Decisions are that pivotal point in our journey to be healthier in body spirit and soul. They take us in one direction or the other: they can move you towards being healthier, wholer and freer with more balance in your life, or they take you a step away. The nanosecond where you make a decision is really important.

But, it’s not just about that nanosecond. Decisions are influenced by our past, our present surroundings, and how we want our future to look. This video, and the blog below, looks at these three elements in more detail.

1. The Past: The decisions that you make today about your health, and becoming healthier in and body, spirit and soul, are going to be influenced by your past. You can learn from mistakes that you’ve overcome, or past experiences that have gone really well; you can learn from things that you’ve read, things that you’ve seen and the way that you felt in the past too. All of these can lead towards you making healthy decisions.

But there are also going to be things in your past that have caused you not to make the healthiest decisions and recognising those things too is really helpful. It could be that you’ve listened to wrong voices. Perhaps you’ve listened to the lies of the world or from the dieting industry. Perhaps you’ve learnt things like: ‘all carbohydrates are bad’ or that ‘you can’t ever eat cheese again’, which influence the decisions you make today.

Perhaps you’ve got some limiting beliefs: if things haven’t worked out for you in the past and you haven’t been able to break free, then you may struggle to believe it is going to be different this time around. Perhaps you find it hard to really believe God wants you to be free in this area. There’s not a lot we can do about things that happened in the past, but we can change the way that we respond to them now.

God is outside of time so, if there are things coming through from your past that are influencing your decisions in the moment, then with God’s help you can work through and untangle them, so they don’t have such an impact on your decisions anymore. So, it’s really important to look back at the past and see if there’s any less-than-healthy influences that mean that your decisions in the moment aren’t as healthy.

2. The Present: You current situation will affect whether you make healthy decisions or not. Things in your environment can make certain decisions easier or harder to make. If your current situation is leading you to make less-than-healthy decisions, the good news is that this area is easier to change! We can’t always change everything about our current situation or the stresses and strains that you might be experiencing, but you might be able to change how they affect you.

Some of the most common reasons people overeat is because they open the fridge, or the cupboard and the food is there. Or there are cake or biscuits sitting on the counter. This is easy to change. You can remove things that aren’t helpful from your environment; you can change your routines, or the structure of your day and the things that you do.

I heard a great example from a lady on one of my courses, who changed the chair she sat in after coming downstairs having put her children to bed in the evening. Sitting in a different place meant she had a view she could enjoy and a more comfortable spot to pick up some knitting or crochet. This simple change to where she sat helped her to stop overindulging on snacks or wine.

Changing your environment or the triggers for decisions can make all the difference. It could be that laying out exercise clothes the night before or knowing where your trainers are will encourage you to follow through with planned exercise the next day. Perhaps even buying some new exercise clothes that make you feel a bit better will help. There are lots of things we can do to change our current environment, even if we can’t change our situation, that will affect our decisions and make sure that they are more balanced.

3. The Future: The future also has a big impact on the decisions that we make today. How do you see yourself in the future? Ideally, with no holds barred, what kind of character are you? What do you believe God has called for you to be? He gives us all that we need; immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine.

So, what kind of person do you want to be and what kind of lifestyle do you want to have? Do you want to be living a healthy lifestyle in body, spirit and soul?  If so, it’s important to work out what steps you need to take, working backwards, so that your decisions today line up with the future ‘you’ that you want to be.

Decisions are really pivotal and affect whether, in the moment, we take a healthier path or less healthy path. If we can recognise the influence of past, present and future, this can help us to make healthier, balanced decisions for our body, spirit and soul.

Join us in Motivationfish our supportive FB community for more tips.