Actions Have Consequences

June 28, 2013

My daughter lives with her iPhone and if it isn’t working 100% correctly, I get a phone call pretty quickly. One day when she was in school, her phone fell off of her desk and the screen cracked. (Why it was on her desk at school is the subject of an entirely different kind of blog post…)  That aside, she is still walking around with her cracked screen and isn’t all that happy about it. 

But there is no way I can justify spending hundreds of dollars on a new phone for her when in spite of parental advice to always keep the phone in an OtterBox case, she opted not to because it was too bulky. Actions have consequences, and she is now living with those consequences. I may show her this article about this company that fixes cracked screens.  Or I may not!  Actions have consequences.

That goes for good actions as well as not so awesome actions. Last week, I was talking with a young man who really knows about this. He grew up in an urban area that is well known for being an incredibly violent area where drug dealers are more commonly seen than police officers. Violent crime is a nearly daily thing and he’s seen many of his friends and family members get involved in that “business” and end up either dead or in jail. He grew up seeing a real life version of “The Wire” in action, often with deadly consequences.

He faced a choice.  The easy choice would have been to  get involved in his neighborhood’s activities and the quick money that seems to draw in too many young men.  He chose a different and much harder path.

He went to school every day when many of the people in his neighborhood went only sporadically. He read a lot. He did his homework.  When he had questions or didn’t understand something, he asked his teachers questions.  He was a model student and got good grades through hard work.  After graduating from high school, he enrolled at a local community college, spent two years there and graduated near the top of his class.  He then went to a local 4 year college on a scholarship and graduated with a teaching degree.

Now, he is teaching at an inner city elementary school and trying to instill a love of learning in the kids that he is able to reach on a daily basis so that they don’t get caught up in all of the bad things that can come from getting involved in the drug trade. He took some actions that have changed his life and he is working to change the lives of others. At 20-something years old, he’s one of my inspirations now.

What can we learn from him? Sometimes, what you have to do in order to make progress is tough. Sometimes it’s hard work.  Sometimes it’s not going to be easy or popular.

But, the tough choices are the ones that are often the most rewarding ones in the long term.  Ask yourself what choices you are making today that could be preventing you from reaching the goals that you’d like to reach. What can you do differently?

I’ve talked with people who have very high car payments and already have plans to trade the car in for a more expensive model when their payments end.  I’ve talked with people who eat at restaurants nearly every night.  I’ve talked with people who buy houses that are a bit more expensive than they can reasonably afford.

Take a look at your individual situation and find one or two things where you can make a different choice that might be tougher today but more beneficial long term. And then make those choices and take some action.  The laws of physics, the laws of nature, the laws of human behavior all suggest the same thing. Actions have consequences.  Make sure that your actions are in line with the goals that are most important to you.