A lot of what I say in this article can be considered common-sensical. Nevertheless, contemplating and reading about these abstract topics have meaning, if only because it encourages heightened awareness – both for the reader and for me, the writer.
Various Aspects Of Our Decision-Making Process
There’s a certain calculus that goes behind our every choice and action. A huge number of inputs and considerations are weighed in an abstract manner by our neurons, the weights of which are determined by our prior experiences, conditioning, beliefs, and values.
Awareness of the thinking behind our decision-making process is inherently meaningful because it gives us a heightened degree of conscious direction (but not complete control) over the actions we take, which enables us to alter the trajectories of our lives.
A good example is our decision-making process centered around health and well-being, particularly sleep, diet, and exercise. How we value these things and what we believe about their significance affects our decision-making over a long period of time. The cumulative calculus of differential decisions over the years then culminates not only in our overall health, quality of life, and overall well-being through the course of our lives, but also in our longevity and the nature of our mortality.
This much is common sense. What isn’t as common-sensical is why some people might value health and others might not. The nuance of innumerable differences between the decision-making of individuals rests in the complexity of countless variables shaped in a myriad ways, which inform the weighting of our neurons.
At a rudimentary neurochemical level, our dopaminergic and serotonergic systems (at the very least; there are plenty of other systems at play) work in tandem with the regulation of reward and mood that often informs the weighting of our neurons which in turn governs decision-making. I am sure I am both over-simplifying and exhibiting my overall lack of knowledge in this arena as I am not a neuroscientist, and even modern neuroscience is rather lacking in its ability to connect the dots between neurotransmitters and neurons and macroscopic behaviors.
With that disclaimer out of the way, we can continue this presumptive model-building.
From a different vantage point, we can elucidate a host of abstract concepts or thoughts that significantly inform decision-making related to the example of personal health.
Our beliefs, which help us formulate our values, may be the single-most important abstract concept in our decision-making process. The inherent sense of physical “goodness” or “reward” we feel from good-health is of equal significance as well.
Someone who believes that health is important may inherently be inclined to value their health, and all aspects relating to it, even without a sense of feel-good deriving from good health.
But why would someone value their health or believe it is important? This comes from a variety of places: our sense of egoic self-identity; our instincts for biological self-survival and propagation; our fears of being in pain or experiencing physical discomfort; our desire for social status or belonging (which could be tagged an egoic consideration).
In contrast, why would someone not value their health? Perhaps because they do not value living, because being alive is painful and they are not convinced good-health alleviates that pain in any meaningful way; or because they passively if not actively wish to die sooner and are willing to bear the discomfort; or perhaps because lack of knowledge, thought, and awareness led them to make decisions counter to their health and they now find themselves in a pit that is either too difficult to get out of, or a situation that feels helpless.
Self-esteem, morale, and a sense of meaning in life and existence, arguably all byproducts of environment and our mental wiring, play a tremendous role in shaping our beliefs. Memory, knowledge, and awareness also play tremendous roles in helping us shape our beliefs. Someone who does not exercise self-awareness may consistently favor short-term gratification over long-term work, and may not even value existence or find meaning in life the same way as someone who practices greater awareness.
Therefore, the nature of one’s consciousness and awareness is of paramount significance in all of this.
Belief-wise, if someone doesn’t believe life holds any value, if life is painful without any sense of gratification, if the future is meaningless and all that matters is the present moment, then they may rationally conclude that personal health is rather worthless. The amount of effort and cognizance necessary to ensure one’s good health will be viewed as an inconvenience not worth the effort.
Another aspect of important consideration is how our brains are wired to perform economics calculations of time and energy cost relative to reward, often in terms of physical reward (e.g. sexual, social, or food-related). For example, being sedentary is conservative of energy, which our brains are hardwired to prefer to a certain degree in relation to our survival. Consuming high-fat, high-calorie foods rich in salt (an important electrolytic nutrient that is essential for regulatory functions but rare to find in the wilderness) helps ensure survival in the wild, so our brains are psychologically hardwired to enjoy or find reward in these things.
Modern fast-food restaurants exploit these psychological underpinnings to encourage psychological addiction to their products in the name of corporate profit and business. Similarly, many forms of entertainment, like video games, movies, and social media, encourage sedentary behavior, which we are psychologically inclined to prefer. Even the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries profits off our being unwell, and so our culture becomes one of treating health problems after-the-fact, rather than encouraging preventative education and behavior.
