Decisions, decisions… We’re faced with loads of them on a daily basis: What to wear, what to eat, which route to travel, whether to say “yes” or “no.” Sometimes, our choices are pretty insignificant. Other times, they alter our lives forever. And often, we don’t even realize it at the time.
In the 1998 movie Sliding Doors, a woman misses the train. But in a parallel universe, she catches the train, and it triggers a completely different turn of events. Looking back, many of us have probably had moments just like that. Choices made, opportunities missed, and random encounters that have led us to exactly where we are today.
Someone asked, “What’s a decision you made in 5 seconds that changed the entire course of your life?” and it sparked a slew of responses that read like the script of a Butterfly Effect series. Many were romantic, some were harrowing and others were inspiring. Bored Panda has put together a list of the best for you to scroll through while you reflect on your own life choices.
I went back to school in my mid twenties after failing to find a job in my field.
My dog had passed the day before, so I wasn’t keen on going home. There was a poster on one of the classroom doors advertising a talk with a local company that does engineering
work with NASA. I decided to listen in even if it wasn’t a networking opportunity I was looking to take advantage of.
One of the speakers and I got to talking anyway and they said I’d be a shoe in for one of their early career programs.
I’ve worked on NASA’s Artemis Program for six years now, helping to get humans back to the moon. It’s an amazing job that I never dreamed of pursuing.
35,000. That’s how many decisions the average adult makes in one day. It seems crazy but according to researchers, it’s true. And that’s not even counting the choices we make subconsciously. It’s no surprise then that some of us can become overwhelmed with the amount of options available to us at any given time.
It’s something the experts call “choice overload.” It’s also known as “overchoice” or “the paradox of choice”, and according to team at The Decision Lab, it refers to “the difficulty of making a choice when presented with many options, especially when all options seem to have equal value.”
More options is not always a good thing, they warn. “It can decrease our motivation to decide, decrease satisfaction with the final choice, and increase negative emotions like regret,” the experts explain.
Buying her a drink at the bar instead of going home because I was tired. We ended up cozying up to a barstool, talking until the bar closed at 2 AM, getting married 2 years later, and 9 years later are expecting our second child in just a couple of days.
If I hadn’t bought her a drink that night I probably would never have seen her again, she graduated just a couple weeks later and moved across the state.
I remember walking home one night, I was about 14 or so. I walked everywhere, but also lived in a not so nice neighborhood, but I was used to it.
While walking down the street, I glanced back and noticed a guy guy walking behind me, a few house lengths behind. I didn’t think anything of it and continued on my way. After walking a bit further, I turned to check behind me and he was still walking, but then I noticed at a quicker pace than me, like a determined pace and was much closer than before.
Like I said, I was used to being in a shady neighborhood, but something told me something was up with this guy. I wasn’t scared, panicked, or anxious, but my brain told me, “what’s the worse that can happen if I just dip anyway?”
So, the next alleyway I walked up to, I decided to turn the corner, wait to be out of the guy’s line of sight and just sprint as fast as I could down the alley and tried to time it to where I could stop and hide behind a parked car without him noticing me running or hiding.
I sat behind the car, calmly. I wasn’t in a rush to get home and still didn’t have any fear. After about 30-45 seconds of chilling and waiting to see if anything would happen, the guy ran past me, down the alley. His head was on a swivel like he was almost definitely looking for me. He also had something in his hand; It kind of resembled a knife.
He never stopped going down the alley, so I waited again until I knew I’d be out of sight, and just walked back up the alley, back to the same street I was already on, and finished walking home.
Even walking home, even typing this 20 years later, for one reason or another, I just never feared for my life like I probably should have that night. Anyway, that split second decision proved to be the correct decision to keep my life, or at the very least, my allowance money.
Choice overload can also lead to FOMO. The dreaded fear of missing out… Jorge Cham, an engineer-turned-cartoonist, and Dwayne Godwin, a neuroscientist, explored this in their book Out of Your Mind. They say that FOMO rears its ugly head when we compare ourselves with others. And nowadays, social media makes this so easy to do.
