth, there is no such thing(for me at least) as "just one"... and it's hard to convince yourself out of a cigarette when "just one" is not that harmful. I realized I have been making segregated decisions, rather than holistic ones. Instead of "I'm choosing to be a smoker", I think "I'm just having one cigarette", when that is not the case at all. Actions set the foundation for habits and thus life. It's easy to make a bad decision that takes just a moment when you think of your decisions as isolated incidents, but when you look at the very real fact that your entire existence is made up of those small moments, you take them a little more seriously. Thinking about whether or not I want to spend my life smoking is much more conducive to my goal than thinking about whether or not I want to smoke in that moment(which I do, of course).

Later on after the idea developed a bit further I realized that this truth applies to everything: Our eating habits, our thoughts, the way we talk to ourselves and others. We are creatures of habit. This is undeniable.

“Every decision you make is not a decision about what to do; it’s a decision about who you are.” -Neale Donald Walsch

The foundation of experience.

       Be open to any and everything that crosses your path. Take your time in experiencing life, give your complete attention to someone, cook a meal and enjoy it thoroughly.
A friend of mine told me about a quote that said "How you do one thing is how you do all things". Keeping this in mind, I'm not even exaggerating when I say that I had an existential breakthrough of pure bliss while simply peeling and eating an orange at work, because I surrendered myself fully to it. I let myself experience it without seeing the peeling process as a hassle or reading something while eating or mentally reviewing my grocery list at the same time.

We all rush through our daily events or obligations as if we're hurrying to get to something else, only to rush through that when it arrives. I often find that I get so caught up in looking forward to free time that I find myself being unable to put on the brakes(mentally speaking) when it actually arrives. And I end up not being present for it!

What are you rushing towards? What are you preparing for? Your life is NOW. Your life is all these "mundane" tasks you rush through each day. You are in complete control over the way you're going to perceive yourself and the events around you. The mood you are in affects how much you notice and what you focus on. If you're in a bad mood, you literally have tunnel vision. In a foul mindset, everything that happens to you throughout the day is going to prove to you that your foul mindset is justified... So why not try living without judgement and see what happens? See each moment as completely and utterly unique, because it truly is. You're always a new person, it will never be this day or this moment again. Treat it as such.