Good Decisions and Bad Decisions

I am finding that lately my blog is less about adoption and foster care and more about motivation and self control and positive thinking and all the stuff that is helping me get through these last few months.

I suppose there isn’t anything wrong with it, but remember -- if you want me to blog about something, all you have to do is ask or leave a comment. I’ll blog about anything you want as I have an opinion about everything. Seriously.. ;-)

Today on the way home from the YMCA I gave Sadie a mini-lecture about good and bad choices. She was telling me that this morning she really didn’t want to get up and come to the Y with me. I told her it was a good thing she did and then I shared this with her, and actually was surprised that I hadn’t thought of it before. I’m sure someone else has said it to me -- nothing new under the sun you know -- but it made sense in a new way to me today.

Good decisions make future good decisions easier.

Bad decisions make future good decisions harder.

I gave her some examples. I started with the Y this morning. I said, you made your body get up for four days in a row with me. You made four good decisions. So when day number five came along and you could say to yourself, “of course I can do that. I just did it the last four days.”

Then I went on (as I am prone to do). If someone offers you a beer someday and you say “No, I don’t drink”, then the second time you are offered a beer it is easier to say no again. I told her that now, after having never had a drink in my life, people still try to tempt me and I just laugh. “Why would I want to start drinking NOW?” I ask them. They usually mention my twelve kids as their answer, but I just laugh them off. I’ve said no to alcohol so many times that saying yes is not even an option in my mind.

I mentioned to her that we should consider the opposite decision. If someone offered you a beer one weekend and you said, “Sure” even if you didn’t want to, what would happen the next weekend? If they said, “Want a beer?” you could not longer respond with “No, I don’t drink” because they would simply say, “Sure you do. You did last weekend.”

So, each good decision makes future good decisions easier.

Each bad decision makes future good decisions harder.

It works with dieting. It works with exercise. It works with peer pressure. It works with not letting our kids control us.

I explained to her that building character is all about taking one step at a time and building on it. Each time that we control ourselves, whatever it is about, the easier it is to do so the next time.

And she is really doing it this summer. One day at a time. She is making good choices. She has a goal to earn enough money to have a cell phone by her 14th birthday which she is well on her way to doing. I only pay $4.00 an hour but she has a schedule written up for herself. I’m so proud to see her so determined, but we may go broke having to pay her by the end of the summer. :-)

It’s fun watching her running on that treadmill. It’s fun watching her crawl out of bed when she is sleepy and doesn’t want to. It’s fun to watch her working hard to earn money.

She’s having such a great summer. I’m so proud of her.