As I celebrated my birthday a few days after Christmas this year, I reflected on how everyday decisions end up becoming lifetime commitments. These choices we are allowed to make in our daily lives, which sometimes include small decisions like what to wear, what to say, what to eat and what to do, can often dictate lifetime consequences that we may not even realize in the moment.

Though we make an estimated 35,000 decisions each day, some decisions we end up making can end up being truly life-changing commitments that will affect us for the remainder of our lives.

For example, what we eat daily may not seem like a huge decision at that moment, but over time what we eat regularly affects our health and well-being. If we choose healthy foods, we stay healthier, but if we don’t, we pay with our health in our later years.

How about what we say or how we say it? Though some may think this surely doesn’t affect my life, it really does. How does it affect you? Well, because how you speak to others and what you speak over yourself will cause others to see you in a positive light or in a negative space. So even your own words can make or break you. Are you a winner or a loser? Are you wise or foolish?

Then there’s what we do daily. Our daily habits will dictate a lifestyle of selecting an action or choice to get up early and meditate or spend time in prayer or working out before starting our day and this will often set a tone for our whole day. Are we appreciative or are we ungrateful for what we have in our lives? Are we vivacious or lethargic? Do we inspire to make a difference or do we just do the bare minimum to get by? This definitely makes an impact on what you do with your life and who you become. What do you contribute to society? Is the world better because you are in it? If you’re not sure then do something to make it better.

You see, all these daily decisions are either moving you closer to your life goals or they are pushing you further away from them. These little decisions make a huge distinction on who you are becoming and where your life is going.

Simple decisions like getting up and being productive for the day or turning off the television and putting down your phone to read a book instead can determine your intellect. How about even going home on time if you value quality time and balancing your home life against your workaholic lifestyle. Do you think those small decisions affect your lifetime outlooks? I think they do.

Then there are major daily decisions that can affect the rest of your life. These include things like choosing a career, managing your time and money, choosing a life partner and getting married or not, having a child or not, even starting a new career can be life changing.

Our decision-making process allows for different alternatives in our lives. It can dictate a good choice to a better choice to even the best choice of all.

I have read The Five P’s of Ethical Power: Purpose, Pride, Patience, Persistence and Perspective.

First and foremost, I believe we all have a purpose but we must find our purpose. A life lived without purpose isn’t much of a life at all.

Then we must take pride in it. That’s pride in our ability to grow and our effort to make a difference. This brings clear purpose and a healthy sense of pride to grow patience, because trust me, you are going to need a lot of patience to accept all the setbacks you will have along your journey. Yes, you will have to learn to tolerate disappointments without compromising your values or standards and that takes a lot of practice.

This brings me to persistence because you are going to have to make daily decisions to get up and keep going. No, it will not be easy. In fact, it may just get harder as you go, but you will become stronger and your persistence will pay off.

Finally you will see things in a new perspective. This perspective will reveal who you are, what you want to do and why you want to do it. You will better understand that every decision you make really matters. Yes, beginning your day with inspirational reading, meditating or journaling helps wake up your soul and gives you greater clarity on your purpose-driven life. This will make you have a positive perspective on all those daily decisions that are making lifetime commitments. So cheers to another year around the sun and to a Happy New Year. We’ve got this!