A wise decision that's drastically affected your life

[LSN80]

Even if you didn't know it at the time, I'm sure you can look back at your past and see both good and bad decisions that have or could have altered your life in a major way. I already brought up poor decisions in the "Youth is Wasted on the Young" thread, so I figured it's only fair we look at things from the other point of view. That being, a choice you made in the past that dramatically affected your future in a good way.

Life is so funny in this way, because when you think about it, what makes the most sense is that it's the choices one makes over time that should be what has the biggest impact on your life. Struggles, perserverance through them, hard work, and never giving up over a period of time should make for our success, right? And generally, it does, but sometimes what it boils down to is one decision you made, a decision that was a precursor to those opportunities being available to you. Had you not made that decision, those opportunities may not have come your way.

With me, it comes down to what happened after I graduated college. I took my exercising, my social life, making good cash at my waitering job and females quite seriously, but I didn't care much about school. I did what was needed to get by, and I did get A's and B's, but I wasn't invested in my work, and really gave little thought to my future. Not the best foresight either, because to make any money in the Mental Health field, a Master's degree is almost a must. But i graduated college, returned home, and transferred from the restaurant I worked at in college to a restaurant near my house, not giving my job or my future much time.

My parents saw how unmotivated I was, so they proposed I think about something. They knew I didn't want to go to graduate school right away, my idea was to take the year off and just work. But they suggested I apply to one school, and if I got in, go. If I didn't, they wouldn't bug me about it any longer, and give me their "blessing" to take the year off.

Out of respect for my parents, I did exactly that. I gave it my best shot too, and applied to the graduate school I thought would benefit me most, and spent days filling out the forms that likely would have taken most people a few hours. I went to the interview for the program in my only suit, and sold myself on why I would be a good candidate for the program like noone else. Between the effort I put in with filling out the paperwork, my test scores, and my interview, I received a letter a week later, welcoming me into their program. I didn't half-ass a single class the next five years between my Mater's and Doctorate programs, and I'm very happy with my current position in my field.

Like I said before, it did take a lot of hard work and perservervance to get to where I am today. But it was one decision I made that really set myself up for success. I can say for a fact that had I taken that year off between college and graduate school, I sure as hell wouldn't have gone back. It was hard enough for me to get motivated and used to working hard once I started graduate school, and that was only after 3 months off. I can't imagine myself having found the motivation after spending over a year off, especially with how little I had wanted to go to graduate school in the first place. But it was that one decision, to simply apply and make a true effort in doing so that very well may have drastically changed the entire course of my future and life as I know it today.

Is there a decision you made in the past that has drastically impacted your life for the better?

In what way has it done so?

Any other thoughts or discussion on the topic are more then welcome.

 

[Paralyzer Z]

Is there a decision you made in the past that has drastically impacted your life for the better?

Of course there is, no one is born with the quality of perfection so there is always room for improvement in one's life. For me twas the decision to begin to use my skills to start doing better in school. All throughout my life I have always been able to grasp a concept much faster than others. That doesn't mean I struggled with somethings but I was almost synonymous with understanding lessons at school quickly. From my early childhood I recall the other kids would struggle to add coins up while I could do it mentally very hastily, however I never used it to excel.

There were always unrelated reasons why I hated school, thus I had no motivation to do better. I was always average in terms of grades strictly and much to the dismay of my parents continued to do so until the third grade. Afterwards my parents attempted to motivate me through unorthodox methods to do better in school grades. After plenty of annoyances I made the decision to begin doing good on tests, raising my hands more often and stop showing signs of maladaptive daydreaming. My rewards for the good grades zoomed up as I time and time again came home with a very sexy report card. Eventually it was no longer hard to do so, sure it was hard work but I was so used to it that it no longer seemed very difficult to earn.

In what way has it done so?

Well for one I was rewarded very often by my parents but then I gained a new reputation in school. I was always the strange one (and to some extent still am) in the class but now I was smart and divergent from others. They always came to me for help (most of the time I just toyed with them and jokingly provided wrong information on purpose). It really helped me boost my self esteem to which otherwise would have been extremely low. In simpler terms it helped me with an expansion of confidence and a salvage to gain more information. To this day I carry every result of that major decision with me as I find myself to be a better person overall now.




