Latest / Wanzology / Decisions And Consequences
Transcript
- Decisions And Consequences Yes, Sir-eebob? Yezzir-eebob. Hi! Welcome, welcome, welcome to another episode of WANZOLOGY! I am your host, The Wanz!! I like Wednesdays because I get to drop these episodes on you. Yea-ee-yer!! This week's episode is an interesting topic for me because I'm kind of going through this. My father used to tell me, “Tere's only two things in life you have to do, die and make decisions. I don't recommend the former, so you better get damn good at the latter.”, and sometimes he would follow that with this one. “Those lessons not learned in life will be repeated.” Now, those two nuggets of knowledge given to me by my papa have beared out to be exactly the truth. You probably don't even realize how many decisions you make in a minute. Left, right, up, down, forward, backward, stay there, head up, head down. Focus. Open your mouth, close your mouth. There's lots of decisions that you make. Don't think so. Here's the litmus test. As soon as you realize you're awake, take a deep breath, start paying attention. Everything you do, ask yourself if you did the opposite, what would that be like? So if you're awake and you're lying there. And maybe you have to relieve yourself, so you throw back the covers and swing your legs out and stand up and walk to the bathroom and relieve yourself. Well, that was a decision. You could stay in bed, but there'd be consequences. You could wait till the last minute and have to run to the bathroom, which would be a consequence of a decision. Or maybe you make it just fine. You decide that it's too chilly out there in the air and you come back and you get back in bed, which is also a decision and the consequences of which is you get to warm your little body back up. Maybe the better example would be. You're at a four-way stop sign, and you got there the same time as a person on your right got to that four-way stop. Now, in Washington, the law says that if two vehicles arrive at a four-way stop at the same time, the vehicle on the right has the right of way. This shouldn't be too hard, but it is for some for some, it's extremely challenging and they're waving ‘go ahead, go ahead’, g o ahead. Not realizing that they're in the position of having the right of way, and so I saying in my car, knowing they cannot hear me, “You have the right of way! GO AHEAD!!, and they don't move and you have no way to send them a message or anything. The decision made by both vehicles, even though it is totally legal for that other person, not me, the other person, it's totally in their purview to go 'cause they have the right of way. Oh Lord, it is so unnerving. Or maybe, maybe you've experienced this one, you're coming down the entrance ramp to the freeway, and as you pick up speed to match the speed of the traffic like you're supposed to, you come down and you're even with another car. Now there is space in front of the car and behind the car for you to merge. Which do you take? Do you drive faster to get in front of the car or do you slow down to get behind the car? These are pivotal decisions. Me, I always speed up. If there's an opening for my car to get there, I will speed up as not to impede anyone behind me. Of course, I do this in a safe manner, as safe as I can, but I'm not the guy who's gonna slow down to let you in. I may vary my speed and go a little slower so it creates a space, but hopefully you see me doing that and when the space is wide enough and safe enough for you, you move into that space. But man, I'm telling you, some people can't merge to save their own lives. So anyway, the consequences of decisions, this is the thing that is annoying. Of all the decisions that we make, I would wager better than 80% of them are successful. Better than 80% of the decisions that we humans make are good decisions. I think the 10% have no outcome at all, and then that 5%, those are the bad ones, when bad things happen or things that you really don't like happen because of a decision you made. You can decide anything you want to, but as soon as you act on that decision, you're in it. You’re responsible for the consequence and how you handle the consequence. So let's apply this to how you feel. Like right now, as I'm recording this episode, I feel somewhat tired, a little discouraged. I feel alone, sort of disparaged and there are things that I could do to act on those things and maybe counteract those feelings, but I'm just sitting with it 'cause I want to explore those feelings even though I feel alone and left out and disparaged, I'm still doing something, I'm recording a podcast episode, I'm accomplishing something, so it's not completely negative. But what it is, is I don't like it. I don't like feeling like that. I don't know anyone who does. Now I have my own technique. I decide to go through the Serenity Prayer to check myself, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.” (That's everything outside of my skin.), “The courage to change the things I can.” (That's everything inside my skin), “and the wisdom to know the difference.” A-ha! That's the catch. What is inside your body and therefore within your control versus what's outside of your body and not in your control. Sometimes, and for some people, can be difficult to discern. Most times when I'm faced with, should I go left or should I go right, I'll wait, 'cause the universe is always listening. There'll, there'll be a sign, not something as trivial as, “oh, I'm right-handed, so I'm gonna go to the right.”, naw it, it's more intuitive than that. We humans ‘feel’. We get a ‘feeling’ about things now that's not guaranteeing they're gonna be correct. I've driven many places, not sure where I'm going, even though the little navigation thing on the phone says, do this. I do it, and then it doesn't look familiar, and I stop and turn around and go back because I realize it's a dead end, not where I intended to go. Pops used to say,”I don't get lost, I just find new ways of getting places.” That's my pop. There are a lot of lessons my father taught me in how to make ‘lemonade’ outta the ‘lemons’ that the universe sometimes shovels my way and this episode is nothing more than a catalyst to get you thinking about the process of making a decision. I mean, for some it just comes and goes and nobody cares, but there are others, others who sweat every little detail about every little decision, and they can become paralyzed by fear. They stay in the shadows. They are always meek and mild and try very hard to be invisible because they really don't want to expose themselves to everybody else, and perhaps be noticed. I get that. I don't agree with it, but I get that. How about you? You make decisions. You're listening to this podcast instead of your favorite Led Zeppelin record or something. Maybe you're catching up on an episode of The Last of Us, I dunno. I just know that if you're hearing my voice, you're here and that was the decision that you made and the consequences for you. The consequences for you will be whatever they are. But in your world, after this podcast, just try it for a little while. Pay attention to the choices that you make just to see what the consequence is going to be. Do you choose the banana? Or the apple? The apple or the naval orange. The naval orange or the grapes. What's the outcome? Choose any of them, they're all good. I mean, to me, are they good to you? Die and make decisions? We have to do those things. We don't get a choice about making a decision. Even “if you choose not to decide”, as the band Rush puts it, “you still have made a choice.” And what's the consequences of an indecision of not making a decision? Sometimes it's nothing. Sometimes you miss your ride. Sometimes somebody cuts in front of you in line. Sometimes you get wet because you chose not to bring an umbrella or an overcoat. Paying attention to all these results helps you make better choices 'cause usually if the result is a negative one, it stays with you a little while. It stays with you in order to remind you, well, the next time this happens, I'm gonna choose differently. Very rarely do I see people who come out of a bad consequence and then say, “I'm gonna do the exact same thing because, woo, that was so much fun!” Who does that? A friend of mine wants to get me to go to a juvenile detention facility so that I could lecture to them. I'm dying to do it. Things just haven't lined up for us to do this, but I'm just raring to go. I can't wait until I get in. I can't wait until the room is filling up and the guys are coming in, they're sitting down and I introduce myself and tell 'em who I am, and then I'm going to say something like this: “Now, I don't mean to offend you, but I want you to consider this next sentence that I'm going to say. Your best thinking got you here. Your best thinking, got you, here, in this room, with me, on this day at this time. Your best thinking, that means the thinking that you were doing before, one of the consequences was number one, you got caught and you got sentenced and put in here. I love it when I think it's Shaw Shank redemption when the young kid shows up in the thing and he was always getting busted for petty theft and burglary, Andy DuFrane goes, “Seems to me you would choose another profession”, which makes total sense to me. I mean, if you're always getting busted for something, shouldn't you stop doing it unless you like getting busted? The episode before this one was some mother--ers always seemed to, to ice skate uphill. They don't wanna go with the flow. They don't wanna be a part of the masses. They wanna be separate and different. Well, go ahead, go ahead. Every single nature show where there is a herd of animals being pursued by a predator, does the predator always get the one in the center of the herd? No. No, no, no, no, no! They get whoever's out on the edge and away from the herd. That's how you get GOT!! Law of the Jungle. Some of those mugs don't change, man. Some of those things, they just take on different forms, and it's not as crucial as getting eaten by a predator, but it's a parking ticket or a speeding ticket, or you get into a car accident or you get caught by the police or you trip and fall or you almost choke to death. These are consequences. So if you could rewind and pay attention to the decision that you have to make, if you can do that, what would be different? Man, if I could rewind stuff, I would do something I've never done before, provided I didn't foresee a negative outcome when I first was getting sober, a guy told me, “If it feels familiar, do something different”, and I asked why, and he said, “It's really cool to have a new experience with a familiar situation.”, and I thought on that, been thinking about that for years. Every once in a while it'll pop up “What if I do something different? What if I take another way home instead of the way that I always go? What if I took another way to the freeway instead of the way I always go? What if I had breakfast for lunch? What if I ate my dessert first? What if I didn't care what anybody thought about what I wore?”, it can be that simple, if you're paying attention…if you're paying attention. The object is to notice the steps leading up to your decision so that you can see, be, feel the consequences. I used to say life is 75% making a decision, 10% actually deciding on the decision and 5% acting on that decision and then the whole thing turns upside down because once you act on the decision, then you know what decision you made. That's 10%. And then the rest of it is what was the outcome? Would I do something different? So, imagine two pyramids, one sitting on top of the other. To me, that's what decision making looks like. Be careful out there. And as, uh, one of my favorite old school groups, Black Sheep would say, “You could get with this, or you can get with that. You could get with THIS, or you can get with that. You can get with this or you can get with that. I think you'll get with this, 'cause this is kind of PHAT!” I really appreciate you paying attention. What are decisions like for you? I hope they're positive in both action and outcome. Okay, y'all take it easy. Breathe deep, and I'll see you next week.