Because our modern lives are so filled with stimuli that run counter to our long-term well-being, the onus falls upon the individual to consciously develop a set of personal values, self-discipline, and pleasure-reward pathways that intrinsically inform what might be labeled “good” decision-making, in the sense that their decision-making naturally leads to actions which enhance individual well-being in metrics like longevity, physical quality of life, mood, psychological and mental contentedness.
Focus On Awareness, Thought Patterns, And The Discipline Of Long-Term Habits
There are more than a few things you can do to alter your decision-making. The most immediate is to meditate, or sit back and think and contemplate on why you make the decisions you currently do. When you go out to eat ice-cream or buy yourself a cheeseburger, think about why you’re doing it. What is motivating you? What do you believe in, and how is that shaping your motivations? Do you feel your action is qualitatively “good” or meaningful, or are you doing it for physical pleasure? Building awareness of your own beliefs, values, and thought processes is by and far the single-most helpful thing you can do to alter your existing decision-making processes.
You’ll find that for anything you do or think, your reasoning tends to be very multi-dimensional, originating from numerous layers of thoughts. Building awareness of all the different layers of your thinking is a gradual, gentle process: be patient. Don’t expect to suddenly know yourself overnight.
As your awareness and self-understanding grows, take time to contemplate things you could do differently to motivate or alter your behavior patterns, both in the short-term and the long-term. Instead of thinking of turning your life around overnight, think about little things that you can do each day. For example, don’t push yourself to suddenly run three miles in a bid for weight-loss or better health. Instead, start by taking short walks, maybe 10 to 15 minutes in length, and do that every day. Eventually, you will naturally start taking longer walks, your focus will deepen, and your sense of reward from your walks will enhance. Your legs and body will naturally get stronger over time, until eventually you might begin power-walking and interspersing your walks with jogs, or high-intensity interval sprints. Doing this over a long period of time will naturally build your willpower, strength, and stamina over time, both in a physical and mental sense.
By this approach, getting in shape actually ends up being the secondary goal. Your primary goal becomes to build a habit centered around fitness and ultimately well-being. This habit then becomes a priority that you value, and you typically end up having egoic self-identification in your discipline and regularity. This has a spillover effect that begins affecting your other choices: for example, you may naturally find yourself cutting back on alcohol and empty calories, preferring protein and nutrition-rich foods as a rule of thumb.
Changing your sense of values and self-identity through gradual habit-building takes far less mental and cognitive effort than drastic changes rooted in tremendous exercises of willpower, and are far less likely to incur a “relapse” where you revert suddenly to old habits.
Consider the number of people who yo-yo weight-wise when they rely on drastic diets or starve themselves in a bid to lose weight quickly. This is because they are not building a sense of value and identity for the discipline of watching what they eat, a habit which would alter their inherent decision-making and cognitive processes. This would be a long-term change that would result in a certain momentum of habit that could not be so easily unraveled. People who focus on this long-term growth are then able to make “better” decisions over a long period of time with minimal cognitive effort and willpower. The word “better” is used qualitatively, as everyone has differing opinions on what is “better” but it can be presumed most people agree that good health and fitness is preferable (and “better”) than the alternative.
To effect a long-term change in your values and decision-making process, you have to invest long-term effort into it. This is why it’s so essential to reduce any negative psychological barriers (a sense of pain or punishment from an activity) or heightened requisites of willpower to engage in an activity. If we think of every activity as having an “activation cost” of mental energy and willpower to engage in, we are simply trying to minimize the activation cost.
We only have a finite amount of willpower in each day, so be sparing in how you apply it. Rely more on cognitive momentum borne from habit and altered thinking patterns, rather than sheer, conscious force.
That isn’t to say building conscious willpower isn’t meaningful, but you will find that your willpower naturally increases by virtue of a long-term, dedicated habit. In other words, by making tasks easier and focusing on altering your thinking in the long-term, you get the added benefit of greater willpower and self-control anyways.
Examine Your Philosophical And Ideological Beliefs And Values
Much of our conscious direction and motivation derives from the lens through which we view the world. We take action based on what we believe is important, which rests upon our presumptions about the nature of the universe, our idea of what life is about, and our notions of what we are personally living for. We each have conceptualizations of what brings us not only the greatest individual satisfaction or happiness, but what enables us to meaningfully connect with others and the rest of society: friends, family, coworkers, and people at large. We can term these our philosophical foundations and beliefs, the complete set of which is far more expansive than the few points mentioned heretofore.
