From Mundane to Extraordinary: The Transformative Power of Consequential Choices
Every choice in life leads to a different trajectory. The path you take depends on your decision. To better understand, let’s divide choices into two categories. You can either binge-watch the latest web show or work on the book you’ve been procrastinating on. You can scroll through reels on IG or go to the gym. You can take the elevator or use the stairs. These are the simple day-to-day choices. However, I want to focus on consequential choices — the turning points that have the power to break you out of your mundane life and set you on a new path.
The Easy Path
This path is the opposite of the path offered by consequential choices. It involves staying where you are and allowing people, situations, and random luck to determine your fate, essentially living life on autopilot. This path primarily caters to the pleasure-seeking tendencies of the primitive part of the brain, focusing on immediate gratification and avoiding effort. While everything on this path may provide temporary satisfaction, it ultimately leads to negative consequences in the long term. It hampers the potential for new opportunities and growth in your life’s journey, killing the potential of new branches from sprouting on the Tree of Life.
“Netflix and Chill” can be good but it’s crucial to consider the context. If you have assignments or pending projects and you’re using Netflix as a means to escape reality, you may experience underlying anxiety. Your subconscious is aware that you should be working on completing the project, so you end up trying to relax and feeling like shit at the same time.
Pleasure without effort can lead to negative emotions. To live a good life, it is important to combine pleasure with effort.
The Difficult Path
The difficult path is choosing to begin writing the book you’ve always wanted to write, start taking swimming lessons, join a gym, and so on. It’s not solely about the small choices you make on a daily basis, but also about selecting the path that will lead you to make those choices. It is navigating the ship in the right direction and staying on course.
Putting in effort can be challenging, but it makes you feel good; we have evolved to experience a sense of satisfaction after putting in the work. Without something that motivates you, it can drive you to a state of restlessness. If you opt for something that requires little effort, you may experience momentary satisfaction due to the release of dopamine. However, in the long run, you will become unhappy because humans are not designed to constantly seek pleasure. Recent studies indicate that leading a comfortable life and constantly feeding ourselves around the clock is actually detrimental to longevity.
What are Consequential choices?
The choice that steers you in a new direction and serves as a starting point for new opportunities, connections, and experiences is the consequential choice. It brings surprises. Adds unpredictability, and we all love that for some reason. Consequential choices can also be termed as major choices. You’ll rarely make more than 6 of them in a year, therefore it is important that you pay close attention.
Every single consequential decision or choice brings us to a point where the possibilities are endless. For instance, if you choose to learn and practice the guitar daily, it opens up a new set of opportunities and experiences for your future self. You may have the chance to play on various occasions, make new friends, or find the kind of friends you’ve always wanted. Additionally, you might receive invitations to parties and even capture the attention of someone you’ve always liked. I may be indulging in my own fantasies now, but you understand the point.
The same example can be applied to books. Begin reading them, join book clubs, make friends with fellow enthusiasts, and enjoy your changed life. Your consequential choice can be anything. You can easily make a list. As a matter of fact, you know what it is inside as you’re reading this. You can consider making a rough list of consequences/experiences it will generate for you. The element of surprise will always be there.
What’s beautiful is that every choice can bring a potential opportunity. It is up to you to pursue the hard path, and you know which one it is in your heart.
The resistance you feel before a effortful task, is there for a reason. Use it as compass. The thing you are fear the most is the thing you should pursure first.
Important Advice
Don’t fall into the trap of chasing consequences. Sure you can reverse engineer your choices based on the kind of experiences you want to have. However, if you’re not in love with the action. You will never be content. You will be living a lie. You’ll be a wannabe. Choose directions that genuinely align with your likes, dislikes, and values.
If there’s nobody left on earth, would you still do what you love? would you still love what you do? I don’t believe any normal human being does any activity without expecting any kind of social validation whether it helps him get status in society, connect with people, or share his experiences with others.
Thinking in Consequences
If you practice and adopt the habit of considering the consequences before making choices or decisions, you will be able to guide your behavior and anticipate future outcomes. Not only this helps you in making major choices but also guides you on daily habits. You begin to observe whether your actions are aiding your progress or hindering your growth toward the person you aspire to be. This will help you recognize the potential costs that your future self may have to bear. Always keep an eye out for your future self.
Second and Third-Order Consequences
We often fail to consider the future consequences of our decisions before making them. For example, we might think that binge drinking just once this weekend won’t affect your life if only just this once. Let’s consider the potential second-order consequences of this decision.
You are a person who rarely drinks and dislike the after-effects. However, you are now faced with a choice to drink over the weekend, and you decide to go for it.
Second Order Effects: You’re likely to experience a hangover tomorrow, accompanied by a headache, leading you to cancel your social plans and stay home. During this time, you’ll probably spend your day scrolling the internet. This sluggish and lazy feeling may extend into your Monday, making it difficult to feel productive until later in the day. We all understand the importance of starting the week off on the right foot. Although you might feel somewhat better, your motivation might still be lacking. At this point, you find yourself eagerly waiting for the weekend reset. It’s possible that you’ve compromised an entire week due to a night of drinking. And now, the weekend is here once again, and you’ve just received an invitation to another party or fun night. The question is, should you choose to accept it or not?
Every single choice is a vote for the kind of person you are becoming.
Third-Order Effects: That one-night drinking got you hooked, and your brain rationalized that there’s no harm in doing it once in a while. So, you started doing it every 3rd or 4th weekend. You made peace with the hangovers and accepted a day or two of sluggishness. However, something bad happened: you found out that your girlfriend is cheating on you. When you confronted her, she showed no remorse and left you. This caused you immense pain. Due to repeated experiences, your mind has associated drinking with feeling good, leading to a craving for alcohol. As a result, you now drink every weekend and gradually escalated to consuming it daily. And that’s how things stand. One choice, one decision, can have a long chain of effects on your life.
Every choice matters. No action exists in isolation, each decision will have an impact on other parts of your life.
We don’t typically think in terms of weeks or months, so expecting us to suddenly start thinking in terms of decades and a lifetime overnight is a bit unrealistic. However, with enough practice, you can easily develop a long-term perspective.
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