Any other thoughts or discussion on the topic are more then welcome.[/QUOTE]

 

[Dagger Dias]

I touched on this a little in the thread where we discussed mistakes we regret in life. One of the wisest decisions I ever made was during my second year of college, when I finally decided to stop worrying about trying to impress all of my peers and just being myself. Throughout my teenage years I was so hung up on what people thought of me and wanted people to like me. It made high school and dating difficult.

I was in my second year of college when I got fed up with dealing with all of that, and realized I was happiest in life back when I was honest about who I really was. I had been a social chameleon, acting stuck up around the preps, pretending to like all sports around the athletes, acting smart around the straight A students, and so forth. So I went back to being who I really was on the inside. Openly declaring my WWE fanboyism and the fact that I was a gamer, wearing my trenchcoat and cheesy sunglasses, not caring if people would like it or not, because true friends would accept who I was.

This helped me be more confident in myself. I made a lot of new friends for life, got involved in several different organizations, attended a ton of events on campus, and ended up having some of the best years of my life. None of that would have happened if I hadn't gone back to being honest about myself. It also made dating easier, I knew the women who did not accept me for who I was were not worth wasting any time on. I was rather miserable until the point where I made that decision, so it was one of the smartest choices I ever made.

 

[Trill Co$by]

This is going to sound weird, but I can honestly say that dropping out of high school my senior year, getting my GED, and pursuing an early wrestling career was the wisest decision I ever made.

See, when I first dropped out, I didn't just say "Fuck it, I want to wrestle and that's it!"... I dropped out because

1. I needed money to support my son. Money that came from wrestling that was just amazing.

2. I had bills to pay as well. Car notes, insurance, stuff that normal teenagers leave up to their parents, I was handling by myself (along with raising a kid).

But even when I dropped out and got my GED, I made my mother, my wife, and myself a promise. If I ever got to a point where wrestling wasn't going to work, I would go to the Art Institute and get a degree in Culinary Arts. That way, I could still make 50K a year because South Carolinians love their restaurant dining experiences.


So there I was, 17 years old. I had been wrestling since I was 16, but between that and school, one of them had to go. So at 17, I was traveling to North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida to wrestle. Why travel? Because SC has a fucked up athletic commission, which wouldn't let me wrestle until I was 18. Although, I did manage to score a spot as a "plant" for SC's largest promotion at the time...

At 17, I was having a very great start to what I call my true first year in wrestling. I was getting pushed by promotions that wanted to develop young stars. I was getting storylines centered around me. I had won my first title just two days before my 18th birthday... and to make it better, it was an NWA title. Regional, but still an NWA title nonetheless. That's credit no matter how far you go. Yes, WWE and TNA still consider NWA guys to be greatly tuned athletes because they still follow a somewhat territory feel.

The pay for me wasn't bad either, considering it was my first year. I started from getting $25 a match to getting $150 a match plus I had merchandise that was selling like hotcakes. And then, as I turned 18, I got the license needed to finally become a legal competitor in South Carolina. I began working for a small promotion called APW in Chester just before another promoter caught wind of me. A starting promotion called SCWA contacted me and said "We need a heel tag team. We have a guy you might blend well with" and so I took him up. No, they weren't paying me at this point, but the location was great exposure.

So I was in the middle of the promotion's tag title tournament, the third round, where my partner and I were scheduled to win... and then out of nowhere, my ankle popped just as I went for a super kick. I finished the match, but had to be carried out on a stretcher. As I got to the back, the EMTs we had set aside for a coming stretcher match looked over my ankle and said it was broken and I'd have to get surgery, as well as take 6 to 8 months to rehab the injury.

And that's when I had no choice but to honor the agreement I made before. Sure, my girlfriend had since left me.. but I still had a son to look after. I still had to find a way to pay bills if wrestling wasn't going to do it for me. So I took the saved up money from wrestling, as well as a small loan, and I applied for Art Institute in Charleston. Since then I've been in school for Culinary. I just got my Associates for Baking, and I'm on my way to getting my full Bachelor's degree.

Also, my ankle's fully healed so I can finally start rebuilding my name across the scene.


So, was me dropping out of High School a really good decision? I think so. Because it allowed me to find out if wrestling is truly who I am. It allowed me to find out if when push came to shove, could I find another life to settle in. And I have. I still have the desire to make it to WWE and be a great wrestler, but I also know that if anything were to happen where I couldn't wrestle anymore, I would be fine working as a Chef. So to me, that's a wise decision.

