Small, Beautiful Choices
Sharing a short post about one of my new favorite concepts: small, beautiful choices.
A small, beautiful choice is one that improves your life in the moment, in a way that’s consistent with who you wish to be, without radically altering the overall course of your life.
I’m not talking about deciding where to live, what to do for work, whether and whom you’ll marry, or whether or not you’ll have kids — those are all BIG decisions. They can certainly be beautiful choices, but they will also dictate many of the other facets of your life, a la the 80/20 Principle.
No, I’m talking about little decisions like ordering dessert or taking the stairs instead of the elevator. Making either choice once or twice will not determine your destiny, but, in conjunction with all your other decisions, it will lead your life closer or further from a future you’d want to inhabit.
At this point, you might point out that I’m just talking about habits. And small, beautiful choices, when combined with other similar small, beautiful choices, will move your life in a particular direction, in the same way that habits do.
But what I’m focused on here is not so much the formation of repetitive behaviors that we carry for years on end, but rather a short trigger phrase, meant to reframe our outlook in a particular moment.
The idea of “small, beautiful choices” is not meant to replace “habits” — instead, the point here is to narrow our attention, to point out the value of the choice in this moment, with little or no regard to our usual habits.
Imagine a health-conscious person who has no dietary or allergenic concerns but has decided she will not eat any desserts for the sake of her waistline. She has made it her habit to eschew all forms of culinary indulgence, whether naturally or artificially sweetened.
We might agree that her seeking to be healthy is generally both virtuous and wise. But you can imagine a situation — a birthday party or retirement celebration — where her refusal to partake makes her feel disconnected from her community, or makes another friend feel ashamed or, worse, makes her subtly resentful of the people around her, merely for enjoying their treats.
In such an instance, maybe she should maintain her general habit of not eating desserts, but — for just this instance — she could focus on connecting with the people around her and uplifting her mood by making the small, beautiful choice to have a dessert. (And then carry right on the next day with her health-conscious habit.)
As my wife and I like to say, sometimes the wise thing to do is to eat the ice cream — maybe in a moment where the point is not about the calories, but to connect with the people around you, to show your shared sense of humanity and celebration; even, perhaps, just to improve your own mood.
Small, beautiful choices require sensitivity, awareness, presence — you must be alive to what exists in the reality of a moment and then act according to the specific contours of that exact instance. This is different from a habit, which might produce a tired, automatic response, regardless of nuance.
So, if the notion serves you, I invite you to take it and run with it. Go and find moments in your life where you can make small, beautiful choices that are in line with the kind of person you wish to be, and that will improve your life right then and there.