As the titled mentioned, is there anything that we should do to avoid undesirable life consequences?
Don’t break more than one law at a time
That depends. If everyone is speeding, don’t be that one goody two-shoes if you’re afraid of getting caught with drugs.
Break the law like you usually would if you’re breaking other laws intentionally.
AKA - Don’t be stupid while you’re being stupid.
Yes. There is an entire field of risk management devoted to this topic. It’s complex.
There are some strategies that you can use in a wide variety of situations: commit as late as possible, figure out how to undo something before you do it, imagine the worst consequences to an action and then decide if you can accept that worst outcome.
How to do those things? It depends on the situation. What else can you do? It depends on the situation.
floss
Don’t waste energy trying to live life with zero irreversible or undesirable consequences.
Plan to avoid them, sure. Make good choices, sure. Accept that a lot of your learning, growing and opportunities will emerge from irreversible and undesirable outcomes
Sunscreen. This is not limited to occasional outdoor activities, because the bulk of your UV exposure over a lifetime is your everyday exposure. Use an everyday SPF moisturizer on your face, neck, and arms.
Started a daily stretching routine recently. I read one of those ‘things you wish your younger self did’ posts and stretching came up a lot so I thought I’d give it a go. I guess there’s some pretty irreversible consequences that come from aging so doing what you can to limit that seems like a good idea.
Do you do the same routine every day? I’ve been interested in trying this but I don’t know where to start.
Honestly I just started by winging it. I played a lot of sport as a kid and just started by doing some of the stretches I learnt growing up. Then you can kind of figure out which stretches you like most and what order you like doing them in. The key thing for me was really just inserting it into my existing routine. So if you already have a workout routine you can just add it to that. If you don’t then you could try doing it first thing in the morning when you get out of bed, or last thing at night before you go to bed.
There are some great yoga videos online. Find a beginner, 15-20 minute wake-up one. You’ll be shocked at how much better you feel.
3-2-1
3 copies of data
2 different storage medium
1 set of data at an off-site location
Commonly refered by the sailors as “one spouse in each port”
Sure: never go anywhere or do anything of substance or interact with anyone in any meaningful way. Avoid the potential for consequences.
Exist, but don’t live.
Always have backups
For your spouse and children
Avoid relying on a single failure point, especially when it’s a person or group of people, when the consequences are anything of substantial value or importance to you.
Instead, when such a failure point exists (which is more or less inevitable in life), before committing, have an alternative exit plan prepared and thought out, including the trigger point for when it’s time to bail, and preferably have the exit plan already begun in some way so that starting it up when necessary isn’t too hard.
Getting trapped in a situation where people have power over you or your situation, but are letting you down, and you have no clear recourse, is a mind fuck and gets plenty of people. The exit plan is there to protect you and provide perspective as much as giving you “an out”.
A corollary of this is that if you can’t setup a satisfactory alternative/exit plan before you commit, then you shouldn’t commit, unless you’re absolutely certain that you can live with the worst case scenario. Which is dangerous though, because it’s easy to convince yourself that things will be fine and that the worst case scenario is actually better than it will turn out to be … better to stay agile and have the exit plan.
Start saving money while you’re young if you’re in a position to do so.
I can’t believe the number of colleagues I’ve had in the past that were making good money without having responsibilities (living at their parents’) and spending most of it at the bar or to go party in Cuba only to hear them complain years later that they didn’t have enough money saved to make a 10k downpayment…
The later you start doing drugs the better.
Not sure about that one, the friends that started way late got on a rampage and crashed hard. Not being used to the highs might just make you not want to come back down.
The question was about irreversible consequences, not the best way to get into drug use. The later you start, the more stable you brain is - the less consequential it will be for your development. Not hating on drugs by the way, drugs are awesome. But they do mess with your brain.
If you feel in your gut that she’s not the one, you have to trust that feeling. Going into a marriage you know is going to leave a part of your soul behind, reasoning that you’ll just give it a chance for a few years, that’s lost time. It never comes back.
You have to trust your gut. If you have a bad gut feeling but don’t want to tell others because of goals your mind is afraid of sacrificing, you need to trust your gut over your mind.
If that’s where you are, just know that there is a better life than you can imagine waiting for you, if you truly decide to feed your true self. Everything you think about losing is nothing compared to the continual warm glow of knowing you’ve got your own back.
Don’t give that up for someone else. Don’t be with someone who makes you betray yourself.