 

[CH David]

Interning for the radio stations Q101 which was frequency 101.1 FM with the call letters WKQX, and 97.9 The Loop, call letters WLUP. You likely don't care about the call letters or even the stations themselves. They were rock stations owned by the same company. Q101 was alternative, Loop at the time I started was just a mix of rock, then turned back to classic rock in early 2011.

When I went to school for radio, one of the requirements was to get an internship at a radio or tv station. I'd been trying for about five or six months and I either got nothing in response after the interview, or I chose not to. The one I chose not to go with was B96, because I was supposed to have an interview later that day. Well I didn't feel like B96 was worth it because it wasn't my type of music, and didn't think it was worth me cutting hours at work for. A few weeks later I had my interview with Q101/The Loop. The interview went well, and I knew I needed this internship. I talked to my boss about needing to cut my hours at work, and while he wasn't thrilled, he did it, and my internship officially began a few weeks later.

How did this drastically affect me? Had I taken the internship for B96 I would have been in a place that just did not suit what I wanted out of an internship. The people seemed nice, but just not for me. Q101/The Loop were my two favorite stations, and I have a bunch of incredible memories because of it. Having the Loop name on a resume is huge because of the history behind it, being around for 35 years, and generally being held in high regard. Q101 was also a huge station that had been around for 19 in it's alternative form. Not only that, but the people that worked there made it a fun environment. I would chat about wrestling, random shit with some of the jocks, talk to the production guys. Hell a month after I started in Promotions I was able to do production work too. I was with the station for about 9 months, 11 if you count my show after I was officially done, before they switched ownership.

This internship helped me meet a lot of new people, get my foot in the door, and reaffirm my love for the radio business and my goal to be on the air.

 

[Mustang Sally]

I've always wanted to work in journalism. After graduation, I was fortunate to have a choice between two jobs. One was as a reporter on a mid-sized newspaper and one was as an intern on one of the largest newspapers in the world. The reporter job came at a higher starting salary and a higher standing in the industry at the very beginning of my career. The internship paid much less and would cause me to start at the very bottom of the profession, yet it gave the chance to learn the publishing industry from the ground up. I took the internship, figuring the long term prospects were better.

Now it's 11 years later. I've worked my way to an editor's position at my current job. It's the only permanent job I've ever had; I've come a long way, yet there's tons of room for upward movement.

The paper on which I could have been a reporter?...... They're out of business.

 

[BK Styles]

I think I've yet to reach that life-changing moment, but the decision I've chosen that has affected my life the most is most definitely going to University to study Theatre.

Near the end of college, I had a very close group of friends that I never expanded out of. I'd go a s far as to say I was a recluse; I didn't socialise at all with anyone outside of school hours. On the very rare occasions I did, I was always the first to go home. I had good grades, and had three options; go to University to study Media, University for Drama, or neither and get a job. Now, I had no interest in getting a job, and had a vague idea that one day I'd like to be a teacher. In what subject, I didn't know.

So, there I was, deciding between Media and Drama. I'd applied for both, knowing that my best subject through college had always beem Media. I'm good with a camera, not bad at writing articles, good at deconstructing adverts, pictures, music videos, etc. And then there's drama; bearing in mind at this point I was still very shy and closed off to people. But I loved it. Inside that lesson, I had confidence that I didn't know existed. I loved reading plays, and I loved the adrenaline rush you get from performing in front of others in a live setting.

The choice seemed obvious to me; go with what you're good at. I then had my audition to the university I'd applied to for Drama. I fucked up the audition badly, and in the interview after I felt I was going to get slated. And ohhhhhh I did. But the interviewer, the dean of performing arts, no less, told me that the audition reflects confidence in a pressure situation, and as this was my first one, it didn't really reflect me in a true light. He was impressed with my grades, the shows I'd been in, and offered me a place. Something about him, and the entire building when being shown around, spoke to me, unlike anything I'd experienced looking around at Media buildings at different unis. as soon as I got home, I took the gamble, and I put that University as my first choice.

Fast forward four years, and I'm a graduate with a Theatre and Professional practice 2.1 degree. I've worked with two professional theatre companies, been a part of a number of shows, written, directed and acted in my own show, amongst other things. It was easily the most enjoyable thing I've ever done, and at some point in the next five years, I plan on going into a teaching degree, hopefully to help young people enjoy themselves in education the same way my drama teachers and lecturers helped me.

