individual choices have a multiple impact

Our individual choices have a ripple effect. Like the stone thrown into a pond, each ripple caused by the immediate action radiates outwards.

Take the contentious issue of drinking a couple of beers after work on a Friday and then deciding to drive home. We may not think that our reaction times have been affected, until we get to a stop sign and can't in fact stop. We run a red light and into another vehicle.

Depending on the size of the other vehicle, the speed in which both vehicles were travelling and where the impact took place will depend on the severity of the accident. We may all walk away with nothing more than dented cars and dented ego's. Or we may hurt or even kill ourselves and / or the other people. Imagine then the impact of our decision to drink and drive on our families and the families of the other people involved.

But it doesn't stop there, we also need to consider the impact our accidents cause on the police, fire and rescue and ambulance crews who now have to fix our mistakes as best they can before they take our bent and broken bodies to the hospital and / or the funeral home.

Of course your short-term choices may not have an immediate impact. We may in fact get home safely. But our short -term decisions of too much alcohol, cigarettes, over eating and using illicit substances - multiplied by time may cause just as much heart ache and devastation as our short term accidental ones. Our loved ones may have to watch us go through a series of treatments for a range of illnesses we had often heard about, but assumed we would never suffer from.

Or take the seemingly insignificant decision to delete all your work emails. After all, they're on your computer so they're yours - right? Actually if they are work related they belong to the company and should be treated like all the other records you generate. Imagine that you are asked to respond to a request by a judge to account for your decisions in the creation of a new and wonderful drug, of which you were part of the scientific team that helped generate the patent.

If you had deleted all your email records discussing the work that you were doing, how then are you going to be able to prove that you did in fact do the work when you said you had done the work. Imagine that a rival company had said they had created the same drug - and they won the right to the patent, all because you had made the decision to delete a few company emails that were clogging up your computer. How long do you think it would be before you were out of a job? Given that a new drug takes years to develop and can cost millions to create, something tells me you'd have trouble finding another position. Which of course would have the immediate impact on your family - what will they do for money?

Each minor decision that you make today will have a long lasting impact - and not just for you, so choose wisely. Ask - is what I am about to do going to have a major impact down the track? Who is it going to affect? Am I willing to continue knowing those facts?

With many thoughts
Elle

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