Everything You Do Creates Ripples

Even if we just sit on the couch and watch Netflix all day, we influence the world.

For example, what we watch affects the decision of which shows the channel will continue to broadcast and which will not. We always make decisions that are measured, evaluated, and used to make further decisions.

People do not always make these decisions. Most often, our choices do not influence conscious decisions by anyone, but many invisible timelines.

Every thing, every thought, and every state has its timeline that interacts with all other timelines. If I go out the door now, I can meet a neighbor and influence his timeline by engaging him in a short conversation.

Without my decision to step outside, my neighbor would have simply continued on his way and would have arrived earlier at any place he wanted to go as if he had not met me. That can be good or bad.

Missing a train by half a minute, which then crashes, is good. Missing a train with someone sitting on it who would have changed your life if you had met him today is terrible.

So with everything we do or don't do, we continuously create ripples that affect other events. We can't know whether our decisions have positive or negative effects or even if both would be the case.

Every decision is better than no decision

Since we cannot know what effect our actions will have on everything and everyone, we should not try to think everything through to the very end before we act. We can never see all the possible consequences anyway.

If we allow uncertainty to prevent us from making our own decisions, we become a pawn in the decisions of others.

Instead of creating ripples ourselves, we then swing on the waves of others. I don't know about you, but I prefer to influence my future as much as possible myself, rather than merely waiting to see what happens to me.

That doesn't mean, of course, that every decision is as right as any other. Some actions have foreseeable consequences that we should consider. Without parachutes jumping out of a plane, the predictable result is that we will die. So the decision to put on a parachute first is, in any case, better than jumping without.

Then there are actions whose possible consequences are defined by probabilities.

So we can say that I will probably have more money in my pocket at the end of the day if I don't buy a lottery ticket. So the negligible chance of winning a grand prize should not tempt us to buy a ticket if our goal is to have as much money as possible.

We must therefore always consider the foreseeable and highly probable consequences of our actions when we make a decision. But for many of our possible choices, there are neither predictable nor highly likely results. In these cases, we simply have to decide and wait for the result.

Since most of the decisions we have to make every day belong to the latter category, not making a decision is always possible. As long as our inaction is a conscious decision, we have no problem. If we allow ourselves to be paralyzed in our decisions by the fundamental uncertainty of the result, we are giving our lives away.

Interaction is always a good decision

Chemical reactions only occur when we bring two substances together. The same is true for our society and ourselves. Only through interaction and exchange can movement and change occur.

The renunciation of movement and change is equivalent to stagnation and the preservation of the status quo.

To get in contact with other people, to discuss with them, and to exchange facts and opinions always has a progressive value. In an exchange with others, our view of things changes, and that of the other person also changes.

Answers, new insights, and progress are only possible in this way.

But we can not only get in contact with other people but also with different environments.

Someone who continually broadens his horizon by going to places and environments he has never known before grows faster than someone who never leaves his comfort zone.

The most energetic waves of change are always generated in exchange with other people, ideas, and cultures.

So when we ask ourselves what decision we should make when the outcome is uncertain, we should always choose the option that has the most to do with the exchange with other people and new concepts.

Conclusion

In many cases, we may not know whether our decisions will produce good or bad results. In cases where the outcome is foreseeable or highly probable, we must take this knowledge into account.

In all other cases, we should always prefer the action that makes it necessary to come into contact with new people, ideas, and situations.

Therefore your influence on the world as a creator is more significant than when you consume.

That is why the social person is more influential than the loner.

So let's keep creating ripples and changing the world as much as each one of us can.

Let's talk to each other and learn from each other. Be one of those who create ripples instead of just being moved by them.