opinion
Lives rarely collapse from one dramatic mistake. They erode through a thousand small choices dismissed as harmless. A “yes” when you meant “no.” A compromise that felt easier than holding your boundary. A glance away instead of facing what needed your attention. These moments feel disposable. But choices do not dissolve. They remain. They layer. They accumulate into identity.
The overlooked truth is this: you are not simply making choices. Your choices are making you. And careless choices shape a smaller self - one too fragile to carry the life you want.
Identity is not found, it’s built: We like to imagine identity as something hidden within us, waiting to be uncovered. But identity is not found - it is built. It is built through reinforcement, through the daily decisions we dismiss as too small to matter.
When you say yes when you mean no, you are actually practicing self-betrayal. Repeat it enough, and self-abandonment becomes instinct.Avoid every discomfort, and you’re not just protecting yourself - you’re practicing fragility. Over time, resilience feels unavailable to you because you never rehearsed it.
Scroll your attention away, and you’re not just killing time - you’re rehearsing emptiness. Eventually, depth itself feels foreign because you have trained yourself to live without it. Identity is not mystery; it is practice. And what you repeat, you inevitably become.
Compounding - The quiet force: Life is not one dramatic turning point. It is a sequence of choices, repeated and compounded. Compounding is ruthless. It multiplies whatever you give it - whether strength or weakness. One act, repeated, becomes habit. Habit, repeated, becomes character. Character, repeated, becomes trajectory.
This is how lives stall. Not through sudden catastrophe, but through quiet repetition. Not because nothing is happening, but because everything is happening - and all of it is reinforcing the wrong self. A careless choice does not leave you neutral. It leaves you diminished. A deliberate choice does not just move you forward. It enlarges who you are. Compounding never rests. It is always at work - either refining you or eroding you.
The cost of carelessness: We underestimate the cost of neglect. We imagine careless choices leave us unchanged. But they do not. They reshape us downward.
Every time you abandon a boundary, you return weaker. Every time you avoid discomfort, you return less resilient. Every time you scatter your focus, you return less capable of depth. Neglect is not stillness. Neglect is erosion. And the life you want is not only built by what you choose to do. It is also destroyed by what you repeatedly refuse to do.
The discipline of intentionality: If every choice is reinforcement, then intentionality is not optional - it is the foundation of growth. Intentionality means living with the awareness that nothing is disposable. Every choice points somewhere. Every decision rehearses a self. It is not about perfection or control - it is about clarity. It is asking, with each act: What is this choice teaching me to become?
When you decline what hollows you, you are not merely saying no - you are practicing self-respect. When you rest deliberately, you are not merely pausing - you are practicing restoration. When you give full attention to meaningful work, you are not just being productive - you are practicing excellence. When you choose relationships that challenge and expand you, you are not merely connecting - you are practicing capacity.
Intentionality is not only about avoiding what weakens you. It is about actively reinforcing the qualities that build the life you long for. It is the daily discipline of rehearsing a bigger self - one capable of holding a bigger life.
And this is the point: intentionality is not a small improvement. It is the difference between a life that shrinks and a life that expands. Between a self rehearsed for erosion and a self rehearsed for destiny.
The shape of intentional living: Intentional living is designing your life around what you want reinforced. It is not waiting for growth to happen - it is structuring your days so growth is inevitable. It is choosing the habits, the people and the environments that build the future you actually want to inhabit. It is refusing to outsource your becoming to convenience, fear, or accident. It is saying: if my future is under construction, then I will choose the materials.
Careless living leaves the blueprint blank. It allows distraction to decide what you practice. It allows approval to decide who you become. It allows drift to build the architecture of your life until you wake up inside a structure you never meant to design. Intentionality reverses this. It asks: What do I want to be inevitable about me? And then it builds practices that make it so. If you want resilience, you reinforce it. If you want depth, you rehearse it. If you want integrity, you guard it until it becomes instinct.
This is the shape of living on purpose: not leaving your future to chance but making choices that ensure you grow into the self who can carry the life you want.
Intentionality as living on purpose: To live on purpose is to stop treating life as if it begins later. There is no later. The future is not waiting for you in some distant place - it is being assembled now, choice by choice, in the background of your ordinary days. Living on purpose does not mean controlling every outcome. It means shaping every reinforcement. It means recognising that your life is not built by luck or by accident - it is built by design, and you are the architect.
This should not burden you. It should free you. Because it means the life you want is not beyond your reach - it is within your power. It is not decided by fate but by practice. Every time you choose intentionally, you step into expansion. You live not by chance, but by choice. You stop rehearsing the smaller self - and start training the identity that can carry the larger life already waiting for you.
The future you are training: Your future is not abstract. It is not distant. It is under construction in this very moment. Every careless act rehearses the self who shrinks. Every deliberate act rehearses the self who grows. And those rehearsals, compounded, harden into identity. The future will not ask who you dreamed of being. It will reveal who you trained yourself into.
And here is the most profound truth: the life you long for - the larger, richer, more expansive life - is not waiting for luck to deliver it. It is waiting for you to become the person capable of holding it. That person is built today, in the smallest choices you are tempted to dismiss.
A final word: Every choice reinforces. Treat your choices as disposable and your life will remain small. Treat them as consequential and your life will rise beyond imagination. Because the truth is unavoidable: you are not simply making choices. Your choices are making you. And the self you are building today is the destiny you will live tomorrow.
Neshmeeya Abbas is an author based in London. She can be reached at neshmeeyagmail.com