“This is called ‘social comparison,’ where you not only think you made the wrong choice, but you think someone else made a better one,” explain Cham and Godwin.
And they warn that it can happen even if you’re content with your own life and choices.
(Mid-1980’s) Last second, I decided to go to a fraternity/sorority social that I was planning to skip. Met a girl who just transferred in and we went to the movies. Afterward, I told her that I wanted to learn how to invest my future savings from work after graduation. Her advice:
*”You should research a guy named Warren Buffett. My parents invested with him a while ago and are really happy with the results, so far.”*.
I was given a choice to stay in my current math class which I was cruising through, or to switch into a different math track that would have ended with me attending college courses as a high school senior and significantly increasing my chances of enrolling in the school of my choice.
I stayed in my current class because I had a crush on the girl that sat behind me.
The pair say that while having lots of options can feel exciting, not having any choice can sometimes make us happier. It’s something we’ve heard over and over again from people who lead a minimalist lifestyle. Cham and Godwin suggest embracing simplicity if you want to avoid choice overload.
Live your life like a Buddhist monk, they say. Well, some aspects of it anyway.
“Buddhist monks aspire to live a life of simplicity and minimalism, with fewer possessions compared to the average person,” they wrote. “Reducing choices lets Buddhist monks avoid the stress and anxiety that can come with making complex decisions. This can lead to a sense of clarity and calmness, with fewer feelings of indecision and worry.”
In 1996 I was 24 and had lived with my parents my whole life (I have lots of medical issues etc). But I was desperate to get out of my situation, so when a buddy of mine said ‘You can live with me? I might be able to get you a job where I work.’ I just immediately said ‘Yes’ without a second thought because I was so afraid of talking myself out of it. 3 days later I was on a bus going ~1200 miles away to live with someone I’d never met face to face on the promise that maybe he could get me a job.
That move got me so far out of my shell.. I started traveling, doing all the things I’d dreamed of, I had a social life again.. it effectively ended a ~7 year long deep depression, taught me that I could stand on my own feet if I had to, etc. so liberating.
Now, as I walk away from a living situation that got too toxic because I know I *can*, I am so glad I did it.
I was living and travelling in my car in New Zealand. I was driving through a small town in the South Island, looking for a spot to camp. It was super cold and as I was driving past a backpackers I thought “frick it, I’ll treat myself to a bed and a warm shower for one night” and swerved into the parking lot at the last second.
Got chatting to a girl in the dorm they put me in. 10 years later we are still together, have a kid, and live in Spain. My life would have been very different if I had made that decision even 1 second later, because is all likelyhood I would have chosen to stay at another backpackers about 20 meters further down the road.
Freaks me out sometimes thinking about how close I came to never meeting her.
My sister was always more social than me, and also has more medical issues than me. During one particularly hard summer where she needed to get *major corrective surgery* on *both* of her legs, one of her friends very kindly organized a pathfinder game she could get some regular social interaction out of while still resting up.
Somehow, I guess she mentioned that I’d also been interested in ttrpgs for a while, but I had no friends interested in playing any with me. The GM also extremely kindly extended an invitation to me, and even though I didn’t know anyone in the group besides my sister, I accepted! My sister spent a bit describing her friends to me before our first call altogether. She mentioned the GM and I have similar senses of humor, and she speculated that we would get along really well!
Years and years later I plan to include that speculation in our vows, because good god, *what a called shot.* Although we can’t get married on a Sunday, that’s our game night…
It’s a sentiment echoed by Robin Sharma, author of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. Sharma is a firm believer in minimalism. And according to him, saying “no” more often, is all part of the lifestyle.
“Too many good people suffer from the affliction of trying to please people. This causes them to say yes to nearly every request that comes their way,” se says, adding that mastery is very much about minimalism. And that means building a life based on a “monomaniacal” focus around only a few things.
“And because all you do are a few things every day (that are the very same things each day), you’re certain to get very very very great at these things,” adds the guru. “So, politely say no to lost opportunities so you can get your finest work done.”
