---

“Kids nowadays don’t know the meaning of consequences,” says my husband after he’s heard yet another story on the news about wayward teenagers creating havoc in the suburbs.

“Maybe because it feels as if there are none nowadays. Or they haven’t learned to understand that with each action there is a consequence – good or bad – and then how to deal with it?” I reply.

How to predict consequences is the first skill to be successful as outlined in Robin Good’s recent post “What We Really Need to Learn to Be Successful in Life”.

The article made me reflect on how consequences made an impact on my life so I thought I’d write about each skill and my own experience of it.

I went through the links that Robin shared and although some are dated, you can still find some gold or add your own. After all, curations are selected individually. It’s up to you to decide and create your own curations.

Where Did I Learn the Meaning of Consequence?

I grew up in a strict and harsh environment.

To be honest, I didn’t like my childhood at all much of it lived in fear.

Consequence was something I understood early on as I grappled to understand how my behaviour fed or resulted in the actions of others towards me and as a result, I learned to temper or mute my behaviours so that I could live a relatively stress-free childhood.

I believe that this lesson learned so early in life allowed me to take a ‘spectator’s view’ of my actions and how they could impact and affect others, what may transpire and to think ahead and decide “is it worth my while to do X and Y” and then act accordingly through my adult years. I also think it’s the reason where I can feel more in tune with people or situations. My intuition has been guiding me through life and it’s saved my skin on many occasions.

Of course, there are times when I think that I should have had a more carefree and spontaneous attitude to make life a bit more exciting but what always stops me are…consequences. It always goes back to that question above. On the outside, it looks like I’m spontaneous but trust me, everything I do has been planned or thought out in advance.

It got me thinking if this kind of “forward”thinking is good or bad?

Should we try to predict consequences and then act in “safer” ways OR should we act on our thoughts and desires, then wear whatever consequences come our way – whether they are good or bad?

I guess this is similar to the “Butterfly Effect” where “the idea that small things can have non-linear impacts on a complex system. The concept is imagined with a butterfly flapping its wings and causing a typhoon.“

My thinking is, “can I deal with the fallout of my actions?”

Thinking Ahead As a Critical Skill for Preparedness of <Whatever>

Many years ago, I was in the Navy and much of my military training was about “anticipating” the next steps in an activity, exercise or operation. Indeed, briefs were always about what we needed to do, how we were going to do it, contingency plans should the activity not go as planned. We had folders filled with checklists upon checklists of every kind of perceivable situation that we may come across and actions to take.

Going through many military exercises, we considered all our decisions and their approaches and made assessments of their potential impacts and affects. In some way, we were always taught to think at least two steps ahead, to consider all angles and to have action and contingency plans in plans.

After every military exercise, there was an extensive debrief or evaluation of the exercise where we looked at each choice, decision and impact of that decision and then made recommendations or suggestions for alternatives should we experience that situation again. As a result, this constant assessment, reassessment, evaluation, feedback and forward thinking allowed us (and me) to hone my mind to keep thinking ahead – and thinking of the impact of my decisions to others who are close to me.

Sometimes, many times, I got it wrong. I am human after all. However, it made me realise that some people don’t think like me. They live in the moment. They speak their truth without fear or consequence so who am I to think this is bad?

After all, I’d much rather live in a world where we can all say our truth regardless of consequences so that we can hear diverse thoughts, to be able to question, to learn from each other.

Unfortunately, it seems like at the moment, what is missing is the ability to be able to listen to other points of view, ask open questions, learn and understand our differences and work together towards mutually beneficial outcomes. No wonder many people would rather just keep quiet rather than wear the brunt of the consequences of the online hordes response. (Just check out the excellent podcast series on the Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling on Apple Podcasts).

Some Guiding Principles To Help You Decide

The topic of How to Predict Consequences also made me think of the Rotary 4 Way Test which I was introduced to when I was a Rotarian some years back. It’s a great prompt if guiding principles to ensure that the decisions you make have positive and beneficial consequences to others in your sphere.

I wonder why schools and other educational institutions don’t teach ethics in this way?

All in all however, I don’t think we can predict consequences correctly all the time but we can at least think about our actions and then act accordingly – and then wear the results: good or bad.

I had reviewed a book by Nicholas Nassim Taleb called “Black Swan” some time ago where he wrote about black swan events happening more often.

We cannot predict these abnormal events but we can at least, prepare for them in some way.

Seeing the increase in crazy weather events in our local area (we had pandemics, floods, fire and earthquakes in our local area within the space of a couple of years), made me put my military training into action and get myself prepared as I wrote in this post Being Prepared. Of course, I know that I can never be fully prepared however, the mere idea that I have a simple checklist and a bag packed with essentials is enough to give me a “tiny” peace of mind. Whether it helps or not, is to be seen when the situation arises.

All in all, in my experience, I believe that predicting consequences is an essential skill to being successful in life because it steers your actions.

Although I would question whether I am successful (ha ha), I can say that I can look at myself in the mirror every morning and like who I see reflected back based on the decisions I have made through my life that have steered me to come to this point in my life with no regrets, with living a moral and ethical life (even though at times I battled with myself to not follow these – or wear the brunt of the bad consequences but I could never hurt the people I loved in my life that much). Predicting consequences have made me the person I am today because I accepted the result of my decisions and lived with them.

What do you think about this skill?

Can it be a measure of success?

I leave this post with a clip from the band Ghost (a band that my husband LOVES and has been listening to their music for a while now. We never see their face as they’re covered with skeleton masks but here’s a clip from Call of Duty game about what they say about making choices).

Photo Credit: Library of Congress