The person who believes there is worth in humanity and human connection and that their role in life is to connect meaningfully with others will more naturally be sociable, friendly, and amicable to people at large. They may even exhibit a heightened degree of selflessness, going above and beyond expectations to care for others. Compare this to someone who believes that human connection brings nothing but pain, that humans are untrustworthy, and that their role in life is perhaps simply to seek self-fulfillment: such an individual will make much more selfish choices, more readily manipulate others, and care less for the well-being of others by and large.
Similarly, by having a clear, conscious notion of our philosophies and perspectives on life and purpose, we can construct much clearer conscious motivation for a particular goal or pursuit. For example, if someone wishes to become a scientist or researcher, they may philosophically value knowledge and humanity, and can make a clear conscious bridge that pursuing scientific research will not only bring them individual fulfillment, but will enable them to contribute meaningfully to others and humanity at large. They can root their egoic identity in such a pursuit, which in turn can strengthen their will and ability to overcome challenges as they pursue the path of scientific research.
Contrast this with a similarly inclined individual who instead is pursuing science purely for money, and is less concerned with knowledge than with capitalizing on knowledge for profit. The latter is much more likely to go into a more lucrative field, say drugs and medicine (as an example) whereas the former type of researcher may choose a more pure pursuit that isn’t as likely to be enriching, for example, mathematics or physics.
Similarly, someone who values fitness, health, and their family might make the connection that their personal health directly improves their mood and gives them more energy to devote to the people they love. They may also conclude that a good exercise and diet regimen builds self-discipline, which is a trait that positively impacts their career and egoic sense of self. As a result, this kind of individual can consciously motivate themselves to exercise more, because they have a philosophical underpinning that has led them to value the more abstract gains they can find in fitness and personal health (self-discipline and clearer thinking). Their philosophy will also lead to long-term life choices that favor health and well-being in general.
Contrast the above kind of individual to someone who only wishes to look fit and be healthy in order to attract a partner. This kind of individual may only be interested in fitness and health in the short-term. When their goal of finding a partner is accomplished, they are much more likely to revert to unhealthy habits out of convenience, because they are lacking a clear conscious motivation rooted in a personal philosophy and set of beliefs.
Thus, refining your personal philosophy and even altering it can be a powerful force for long-term change and growth.
The Power Of Thought
Everything we do is mental. Our thoughts are what manifest into words, then action. Therefore, by having enhanced awareness of your thoughts, then altering or refining your beliefs, you can directing your brain to think in a certain way, which will in-turn naturally manifest as action.
This is why exercises of self-visualization are so powerful. By sitting alone and imagining yourself doing something, you begin to direct your brain to think in a certain way. When you make this into a habit e.g. by spending a certain amount of time each day not only thinking of working out, but also visualizing what workouts you will do and immersing yourself in literature and media related to exercise, you will begin to see that eventually, you naturally gravitate in that direction and almost effortlessly take action towards it. This is an example of reducing the “activation cost” of a particular activity by simply directing consistent conscious focus in a particular direction.
Restructuring your thoughts is a far subtler and deeper way to alter your habits in the long-term, compared to self-imposed discipline and forcing yourself to do things until it becomes a mental habit. The former is an “inside to outside” approach wherein you cultivate deep self-awareness that will serve you in everything you do. The latter approach of cultivating specific mental habits by imposing external motivation and action (e.g. by joining a training program or hiring a personal trainer) can be described as an “outside to inside” approach in which you are using conscious willpower combined with physical action to train your brain to behave in a certain way. This is how schools and institutions “train” people.
My general observation is people who learn how to train themselves tend to be much more mentally flexible and psychologically adaptable compared to people who rely on external forces to train themselves. This may be because it already requires a certain degree of imagination and intelligence to cultivate metacognition and alter one’s metaprogramming.
On the other hand, people who rely on external motivators, like a training program, tend to be more rigid in their thinking and approach. They know how to approach things of familiarity but they tend to avoid things outside their comfort zone and are somewhat averse to change. They prefer doing things in a very specific way. This kind of individual has the added benefit of high focus in their chosen realm, and may be able to go much farther in their chosen field than a more metacognitively aware generalist.
