Son, you gotta live with the consequences of your choices

It’s National Son Day! At least that’s what social media said so I followed suit and posted a pic and cute message to honor my one and only child. It also made me think about the most important lesson I have tried to teach him and that is he must actively reflect on his decision making because all choices have consequences.

From my perspective, there are both subconscious and conscious choices we make everyday:

Subconscious Choices

These choices are usually daily ones that we don’t give much thought to which are likely learned behaviors from our childhood. I shared some of this in my post on intrapersonal skills. An example of a habitual choice is making up the bed every morning or not making it up every morning. Another subconscious example is eating fried fish and spaghetti on Fridays because that’s what your family ate each week and it’s just something you are used to doing. Sidebar: my father never missed a Friday to take my grandmother her favorite fried fish sandwich.

Other subconscious choices are made based on how you feel. For instance, I had a craving for ice cream the other day and went to the supermarket to get some. Another example of a subconscious choice impacted by my feelings was the decision not too do my strength training workout simply because I just didn’t feel like doing it foregoing the fact that it is the best thing for my health. Now if I choose to ignore the benefits of a workout and allow my feelings to take over, well this choice will have negative consequences. I will be actively choosing not to do something that will positively improve the outcome of my health.

Conscious Choices

These choices should require more self reflection like which car you would like to purchase or having a goal on becoming an entrepreneur. Those are obvious scenarios. Speaking for myself, there were subconscious choices I used to make like who to date and how to handle my finances. Those dramatic decisions were based on my emotions and not well thought out at times so the consequences of those choices had long term effects that eventually forced my undivided attention.

In this age of social media, I see a lot of content that is cringy and other posts that are well planned and effective for the intended audience. Many people are going to regret some publicized choices because although there is a delete button, users are taking screenshots faster than most of us moving about in the metaverse. Chrissy Tiegen, model and wife of John Legend, decided to leave Twitter but was reminded of her bully behavior and comments to another celebrity who was a teenager at that time, Courtney Stodden (glamour.com). To get the deets for this article, all it took was a quick search and voila the past immediately appears after you hit the enter button.

Life is one subconscious and conscious decision after another. Some life choices can be avoided but if you let that happen, other people will begin to make choices for you and losing your autonomy is not what you want to happen. Like I tell my son, you have to live with the consequences of your choices but the truth is everyone around you has to live with them too.