I left my horrible boyfriend. He threatened me as he was getting ready for work and as he closed the front door, I knew I had to take this chance while the kids were all out of the house to run. My friend and his dad had everything out in 30 minutes.
My wife (then girlfriend) and I were walking home from the bar one night, and she calmly asked me why I was still at the job I had, that I was too smart for that and meant for better things.
That one comment lit a fire under me like nothing ever had. Within 2 months, I got into grad school, quit my job, and started a whole new (more successful) career path. That inspired my girlfriend to quit HER job and go back to school to pursue the career she wanted, which she ultimately did.
Our one short late night conversation led us to have a to a totally different life than we would have had.
I was having matcha w a former coworker & good friend and talking about how i need invisalign but can’t afford it. she told me how invisalign is discounted for students (some of the time!) and how i should go to school. i told her i haven’t finished hs & can’t afford to. she told me hs at community college is actually free! now i’m enrolled in both my hs courses & some dental hygienist prereqs, she changed the course of my life and what i thought was possible.
Mark Manson, best known for his bestselling book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, believes there is no such thing as a “perfect” decision.
“Every choice we make comes with its own set of pros and cons, and every outcome is shaped by a complex web of variables—variables we’re woefully unaware of most of the time anyway,” writes Manson, adding that every decision has what he calls an “opportunity cost.”
This means that when you “yes” to one path of action, you’re essentially saying “no” to another. Therefore, he says, it’s impossible to ever be certain that we’ve made the “right” decision.
Sorry for the length….
I worked at a small music venue in London, like 600 cap, behind the bar. One day I saw a guy tuning drums on stage, and as a drummer myself I was like “hey… I can do that! He probably gets paid too”.
So I fired out a bunch of emails. Got nothing. Ended up with an internship a music management company.
One Sunday night I get an email, to me and the 2 other interns working there. They asked if one of us would be willing to jump on a train early the next morning to Brighton to sell merch for one of their acts. The other two had already replied no, I thought frick it and said yes.
Turned up and the drummer was the “big deal” of the band and was late. Management had told the tour manager I played drums so he asked if I’d mind helping set up the drums and general Backline. It was a small tour so the FOH engineer was doing everything.
I of course said yes. Cut to the end of the night, ive sold merch, about to go home and the tour manager says “What’s your next two months look like? There’s a space on the tour bus if you want to do the same thing (for cheap)?”.
That was the start of the rest of my life. Being touring mostly stadiums and arenas for over a decade now.
I decided to do genetic screening from my ob gyn before I was even pregnant, didn’t think it would matter bc my spouse and I are not from at risk populations. Found out actually while pregnant that husband and I were both carriers of a recessive disease, so the baby had at 25% chance of being affected. Turned out baby was. Made the agonizing choose to terminate. Went through IVF specifically so next baby did not have it.
We currently have a healthy kid and if I didn’t do the screening, we would have no idea. The kid probably would let even be diagnosed bc the variants we have don’t show up on a usual screen at birth. Best case scenario, the kid would just be sickly and we’d have no idea why. Worst case, he’d be in and out of hospitals already and needing an organ transplant.
Say yes to the optional screening!
Manson advises that you learn to embrace uncertainty. He also suggests that when making a decision, you do a cost-benefit analysis first.
“But don’t just do the old-fashioned ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ list,” he says. “Add a couple more columns. Separate your ‘pros’ into both long-term and short-term. Add a column for regrets associated with each decision. And note if there is any long-shot potential for success.”
Saw there was a hurricane hitting the town an old high school friend of mine’s family lived in.
Messaged her on a whim to just ask if they were OK and see if they needed anything.
We got married and celebrated our first anniversary a few weeks ago!
11 years ago I saw on Facebook that my ex-GF’s fiancé passed away. We parted ways on pretty amicable terms but I hadn’t spoken to her in about 5 years. I disregarded all of my intuition about being tactful and picked up the phone to call her and offer my support. Fast forward 11 years and we’re happily married with 2 kids. I know the decision to pick up the phone changed the entire course of my life.