Stated differently, I am highlighting the difference between someone who learns how to learn, versus someone who learns one thing. The former person is cultivating a life-skill with universal applicability while the latter is simply hardwiring a very specific way of thinking about things. Of course, you don’t have to be “one or the other” as you can apply both approaches in tandem, which is the most powerful approach.
My advice? There’s no good reason not to cultivate self-awareness and self-direction. Choosing self-direction and self-training where you gradually alter your thought processes will make everything you do considerably more fulfilling and enable you to go farther than others who are doing things purely based on rote and habit.
Integrating Awareness Into Daily Life
All of this ultimately converges on a simple but easily overlooked point: awareness is not a one-time realization, but an ongoing practice. Metacognition is not something you “achieve” and then possess permanently; it is something you repeatedly return to, sharpen, and refine. Each day presents a fresh set of decisions, and each decision subtly reinforces or erodes the values and habits you are cultivating.
What makes this particularly important in the domain of health is that health-related decisions are rarely dramatic or singular. They are mundane, repetitive, and often boring. You don’t usually ruin your health in a single catastrophic choice, nor do you build excellent health through a single heroic effort. Instead, you do so through thousands of quiet micro-decisions: whether you move your body today, what you eat when no one is watching, how you sleep, how you manage stress, and how you speak to yourself internally. These decisions compound, much like interest, and metacognition allows you to notice the compounding process while you are still inside it.
As awareness increases, something subtle but profound begins to happen. You start to experience a widening gap between impulse and action. In that gap lives choice. At first the gap is small—barely perceptible—but even a small gap is enough to introduce direction where previously there was only reaction. Over time, as awareness deepens, the gap widens further, and what once felt automatic becomes optional. This is where genuine freedom begins to emerge—not freedom from biology or psychology, but freedom within them.
Importantly, this process does not require perfection, moral purity, or asceticism. You are not required to always make the “optimal” decision, nor to strip life of pleasure. In fact, attempting to do so often backfires and leads to rigidity, guilt, and eventual collapse. The goal is not to eliminate pleasure, but to contextualize it—to understand what kind of pleasure you are choosing, at what cost, and in service of what broader vision of your life. Pleasure that is consciously chosen is fundamentally different from pleasure that is compulsively sought.
Health As A Reflection Of Meaning
At its deepest level, the question of health cannot be separated from the question of meaning. How much you care for your body is, in many ways, a reflection of how much you care for your continued existence and what you believe that existence is for. If life feels empty, hostile, or devoid of purpose, neglecting one’s health can feel not only rational but merciful. Conversely, when life feels meaningful—when you feel oriented toward something larger than immediate comfort—caring for your health begins to feel less like a chore and more like stewardship.
This reframes health from a narcissistic pursuit into a responsibility. Your body becomes the vehicle through which everything you value is expressed: your relationships, your work, your creativity, your capacity to help others, and even your ability to endure suffering with dignity. Seen this way, health is not an end in itself, but a prerequisite for participation in life at depth.
This perspective can be especially powerful during periods of low motivation or existential fatigue. You may not feel like exercising for the sake of aesthetics, or eating well for the sake of abstract longevity. But you may still be able to act in service of something you care about: being present for the people you love, maintaining clarity of mind for your work, or simply reducing future suffering—for yourself and others. Meaning can carry you through periods where discipline alone would fail.
Closing Thoughts
If there is a single thread running through all of this, it is that your decision-making is not fixed. It is plastic, trainable, and deeply influenced by awareness, belief, and identity. By learning to observe how you think, why you value what you value, and how your thoughts translate into action, you gain leverage over the trajectory of your life. Not absolute control—but meaningful influence.
Health, in this framework, is not about optimization for its own sake. It is about alignment: aligning your daily actions with your deeper beliefs, your long-term well-being, and your sense of purpose. When alignment is present, “good” decisions become easier, more natural, and less psychologically costly. When alignment is absent, even the best advice feels oppressive and unsustainable.
Cultivating metacognition is therefore an act of self-respect. It is the decision to take your own inner life seriously—to understand it rather than be dragged along by it. In doing so, you are not merely improving your health; you are refining the very mechanism by which you live, choose, and become who you are.
And over a lifetime, there are few investments with a higher return.
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