As the titled mentioned, is there anything that we should do to avoid undesirable life consequences?
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
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.
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It’s difficult to avoid them, but you can obviously make an insurances against some undesirable consequences, like house fire or illness.
Also keep a buffer of money to solve sudden stuff. Like, don’t travel without having enough cash to get a return ticket, or if you rely on a car, you should always have enough money to make a down payment for a new one when it inevitably breaks.
In general you shouldn’t have to be afraid of irreversible consequences. You have to break an egg to make a cake. Changes are most often for the better.
Some things are obviously more serious than others and sometimes you just can’t know everything up front. Like having a child. That’s a leap of faith that you just have to do if you want to. Changing jobs can also be nerve wrecking, but you can probably insure your income or make savings in case things don’t work out.
Is there anything in particular you’d like to be able to undo?
Try to keep your cool in messy situations, that way you can easier think about how to get the least worst or even a good outcome. But it can be hard, maybe something like tapping on your arm can help to distract and clear the mind
I know that this does not answer your question, but i really cant think of something that was not already told
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.
Doing this. It still doesn’t work.
Don’t forget earplugs when visiting a concert. Prevent tinnitus, the ringing in your ears for indefinitely.
Don’t break more than one law at a time
AKA - Don’t be stupid while you’re being stupid.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I guess you are right, the less time spent on them the less damage done.
Figure out exactly what undesirable life consequences means to you. Some people dream of a quiet life with pets and hobbies, some would call that a failure.
But no, you can’t avoid all negative life consequences. Even if life is a 1:1 totally predictable processing machine (it’s not), you still can’t control all the inputs
Not happening. Every action and decision you make or don’t results in a consequence. Cause and effect. These consequences aren’t always obvious, negative, or noticeable right away but if you look far enough back on your life you will probably see how your choices snowballed to where you are now.
Some people think they are tragic characters living some Shakespearean tragedy where all the bad things happen to them are just the universe/fate giving them a bad hand. This choice to be nihilistic determinist leads to self fulfilling prophecies where they make no effort to improve their life.
Some people think they they are the masters of their own destiny and that despite there being bad parts of the world that are unfair they do the best they can to find success anyways and not throw a never ending self pity party. These people tend to get farther in life and are much more satisfied.
These differences in philosophies are indeed a personal choice everyone subconsciously makes. Whether to be the captain of the boat that is your life and steer it to the destination you want or to be a helpless passenger pushed by the oceans waves adrift until you crash.
A person in an abusive relationship chooses not to leave it through inaction. despite how much they think they have no choice because of X reasons. A severely overweight person who blames their genes and makes no effort to try and loose it. An unhappy married couple who want to divorce but convince themselves not to ‘for the kids’ so they live a decade or two of an unhappy existence subjecting their children to second hand misery when the better option for the kids long term wellbeing was to indeed split. There are consequences to hard decisions, sometimes its not even a right or wrong decision. The pieces just fall where they lay.
Not doing something to change the trajectory of your life is also a choice whether you want to recognize it as one or not. Its the choice of inaction that you justify to yourself.
The problem is that nobody wants to be at fault when things go wrong. Its much easier to scape goat blame to fate and all of life’s unfortunate circumstances. When you do point the finger at yourself for at least some of it you gain much more control over the direction of your life.
I agree with all of this except your example about choosing not to leave an abusive relationship. The most dangerous time for an abuse victim is when they try to leave their abuser. Often, there is a very real threat of death hanging over them. It’s an over-simplification at best and straight up victim-blaming at worst to say that a victim’s inaction is the reason they continue to be abused.
This question is so generic I can’t help but feel there is a more specific idea behind it. Can you talk about what made you want to ask this, what kind of answers you’re expecting?
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Try to avoid jumping off a tall building into a herd of angry goats infected with anthrax while shooting up meth with a dirty needle.
Do not parachute into hostile dictatorships naked and passionately screaming the name of the country’s dictator’s mother; then when the police come to deal with you, throw random narcotics at them.
Refrain from public interspecies fornication for the duration of your visits to the sacred sites of major religions.
Do not permit the bandsaw to become acquainted with your neck.
When sawing off your head, you want a nice clean cut. You’ll want a new dual-purpose hacksaw blade, probably about 24-28 tpi.
Lots of valuable life lessons here
