What matters? Everything......

      "At first, it was just that I didn't feel like doing the dishes, I mean, they could wait another day, couldn't they? So I let them pile up. Seeing the pile of dirty dishes made me feel a bit guilty, so I didn't feel like doing the house cleaning. So my place started to feel like a dump and I felt uncomfortable being there. I mean, what was the point, it was just going to get messy again, right? So I started to hang out at friends places, cos I didn't wanna go home and be reminded of the work my place needed done, I mean, who doesn't wanna hang out with their friends? So, my dirty clothes pile got so big I was gonna need a truck to get them all to the laundry, so I got used to wearing the same clothes for days. My friends started to say that I was smelly, but, hey, my place was such a depressing place who wanted to hang out there anyway?"

There are many things in life that we have no control over, we can't affect the outcomes, but there are also lots of seemingly insignificant things we can. Whatever choices we make, they have outcomes, and if we want a specific outcome, we have to chose accordingly. One of the great aspects of humanity is our adaptability, but unfortunately, it can also become our demise. We can fall into the grips of inertia. "Who cares? So what? What's the hurry? Let someone else fix it...I'll do it later, etc.etc". Someone once said: "You are on the outside what you are on the inside"....hmmm.

If you usually care about your home environment, then ignoring the mess will probably affect you emotionally. If you care about your work environment, and then stop doing your level best, it will affect you emotionally. If you care about your relationships, and then ignore those niggling feelings telling you something is wrong, it will affect you emotionally. If you are worried about a friend being unusually quiet, loud, drunk, hostile, angry, depressed, anxious, but do nothing, it will affect you emotionally. If you are witness to an act that is unethical, immoral in your view, but walk away doing nothing, it will affect you emotionally. Although we do not constantly recite the Bill of Rights, the 10 commandments, or whatever constitutes our moral/ethical priorities at the forefront of our consciousness, most of us have an inner script that we follow and when we deviate the outcome can be emotional fall-out. (If you don't usually care about making the bed, doing the dishes, cleaning the place, doing the laundry regularly etc...try doing those things for a bit maybe and see if it affects you emotionally?) If you usually keep yourself to yourself but decide to ask that sad person why he is sad, it will affect you emotionally. If you usually don't worry about if there's milk left for your co-workers coffee, but decide to make sure theres enough for everybody, it will affect you emotionally.

If you usually find it hard to tell your partner what's on your mind, but decide to anyway, it will affect you emotionally. Everything matters, what we do, what we think, what we say, and all our choices no matter how insignificant they may seem, have definite outcomes that in turn will affect our emotional state, how we feel, so basically we chose how we want to feel......