This year, 2024, seems likely to be so pivotal to so many in so many ways – there will be elections here and in the USA, two major wars are underway and worse threatens, global economies are embattled and some feel that civilisation as we have known it, is changing or even threatened. Conflict and polarisation seems to characterise so much around us. A great deal may come down to choices. Choices made by voters and by leaders. Choices made by people. Choices made by all of us…..
On the wellness front, we make choices too. Let us consider some…

  • We choose costly and unhealthy fast food instead of cooking nutritious meals. Is the ease and convenience really worth the cost of this choice? (For clarity we are really addressing those who eat fast food more than once a week or so.)
  • We choose 45 minutes in bed or watching TV instead of going for a walk or a run. Are we truly so exhausted and depleted that we simply cannot move? Maybe? But every day and every week? It is a choice…
  • We choose to be “right” when arguing (at home or at work or anywhere really). Rather than listening more completely and finding some areas for compromise and agreement. We put pride before peace. We put self before solutions. Is the issue or point really so important, and our views so absolutely correct, without any doubt, that we simply must insist as we do? Certainly, there may be just such instances sometimes. But not always and probably not often…
  • We choose to spend today rather than investing in tomorrow. Sometimes it is just small things (those coffees…) and sometimes it’s major (that flash car…) but even if the scale differs, the choice is the same one: now matters more than later. And maybe it does. But probably not, eh? Each of us decides for ourselves…
  • We choose to continue our unhealthy habits or addictions. This varies but many of us have them or have had them. We rationalise in all manner of ways but in the end we do know the truth: these are crutches or Band-Aids over our deeper and more serious wounds and we really need to deal with the wounds themselves. Or something a bit like that. Don’t we?

So. As we all enter what may just be a momentous year, let us consider carefully, those choices we make.

Author: Dr Colin Burns, retired medical practitioner and wellness coach