It’s cold outside. Really cold. That ugly “the-snow-has-turned-to-ice-and-is-no-longer-charming” cold. Granted, it’s January…in Canada…so, suck it up?

My daughter thinks it’s funny that I walk around the house with a hat and scarf on. “Mama’s always cold.” And it’s true. You’ll usually find me huddled on the couch completely encircled by soft, knitted things.

At this point, my side of the bed is just a small mountain of quilts and blankets and fuzzy things that spark alarmingly in the dry winter air. And when I wake up in a sweat, because maybe I overdid it, I can’t take them off.

Because I’ll get cold.

You see the problem.

Okay, I’m really not here to complain about my mild discomfort, particularly when I’m lucky enough to be comfortable in so many other ways. But, it did get me thinking about tipping points.

We all have tipping points and thresholds that we won’t cross. They vary, and might not make sense to the outward eye, but they’re there, weighing the choices we make against some internal scale.

Case in point, I will not turn up the heat just because I’m cold.

Somewhere, inside my shivering self, I’ve recognized that my basic need for warmth does not outweigh the financial and environmental costs of turning up the heat beyond the recommended set point. Nor does it overhaul the very real possibility of boiling everyone else in the house, who apparently have normal bodies.

But every now and then, we do cross that threshold, don’t we? We reach a tipping point and for better or worse, change. The thing is, you can only do that when you know what’s being weighed.

Poorly-veiled cry for warmth aside, it’s worth checking in on your own internal scale every now and then. Sometimes that thing needs to be reset.

Have you ever tipped the scales, taken a left turn, thrown out your playbook? Let me know ↓