A crux moment is a time when the choices you make in the next minute will set you on a healthy or unhealthy course for hours, days or even weeks into the future. 

Over the next couple of months, we’ll go through several great strategies for healthy living. But all the health knowledge in the world is pretty much useless if we cannot get ourselves to choose wisely in crux moments. 

So, let’s see if we can do something about that…

Some examples

A typical crux moment would be when you walk past the empty-calorie aisle on your weekly grocery run. The choices you make in those few seconds will strongly influence the nutrition of yourself and your family for the next week. 

Another typical example is when you learn about (or get the urge to look for) a new series to binge-watch. If, in that moment, you choose to indulge, you’re locking in days of stagnation, probably augmented by unhealthy snacking. 

The way we react in crux moments quickly turns into a habit. And such crux moment habits can easily lock in years of good or poor health practices. 

Why do we choose so poorly?

There is no logic to choosing unhealthy options in these crux moments. Clear correlations between healthy eating and happiness and between TV watching and unhappiness have been established. 

In the long run, the healthy choice in crux moments will always bring the most happiness to yourself and your loved ones. The problem, of course, is that we easily discount all this future happiness for a burst of instant pleasure. 

This endorphin addition is incredibly powerful. Every day, it drives billions of people to make choices they know are fundamentally bad for them. 

What can we do about it?

The craving for instant pleasure may be very powerful, but it has a weakness: no stamina. 

Let’s think through our two examples. If you experience strong cravings in the grocery store, but manage to drag yourself past to empty-calorie aisle to the next item on your shopping list, your mind will move on surprisingly quickly. 

Similarly, if you feel the binge-watching craving and manage to get yourself started on a more wholesome activity, the craving will evaporate in no time. 

In other words, if you can extricate yourself from the circumstance that triggered the unhealthy craving, it will fade surprisingly quickly. 

Winning in crux moments

There are two steps to consistently making the right choices in crux moments.

The first step is simply to catch yourself, preferably with a fun visualization to tame your Craving. We often make unhealthy choices totally out of habit, like dogs trained by little treats of endorphins from the instant pleasure industry. Using our human intelligence to break out of this spell is the first step 😉 

Once we’ve caught ourselves, we need to navigate the next couple of seconds. In the moment, making the right choice can feel almost impossible, but just remind yourself of two things:

1. This intense craving will fade very quickly after the right choice is made.
2. The crux moment habits you form over time shape long-term health and happiness for yourself, your family and your planet (see yesterday’s post). 

Please give it a go. It’s hard initially, but gets progressively easier over time as you develop good crux moment habits.

Winning during crux moments is essential to transform upcoming posts from words on a screen into longer and happier lives 🙂