How do you anticipate and prepare for the impact of your decisions on yourself and others,
given the interconnectedness and the dynamic nature of relationships and situations you've
described?
Sometimes I don't or can't. Sometimes life kind of broadsides you, someone surprises you, a
company downsizes, and things completely out of my control comes along completely changes
everything, despite my best efforts to plan ahead and foresee things. However, I do try to
consider the potential consequences of my decisions, as much as I'm able to. I will talk it over
with a friend that has gone through a similar situation, or pay attention when someone is
describing something because maybe they have some insight in their experience I can glean and
apply to my own situation. Again, I try to future project and connect dots that I can imagine
based on previous decisions I've made or that others have made. I seek out expertise from people
through their writings or talks or through studies, because humans have commonalities, and I can
draw on the experiences of others when making my own decisions. And I also prepare for the
unexpected. Not so much an actual event, but an emotional preparation, that despite my best
efforts, things may not go according to plan, and I may find myself disappointed or heart broken
or angry because things aren't going how I wanted. I may find myself sad because the person I
thought was going along with me decided not to, and I have to now decide what I do. So I try to
prepare for those cases, and to recognize that those emotions are valid and I'm allowed to feel
them and experience them, and even the negative emotions are a part of life, and I can learn and
grow from them, even though I'm not enjoying the process as I'm living it. I talk to myself, I
ask myself questions, and I give myself the space to ponder those questions and think of
different possibilities and give myself grace that I'm only human, and I'm doing the best that I
can, and sometimes things just don't work out the way we would've hoped they would.