But the best thing about doing the Theatre degree is the fact that I am now one of the most social people from our course. I'm still in close contact with many people from my year, and even people from the two years above, and the two years below my year group. I even remain in contact with one of my lecturers, bullshitting with him about comic books and movies form time to time. I'm much more outgoing, I can look after myself where as before I was like a 12 year old in an 18 year olds body. Now I'm up for doing anything, going anywhere, and making the most of the time I have with my friends. The people I've met in those three years are some of the most amazing people I have ever had the pleasure to meet, and without them I know I'd still be that shy, withdrawn recluse who never went out and was content just being by himself.

So yeah. A bit of an obvious one really, but going to University really has completely changed my life.

 

[Richard Blonoff]

Mine is pretty similar to Dagger.

Up until the time I was about 17 I tried so hard to impress other people and put myself through shit, and was basically being a person that wasn't me. I have pretty bad depression and anxiety but in my attempts to impress people and fit in I stopped taking my medications for fear someone would find out and I would no longer be "cool" and I had a breakdown, I literally lost it. I tried to end my life for the first time. I started to drift back to normal but by the time I got back to school and everything the news had gotten out. My response was to try even harder than before to fit back in. All that I accomplished from that was making my issues worse. When I was 20 I had another breakdown and ended up in the same situation. After I got out of the psych ward I took a break from college and only hung out with a few really close friends....and for the first time since before high school I was comfortable.

I stopped hiding things. I was more open about being a massive gamer, more open about being into comics, basically just being a nerd in general. Not only did my friends accept it but most of my friendships grew stronger. Now I have friends who I game with who aren't just people online, I go to indy wrestling and MMA shows with them, I actually ref a local promotion when they are close. I even had a couple matches. I've had some part time writing jobs. While I was pretending to be someone I wasn't I had one girl I really dated and had sex with, since I quit I have had 3. All because I stopped pretending and hiding

Just dropping all the status bullshit and being myself probably saved my life

 

[Fugazi]

Mine was at the tail end of last year. I was heavily into drugs and alcohol and I was unhealthy but I decided out of the blue on day that once 2012 came I was gonna quit everything and be completely sober. I also quit smoking cigarettes. Here we are almost 5 months later and I've only relapsed twice. Once with alcohol because i was with some friends I hadn't seen in forever and once with weed because I was having massive back pains from an injury I received late 2011. It's been about 2 and a half months since I last relapsed and right now I'm in the best shape of my life and have completely lost all interest in relapsing again. I'm in my early 20's so its really prime time for all these things but I've completely lost interest. Not even when hanging with my drunk friends who pass the bong around nonstop has gotten me to relapse. 2 and a half months might not be much but considering that I'm in the best shape of my life and no longer have any urges I think its a damn good thing. I don't plan on ever going back and I can confidently say I never will. Too many good things have happened to me in the past couple months to try to screw it up.

 

[JWGunslinger]

I know the number one decision I made that's made my life better than anything else I've done. January 20th 2009 I asked my fiance(at the time just friends) to join me after picking up our work schedules for dinner, and that night was when we first really hit it off and began going out. The reason that this one is so big to me is not just because now we're engaged but because it almost didnt happen. I liked her and I wanted to do something of the sort but wasnt feeling too confident and almost just went alone but at the last second I texted her and then the rest was history. I love when you have a moment like that and it leads to something good, its so cool that one small change can alter your life drastically and I'm glad in this case it did for the better.

 

[The Snake]

I'm not fatalistic like this, I kind of look back through those split decisions and think that with each of them, there is a chance I could have developed similarly or found similar happiness.

For example, I grew up working class home, with a single parent, and despite a general dislike of University during my whole high school years, I applied because a teacher said I should, just in case. I didn't really want to go, but I accepted an offer I got, simply because it was to one of the top Universities in the country and on a course that required pretty exceptional grades and was a course that I had enjoyed in high school.

I don't somehow think that that decision, which is pretty huge in terms of how it affected my life, and I find myself hugely happy with life here now 3 years later, has actually any transcendental significance in my net happiness.

I think this might have to do with the fact I went to 10 schools before I turned 14, I soon learned that there's enough people I identify with in most parts of life for me to not worry too much about the choices I have had to make.

I don't think there's much in this world that would truly 'change me', of course the conditions will change, but I've always been content and happy, and I don't find myself with one 'dream' to make me even happier, the world's huge, there's lots of people out there I will and would enjoy being with, and lots of activities and careers the same. The only real things that might change me are tragic ones, for which I'm grateful none have happened.