One Mistake Or Decision Can Change Your Life Forever (Real Life Butterfly Effect) - AskReddit

if i had a time machine i'd go back in time and stop myself from eating that pizza what's one mistake or decision you made that completely altered the course of your life said yes to going to the pub i was on a backpacking trip around europe at a hostel in belfast this australian guy who was in the same dorm as me asked if anyone wanted to join him for a drink me and a new zealander tagged along we had an absolutely epic night in what was then still a city under martial law next day we all went in different directions but i kept in contact with the australian at some stage months later he mentions that i should come and visit him in australia about six months later i did i had a fantastic time traveled around australia and liked it so much that i applied for a residency permit 30 years later i'm still here it's been absolutely great but none of that would have happened if i didn't say yes to a few beers all the way back in the 80s one day my foreman just flat out didn't show up to work i was vaguely familiar with what had to go on at the site and who needed to do it so i just started calling people and talking to those on site saying i was filling in for him for today fast forward a few months and people are saying they greatly prefer me organizing jobs and management starts giving me jobs of my own i start getting great reviews from clients and my jobs are making money eventually my old foreman gets fired not because of me directly but because of some questionable antics and poor performance now i'm enjoying a significantly better paying and more fulfilling job what started as a job to make a bit of money while i figured out what i want to do has turned into something with serious career potential i failed an unfailable class at university because i totally flunked studying i was so sure it is unfailable i didn't study at all i had to retake the class in which there were group projects second time over i was in a team with this girl i married her last summer after my dad died when i was 21 i moved from detroit to portland for a change of scenery and to get out of the rut of drinking every night with my friends this was mid-recession so unemployment was like 14 in portland i got a job working 5 p.m to 5 a.m in a nightclub three nights per week and it sucked then i got laid off i was lost a college dropout no money no job and even the promise of a mild winter didn't happen portland got their worst snowstorm in 30 years i found out a college buddy lived in portland and we connected we went out on a tuesday night and we ate mushrooms and in the moment of clarity that mushrooms give you as you are coming down i realized how much i hated living in portland i texted one friend and said let's move to nyc and texted another and said let's move to chicago i woke up and they had both said no i thought f it i'll move to chicago anyway so i sold my car that friday bought a train ticket and was on a train monday cut to 12 years later i still live in chicago i went back to school and got my degree i have a good job i just celebrated my first wedding anniversary albeit in quarantine rather than the mexico trip we had scheduled we have an awesome dog and we're closing on a house next month all of this because i took mushrooms and decided to move to chicago my wonderful two-year-old daughter was not planned but thanks to her i decided to have a vasectomy i had always had one slightly enlarged testicle due to a mountain biking accident 10 years prior my urologist had it biopsied because it didn't look right turns out i had a testicular cancer for an impossible to determine period of time four rounds of chemo later and i'm perfectly fine had i not had my daughter i would have probably had much worse results years later when it finally made its presence known via pain and had spread into my body so my daughter technically saved my life which is knowledge i'm sure she'll use on with greatly during her teenage years when i'm trying to punish her when i moved and switched middle schools way back i threw out all my stuff except for my math textbook when i went to my new school the math class i was in was a little bit behind from where i was and i told them but they didn't believe me but then i showed my old math textbook to show that i was way ahead of that class two of my classes were changed and in both of my new classes where a bunch of friends i made if i threw away that math textbook i wouldn't have any good friends right now [Music] forgot hamburger buns dad died was depressed was without a job for over a year applied at a few different places and heard nothing back went to a barbecue at a friend's house and stopped at the store first we got everything we needed went out to the car started packing up and realized we forgot hamburger buns i go back in the store and walking down the frozen foods island run into an old co-worker who happened to now be a manager at one of the places i applied at months ago chatted it up with him for a little bit and three days later i get a call out of the blue to come in for an interview at his company he worked at i've been with the company 18 years last month all because of the chance encounter in the frozen food aisle all because i forgot hamburger buns accepted a painkiller at a party started as an every other weekend thing then it was every weekend then it was hard days at work then it was daily before work then it was multiple times a day at work i'd be snorting lines off my desk in a call center then money was getting insanely tight and my dealer was like dude just start doing heroin it's way cheaper and i remember laughing in his face like you idiot that'll be the day then a little while later money became non-existent and i found out your could snort heroin problem solved and then a few handful of years later i found myself homeless in skid row dtla going from a loving supportive family with amazing amazing friends near six-figure job everything going super great to passing out in piles of garbage and having teeth fall out i only got out thanks to suboxone but i'm so glad it exists moved out of the homeless shelter september 2019 starting life over in your mid-30s is pretty bad but it's doable my life is simple as hell now and i have literally zero friends but that's still an upgrade from where i was a short time ago [Music] there was an incident where a good friend of mine got kicked out of where we were living the owner called me and told me the whole thing and said i was welcome to stay because i had not created any of the problems my friend came to tell me about it and told me we have to move out i told her i was told something different and she snapped at me that i couldn't stay there if she wasn't there i was too much of a coward to stand up to her and deal with the consequences of losing that friendship so i left that house and struggled for years school would have been easier i could have saved gotten a car that was such a defining moment and i'm so sorry i chose wrong i was 18. i went to school to get one specific job in urban areas you need a minimum of five years experience to even apply i decided that i only wanted this job and didn't care about geography so i started applying while still finishing my master's degree i was offered the exact role i wanted immediately permanent full-time full benefits defined benefit pension plan three weeks vacation and the exact same salary as urban areas but it was a low cost of living area and it was in bum of nowhere i knew where it was on a map and that was about it so i accepted the job with the intention to get a little experience and get back to city as soon as possible well 11 years later i am still here i love this village my quality of life is amazing i found my partner here i have a two-minute commute to work it is unbelievable how much of a difference no commute