Decisions, Decisions

Can you believe how many decisions we make each and every day? Some short-term, some long-term--our lives are full of decisions.

Odds are that a majority of the choices you make on a daily basis are actually made without you thinking about them.

We get to switch into autopilot and simply follow what we’ve done for years, how we were taught, or what we’ve seen advertised. Afterall, the cheapest pre-shredded cheese at Costco must be the best deal and taste the best, right?

This extends to life-decisions as well, like that the average person should eat 2,000 calories in a day, or the fact that of course dieting is the only way to have a more fit body, or that you color your hair when you start to see grays, or pencil in eyebrows if they’re too light. Are these really true facts? We certainly sometimes act like they’re rules to be followed.

I had an amazing opportunity to live in France for a while when I was around age 20. Many of these “facts” that I grew up with simply were not true in Europe.

For example, many French women wash their hair once a week. Once. A. Week. This was such a stretch from what I had grown up thinking was the “clean” or “mature” or “proper” or “well-groomed” thing to do. These were beautiful, professional, French women who I trusted and admired, telling me that washing your hair once a week was much healthier and the way to go.

I was shocked at first, but they encouraged me to try it out. They explained that my hair would be greasy for a couple weeks because the hair follicles were used to producing more oil, but that my hair would balance out quickly.

Having literally the thickest hair I’ve ever met, I was excited at the thought of washing, drying, and straightening less often. Seriously, everyone who has ever cut my hair has said something along the lines of, “Well, that’s the thickest hair I’ve ever cut.” The shear volume honestly deterred me from even doing my hair most of the time.

Anyways, my point being that this was an experiment that I was more than willing to try given the amount of time my hair took. Sure enough, within a few weeks, I was able to wash my hair once a week, style it, and have it looking great for days at a time. It’s been over a decade and I still follow that same French routine and I still get surprised looks here in America when I tell people I wash my hair only once a week (or even less...so crazy, right?). It might not seem like a huge change, but that’s only 4 times a month that you’re washing hair. Sounds pretty grand, right?

I’ll add that the less products and shampooing I’ve done over the years, the less dandruff I’ve had as well, which I used to think was a sign of dirty hair. Wrong again!

For your enjoyment, me in front of Notre Dame during my Parisian exploring days.

What’s my point with this detour to Paris? My point is that we cling to what we know or what we’ve seen, usually without question.

In the book Essentialism, by Greg McKeown, he says “If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.” Meaning our decisions have to be deliberate and they have to be ours, or we’ll just follow what we’ve seen others do, or others will choose for us (like advertisers, sales at the grocery store, family members, friends, parents, etc.).

I’ve never liked being told what to do, so I of course would prefer to make my own decisions.

Ok, ok, so we get the point. Think about your decisions.

If you consider REconsidering all of the decisions you make in one day from start to finish, it might feel a little overwhelming, but start with something you care about.

Our family’s starting point for reconsidering the way we’d done things was with food.

My husband and I loved a lot of the foods we grew up with, so we knew we wanted to try to preserve some of those great recipes. We did however, reinvent most of them with ingredients that we felt better about eating and feeding to our kids.

I’ll get more into organic foods in later blogs, but buying mostly organic was one of the biggest changes in our house.

I will warn you, when you admit to people that you buy mostly organic, you hear a lot of surprising comments. We’ve heard countless people tell us that they’d never buy organic because it costs more or that it’s completely fake and just a way to make more money from food production. Cost is a perfect example of a decision being made for you. If you base your decision off of price (setting aside those who have to buy based off of extremely limited finances), then the decision is already made for you.

I can tell you that at the time we evaluated our food, I had a looooong laundry list of health problems. I tried loads of elimination diets (wheat, dairy, corn, eggs, etc.) with some success. But, (are you ready for this?) I had literally the most success curbing my symptoms when I eliminated all foods that were not organic. REALLY?! Really.

Again, we’ll circle back to organic in the future, but there is something to thinking outside the norm and trying things out for yourself. I resisted going organic, especially because we were students on a limited budget at the time, but boy am I glad we tried it because it cut down on the hours I spent at the doctor’s office.

I’m still often considering our daily routine and looking for areas where we’ve fallen habit and hoping to uplift and improve our life by choosing based on our personal or family criteria.

Good luck deciding out there! I can’t wait to hear what decisions you make!

-Whitney