Every moment is a crossroads: How to change your life one small choice at a time

Take a look at your life. How did you get where you are today?

No doubt you can put your finger on numerous major turning points that defined the overall arc of your path. What might not be so obvious, though, are the tiny turning points. The micro pivots stemming from the choices you made and the actions you took moment to moment.

Your life as it looks today isn’t just the result of your big decisions. It is also the cumulative result of countless small moments that together led you in one direction or another, shaped your habits, and influenced your ways of being – ultimately creating your current reality.

Sometimes those micro turns nudged you in a positive direction, other times in a negative one. Sometimes they reinforced a helpful way of being, other times they fed a limiting way of showing up.

It’s easy to get lost in the inertia of your life, seeing everything as “the way things are now.” But in reality, your life is infinitely changeable. And nowhere is that more true than in the choices you make moment to moment.

Every moment a crossroads

A few years ago, feeling stuck in a rut that wasn’t working for me, I started exploring the idea of treating every moment as a crossroads.

As I examined how I got there, what kept creating the same ol’ thing, and how to break free of that rut, I started looking at the micro picture. As I did, it was clear how much of both what kept me stuck and what could lead me in a new direction happened at the moment-to-moment level of choice.

There were moment-to-moment choices about, for example, how to spend my time, what to prioritize, what habits to indulge, and the kinds of things I fed my mind.

I started thinking of each moment as a crossroads, one that presented me with a choice of whether to pursue the old mode that wasn’t taking me where I wanted to go, or a new mode that would lead to something better.

Depending on the choice I made, each crossroads offered me a step toward the life I wanted or a step away from it.

I started visualizing it like this:

Every point along the way had the potential to lead me toward what I wanted (the green) or away from it (the brown). And the visual reinforced the notion that, even if I slip, movement towards where I want to go is only one choice away.

In fact, every crossroad is the potential beginning for an endless series of positive choices.

It’s unrealistic to think that every step and every choice is going to lead you in the right direction. But keeping this crossroads concept in mind can make it easier to consciously take a path that leads to the life you want. When you do, you end up with something a little like this.

The beauty of this approach is that it really focuses your attention on the question of, “What choice am I making right now? Which direction am I choosing right now?” And it’s the cumulative effect of those individual choices that takes you where you want to go.

Try this: For the next week, pay attention to the crossroads moments throughout your day. Some examples:

• Whether to eat that salad or that bag of chips.
• Whether to spend time doing something productive, or scroll through still more cat videos on Facebook. (Ouch! Guilty.)
• Whether to reach out and connect with a friend, or sit alone watching mindless TV.
• Whether to give yourself time to rest and refresh, or chase yet another item on your to-do list.
• Whether to give a heartfelt compliment to a co-worker, or just let it slide by unexpressed.
• Whether to apologize to a loved one for being out of line, or whether to double down and insist you were right, even when you know you probably weren’t.

It’s not realistic to keep meticulous tabs on every little crossroads each moment presents. And if you tried, the effort would likely be short lived.  

But if you start paying attention, you might find that there are types of crossroads decisions that are regularly leading you either in a direction you want to go, or a direction you’ll regret.

Start watching the crossroads. Notice what moment-by-moment choices could lead in the direction of a change you want to see, and start making them.

It’s that simple.