The Decisions You Make That Make You
People decided to vote. Our president was elected by a narrow margin of votes in some states that pushed the final electoral votes over the tipping point. Votes mattered.
Your vote matters every day in life. You vote on what you eat. You vote on when to go to bed. You vote on how you will treat others at home, work, or community. You vote on hundreds of small decisions daily. Over time, those votes/decisions pile up. The decisions you make, then make you.
Example. I step on the scale and wonder, “How did I get here?” I am about 70 pounds overweight. I did not gain all that weight overnight. Over the past 25 years, I have continually made several small decisions that contributed to my current health: obese and diabetic. For most of my life, I could eat whatever I wanted and not gain a pound. There was no visible effect of poor decisions day after day . . . until there was. At age 40 after blowing out my knee and being relegated to the treadmill instead of basketball, I started gaining small amounts of weight. Then, I started a business, that led to more businesses. No time for the gym plus day after day of poor diet choices. The slight decisions made daily then made me.
I am Doctor Peace. I work every day to help others gain peace. I work hard on my inner peace as well. My one BIG area – weight. If I am going to have total inner peace, I need to lose weight, get off my diabetic medication and become healthy. I do not know what keeps you from inner peace. I just know that something or someone keeps most of us from peace.
How do I change my situation and gain more peace? How do you? What decisions have you been making on a daily or weekly basis that creates or destroys peace? Those decisions can relate directly to our peace or the peace we experience with others. The first principle of peace is getting your peace together. We cannot pass peace to others without peace in ourselves.
How do we work on our peace?
1. We must become honest about the source. I lack peace around weight because of the choices I make every day. I cannot blame others. It does not help to heap shame on myself. It does help to call it out. The source in this case was easy. Whatever is stealing your peace – money, stress, work, relationships, or other factors, you must be honest about the decisions made that contributed to the chaos. Not necessarily big decisions. Those tiny habits and decisions made every day that have now made you.
2. We must change to find peace. This is the hard one, or so it seems. We must change. I must change. The only people I know who want change is a baby with a dirty diaper. Change is hard and usually resisted. I will not lose weight until I make healthy choices on a moment by moment basis. Not even day by day. I just need to make a good decision right now. Then, I can make another good decision in a few hours, or even minutes. When we think of the mountain to climb, we often become paralyzed to take the first step. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “You don’t need to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” Step by step we change, I change, you change. If we want personal peace, we vote every day for the change. If we want national peace, we vote every day on how we love and treat one another.
I want to make decisions every day that will make me a better version than the day before. I want to learn more, care more, give more, live more. I want to help over 3 million people find more peace by 2030. Want to join me by getting our peace together so we can pass peace to others?