Just like the Butterfly Effect, Manson points out that every one of the actions you take results in a new set of decisions for you to make.
“Life has a momentum to it. Chance interacts with chance. Luck interacts with luck,” he writes. “As you throw yourself at the cosmic dice roll and take action on your decisions, you’ll start to bump into chance. You start to create your own luck.”
And with that luck, adds Manson, you open up a whole new world of decisions you didn’t even know existed up to that point.
Probably more like 5 minutes, but opting for a cesarean section during a long induction. i was given the option to wait things out or elect for a section. it was an especially tough decision given that i stalled at 9 cm – so nearly ready to push. was shaking like a leaf on the operating table, so hard that i was practically convulsing from the adrenaline. i later found out that my decision quite literally saved my life and my kid’s. c-sections get a bad rap, but they can be life saving for some. if i could do things over again, i would probably just schedule it in advance instead of trying to be a hero for nearly 40 hours, haha.
Asking my now-husband if he wanted to be friends. He came to his dental appointment where we were having an amazing chat and connection. I started cleaning the treatment room after he left, made a split decision, and ran after him. I yelled down the hallway “do you want to be friends?”; luckily he poked his head back into the hallway and said yes. My life would be completely different if I hadn’t asked and I’m so glad I did.
When I was younger I remember I was chillin my parents house with my gf. It was the day after christmas and I decided to take my gf home before taking a nap. On the way home I got a call from my mom, she said not to worry and everything was fine before it cut off.
When I called back I got some error about the line being disconnect, weird… When I got back my whole road was blocked off and I remember pulling over being like “what’s going on” before I saw my house on fire. I parked and ran down, found everyone fine thank god. Apparently my christmas gifts caught my bed on fire.
The chief said I wouldve most definitely passed away from smoke if I had been napping. In fact my dad thought I was and almost passed running up to my room to get me. Tbh I dont think he knew I was even out until my mom called me. I lost everything I owned but everyone was safe and it was only the upstairs. Insurance took care of us.
I don’t think it was quite five seconds but I made the decision to join the Navy in about five minutes and that completely altered the course of my life.
I had thought about it before and so it wasn’t totally out of the blue but I hadn’t really seriously thought about it until one day I was just like ‘frick it, I’m out’ and called up my recruiter, who amusingly enough was named Charles Dickens.
My best friend at the time was going to a birthday party for his wife’s sister a few hours away. He asked me if I wanted to go with them.
At the time I had almost no money and was even though I had a great job, I was burning through what I did way too fast.
I decided I would go and figure out my finances when I got back. The night of the party the first person I saw was his wife’s cousin. We didn’t leave each other’s side for the rest of the night.
We have been married for 19 years this August and have two amazing kids.
I’ve made some good decisions in my life, that one takes the cake.
I was at a career fair and had already spoken to the big companies I had on my list. I noticed a small booth with no students there and recognizing some of the brand parts they worked on. I got an offer to interview for an internship, interned at the smaller company for 2 summers, got a job offer at the headquarters after school and moved 1600 miles away with my husband to a city I had never heard of before that career fair. Turns out we love it here! 4 years later, we own a house, have good jobs, and a great group of friends all right here.
Drove home from college after winter break was over because my dumb boss scheduled me for 1 last shift after my semester had already started.
Got there a little late and it was slower than they thought it’d be so told me to go home. It was a 2 hour drive back to school so I decided to just go back to my parent’s house for the night.
Got a call just before leaving from a friend who lived in my dorm telling me I should come back that night. He mentioned a female friend was visiting him and he’d wingman hard for me (he was dating one of my friends who met each other through me).
I really didn’t want to, but in the spur of the moment I decided “Why not?”
That was in January 2008 and we’ve been together ever since that night.
Deciding to not go for my masters but try to get a job with just a bachelor. Holy it paid off. Decent starting salary amd x2 mu salary in 18 months and bought a house. .
I was behind a woman in the left lane doing 20 under the limit on the interstate. When I’d try to pass, she would speed up and slow down so that I couldn’t. I finally had a break in the right lane, so I decided to gun it, but this absolute psycho SLAMMED on her brakes and came to a complete stop. I had the choice of plowing into her or jerking over to the right.