does for hobbies and work-life balance i am leaps and bounds ahead of my friends who steadfastly remained in urban areas some are still not in permanent jobs or getting a pension and whatnot i have been debt free since a year after moving here and able to retire comfortably at 55 if i wanted to being simply open-minded about geography changed my entire life it also makes going to the city feel like a fun trip away i guess we are simple folks here when i was 27 i missed my usual train to work and had to wait another 30 minutes so i got to talking to a random guy who turned out to be a doctor he noticed a dark patch under my nail and recommended i go get it checked out it turned out to be sublingual melanoma skin cancer i thought it was a bruise and probably wouldn't have went the doctors over it i never saw him again [Music] a buddy of mine called me up one day to tell me he and his toxic controlling girlfriend had broken up and he wanted to celebrate with a few drinks at the time i was living a very anti-social lifestyle and i almost said no but something that they told me i needed to get out of the house so i agreed turns out that was the night i'd meet my future wife when we were reminiscing about that night my wife said she too almost declined going out flying into tulsa from san diego in 1998 coming home on a three-week leave from the service after a 16-month deployment a few days before there had been a bad ice storm and the roads were still slick my wife insisted on picking me up from the airport after i suggested taking a cab home i didn't want her driving on those slick roads because there was an eight-mile stretch of country two-lane road from our house to town and it could get pretty treacherous due to minimal maintenance she refused to drive an old cherokee chief that i had at the house and chose to drive her 2wd ranger pickup she lost control of the truck and went down a 40 embankment losing her life in the process we had a one-year-old daughter and a three-year-old son at home that grew up without a mother and i've spent the last 22 years kicking myself for not simply pissing her off to the point that she wouldn't drive and i could just make up with her when i got home i should have argued harder with her or had one of her brothers come and pick me up i met my new daughter for the first time with her mother gone i was basically meeting both my children for the first time as i had deployed when my son was my daughter's age neither knew me and both were absolutely terrified and confused i was still obligated to the corps for another year but they did right by me i stayed home on hardship drew base pay until my ease discharge dealing with being a single parent ptsd and transitioning to civilian life the happy ending is that both children had a great childhood grew up smart well and successful daughter is finishing her master's degree and my son is a successful electrician raising a young son on his own there's always a struggle in my mind that i'll always deal with my wife wasn't going to ever move from oklahoma and i planned on being a career marine so we would have ended up divorced no doubt and i wouldn't have the bond with my children that i do now i lost the love of my life but i gained a great relationship with my kids my children lost their mother but they didn't have to grow up with an absent father life is funny i read the book i claudius loved it so much i scheduled a trip to visit italy while touring the sights randomly met an american guy who was an i.t guy like me for an american school there a few weeks after coming back to the states i email him and he tells me he's getting married and moving back to the states and offered me his old position three months later i was on a plane back to italy lived there for four amazing years and made some great lifelong friends taking videography as an elective in middle school instead of photo like my sister throughout high school i won numerous student filmmaking awards made tons of friends i never would have had if i not joined those classes developed a super useful skill and got paying jobs throughout high school because of my skill set i even got hired at my current job because of my video skills ordered a pizza from domino's wound up with the worst case of food poisoning i've ever had i was essentially bedridden for three months and i've since developed severe post-infectious ibs that i've been struggling with for the past three years i'm basically not functional probably 50 of the time it's essentially destroyed my quality of life and i'm terrified that i may never have a normal life again it's taken everything i enjoyed or was passionate about away from me if i had a time machine i'd go back in time and stop myself from eating that pizza i got fired from my job waiting tables in college i got into it with a customer terrible to lose the job because it was good money i ended up getting a job as a teaching assistant several months later didn't pay nearly as well but it was something i spent a lot of time checking citations years later i got my first job at my current place of work because checking the citations showed i was skilled at paying attention to details that editing job led to my current career all in all it's been great if i hadn't gotten fired i likely wouldn't have my current career which has led to skills travel and good pay going to trade school for some background i am a young woman after being moved out for several years and accumulating some meager savings it was time to begin looking at post-secondary options the course that piqued my interest was in a separate province but my parents offered to both pay for my tuition and let me move back home if i chose a course closer to home this was a trap after selecting a course with transferable skills to the course i had planned to take welding and machining my father drove me to the office at the school to pay for the course in front of the entire office staff he laughed in my face telling me he was never planning to pay for anything except a music degree horrified i decided then and there to use my line of credit and savings to pay for the course unfortunately my father took the opportunity to max out my line of credit and bank account to leave me with no additional funds after paying for the school now i could not just move out again the year that followed was grueling and harsh my sister committed suicide and i contracted mano as an adult in the process i booted my father from my account and moved back out having to expand the line of credit in the process i finished the course with the program excellence award as the only woman present and five years later i have successfully passed my red seal exam as a millwright my debts are paid my job is incredible and i move cities life has never been better despite the rough path that it took to arrive here got accepted at the best state school where i lived when my mom found out she tried to not let me leave for school her plan get a job in a local factory and pay her rent like she did when she turned 18 so she could use the money to pay for my three brothers college my older brother was in an expensive private school already and i had two younger brothers i moved out went to college on my own and turned out to be the first kid to graduate my older bro flunked out twice first to get a job first to get married first to have kids and first to be childless at a young age if i had done what my mom had wanted i would have been for life by my standards thanks for listening to radio tts hit the subscribe button and activate the notification bell for more life-changing videos click the right box for a similar video about the butterfly effect let us know in the comments what small choices have changed your life [Music]

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Id: H0aKHVsK3yU

Length: 15min 30sec (930 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 24 2020