I went diagonal, tapped her gas tank with my front bumper, nearly got t-bones by a semi going the actual speed limit, almost got the exit sign, and careened into a ditch, rolling 1.5 times before coming to a complete, upright stop.
My roof was dented in about an inch from my skull, and the only injury I sustained was broken glass from my windows shattering upon impact. My airbags didn’t deploy, which was a blessing.
The icing on the cake is that she drove off, then later called the police to say she had been rear ended, thinking I had passed in the accident. Surprise! Not only did I not pass away, but we had the same insurance company. Apparently, she kept asking for more rope with which to hang herself as she continued to lie to them, and an entire investigation was launched.
Stay safe out there, folks. A lot of motorists are completely unhinged.
I said yes to a random last-minute invite for coffee after class, because i was hungry and it was raining. That turned into my wife, a move to another state, and somehow two kids later im still annoyed I almost went home and microwaved leftovers instead.
Decided to get gas at the last minute at a station I don’t frequent, helped a lady whose car had broken down… married 31 years this year!!!
12 years ago I had just come back from holiday and was absolutely shattered. It was my friends birthday and there was a big night out planned. I felt bad cancelling on my friend but I was so tired, I drove just to say hello and stayed for a couple of hours. As I was driving back home I just did a U-turn and left the car at the pub and went out with everyone.
Couple of hours later met a girl who is now my amazing wife and we have a beautiful 5 year old boy.
My decision to go back completely changed my life’s trajectory!!!
Years ago wife and I were returning to Denver after camping in Great Sand dunes national park. On one of the state highways, we are like the 10th car stuck behind a camper van driving at 50mph on a 70mph stretch. It’s a single lane both ways with over taking every half mile so one by one cars would go the oncoming lane to get past the camper. My turn comes and I wait for a long straight stretch and move over to the oncoming lane to over take the camper. Just as I do that the camper starts to speed up. My spot in the lane is taken by the next car that was behind me and now I’m stuck in the wrong lane. I honk but no one is budging and letting me back and I see oncoming traffic is getting too close. I accelerate but realize I am not going to get past this camper, and at the last second had to bail to the shoulder of the oncoming traffic side at full speed and then floor it to get past the camper. Easily one of the most harrowing experience on a highway I have had.
I once walked past a poster that said walk across America for global nuclear disarmament, then ended up walking across America on the Great Peace March for global nuclear disarmament, from LA to NY, then to DC. Definitely changed my life.
I woke up one day in my early 20s and was sick of how my life was going, in a matter of a seconds i decided to join the USAF. I hadnt really even thought about it prior, i just knew it would be a massive change to my life and would force me to do something uncomfortable but character building. So, that day I went and talked to a recruiter and the process started. I didnt career it, but its definitely a fork in my life where I could be far worse off… it helped me get away from home and start a life/mature.
Bought French fries for a beautiful girl who hinted she wanted some at a house party. My buddy and I were going to grab food and coming back. My buddy who was sort of into her didn’t pick up the hint. I got them and gave them to him and he told her he bought them. She came up to me later at the party saying she knew I was the one that got them because my other friend told her.
14 years later and we are about to break up.
The middle school I went to. My mom gave me the option of choosing between two schools and I made a random Decision.
After a few weeks of what I couldn’t tell was flirting or not, I put my hand on the leg of the cutest girl I had ever met and said, “So I think we like each other.” And she grabbed my hand and said, “Yeah…”
And somehow 4/10 me has been with 10/10 her for twenty years.
Told my crush they could crash at my place the next time they were in town visiting friends.
The hookup turned into a marriage. 10 years going.
Shortened my first name to make it more resume friendly
I got the job.
Answering that DM from a stranger on Instagram… I move to America in just over a month and we get married ☺️.
So many!
Saying yes when my first husband asked me to marry him. Bad decision.
Asking my husband to marry me. Great decision. Happily married 25 yrs now.
Buying my horses.
Adopting my dog, and subsequent cats.
