034: Decision Consequences: The Long-Term Ripple Effects of Your Choices
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Show Notes
Every decision we make—big or small—creates ripple effects that impact far more than we often realize. In today’s episode, Lauren walks through real-life examples (including her own home renovation saga) to unpack how one decision can lead to a cascade of long-term relational, financial, and emotional consequences. Whether you're considering a job change, a big move, or a parenting choice, this episode will help you think beyond the surface and make decisions anchored in wisdom and faith.
Links From This Episode:
✨ Questioning to Confident Decision Guide — Use code PODCAST for 10% off
✨ Episode 22: Setting Your Kids up for Success: How to Inspire Career-Minded Thinking by Nurturing Your Children’s Strengths & Passions with Anna McLaughlin
Key Points:
🔑 Every decision has ripple effects that can show up spiritually, emotionally, relationally, physically, and financially
🔑 Cutting corners in one area (like building or renovating a home) can cost more later—financially and mentally
🔑 Even moral decisions (like lying at work) can create long-lasting relational consequences
🔑 Positive ripple effects—like those from intentional homeschooling—can shape a child’s future in powerful ways
Your Action Step for the Week:
Choose one decision—past or present—and journal through its ripple effects in the five impact zones: Spiritual, Emotional, Relational, Physical, Financial. Reflect on what that teaches you about how to approach your next big decision with wisdom and intention.
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Transcript
What are the ripple effects of your decisions? How else do they impact you long term, and what are the things you might not be thinking about when you're facing a decision that could be affected by it? That's what we're diving into today.
But first, wanted to give a few personal updates. I know a lot of people are always asking me, “Hey, how's your kitchen renovation coming along?” I know I've been talking about it on the podcast since last summer, since that is when we started on our renovation project. We just got some little bit discouraging news this week. It is April 21st as I'm recording this. We thought our cabinets were supposed to be in either this week or early next week, and we finally got through to our cabinet guy to get an update, and our delivery date to him is not until May 25th, which is a Sunday. So I'm like, that's kind of odd. Who would deliver on a Sunday over Memorial weekend? So we don't know if it'll be the Friday before or more likely the Tuesday after, since Monday's Memorial Day. So now we have to wait an extra month and we literally just got rid of our current cabinets since we are having our flooring guy put the flooring in the living room, kitchen and dining room. So at least we'll have our final floors in and we can do some of the other work that needs to be done before the cabinets go in, like having the walls painted, the ceiling needs to be painted, where we had to patch some holes in the ceiling from moving light fixtures around and we removed an entire wall, so had to patch the drywall there and you know, the ceiling work there. And so there are some things we can do in the meantime, but at the same time, thinking about going a whole extra month with no cabinets, no counters, no storage. Like right now, all of our kitchen stuff is in boxes in my office. So a little discouraging, a little disheartening, but we will make it through.
So that just goes to show though, one of the ripple effects of choosing to do projects ourselves instead of hiring one general contractor to cover everything. So we had a separate flooring guy, separate cabinet guy, Josh did the electrical work himself. We removed the wall ourselves. So that's what's just been dragging this project on. And when you are facing the decision at first, like do we hire the contractor or do we do things ourselves? The number one thing we were looking at was budget. And honestly, now that we've been through it and we are looking back, it's like we've probably saved money, but we haven't been saving all of our receipts. And my husband has had to go back to Home Depot so many times to pick up new tools or new supplies. So that's one thing that the initial effect of choosing to do things ourselves, like contractors have all the tools already, and contractors get discounts on their supplies because they often buy in bulk and they've got connections with different companies. They get wholesale prices. Whereas if we're buying things from Home Depot, we're paying consumer pricing on that and not the wholesale pricing that the contractors get and the contractor pricing. So there are ripple effects and just it dragging out and having to deal with the stress of not having a kitchen and having our stuff all shoved. Every single room in our house has things that are shoved in it that don't belong there. Besides that, our living room is currently cleared out so we can lay the floors there and our kitchen has nothing in it, and once the floors go in there, we'll have to move everything out of the dining room that's shoved in the dining room in order to then access the dining room to put the floors in there.
So it's just a long process. Very dragged out. But this episode is going to be short and sweet because I don't have the time this week to be dedicating it to anything longer, but I think there's still a lot you can get out of it in a short amount of time. So that's even better. Why drag things out and make a super long episode when I can get through the content and help it be impactful in a short amount of time.
So take a listen.
Intro: Welcome to the Anchored Decision Show. I'm your host, Lauren Black, the world's biggest overthinker turn decision coach, all by the grace of God. Now I'm on a mission to help you make easier decisions, discover God's will and live with purpose. Tune in weekly to hear real life decision stories, expert insights, and faith-based strategies to help you navigate your decisions with confidence, so ditch your pros and cons list and learn to make better decisions without asking your mom or losing another night sleep. Let's go.
Ripple Effects of Your Choices
All right, so if you have been around here a while, you know that I am not about making decisions just in the moment on a whim. I'm about anchoring them in God, making wise choices, thinking long term and being mindful of how our choices not only shape our lives, but the lives of those around us, because every decision you make has a ripple effect.
So it's like when you drop a stone in water, you might only feel the splash at first, but the ripples keep spreading. It touches other things around it. I guess a better analogy would be more of a tsunami or something bigger where, it starts off small. An earthquake causes a little splash in the ocean that just builds up, builds up, builds up and pushes, and then it washes as shore and can affect everything.
I guess it just depends on which decision you're making and how big of a decision it is. Are you making a decision where it is just a little pebble thrown in and you've got a few ripples, or are you making a tsunami decision that can impact everything in your life either for the detriment of it or for the better?
So let's go through a few examples. Rather than me just talking through more and more, I think it'd be easier to get my point across to share some examples.
Example 1: Home Construction Decisions
So we will start with a housing example, since I'm going through housing issues right now. And so let's say you are building a home from scratch.
And you're trying to stay within a budget, so you go with the cheapest materials and you might cut some corners here and there. And I know that building is expensive. We are going through very expensive renovations right now, but here in Florida, you have to think about hurricanes, and so if you start cutting corners by only putting single straps on your roof instead of double, or you go with wood framing instead of concrete block, those are going to have effects on how your household's up.
In a hurricane or maybe you grab the lowest cost appliances and thin insulation and really cheap fixtures, what are the effects of those? They might look nice and fine when you first start using them, but are they going to hold up? So if you have this beautiful, fresh new house you built that, you cut corners everywhere you went and everything's cheap, are your appliances going to hold up?
Probably not as well as they would if you had gone with more expensive appliances from the start. And maybe that's okay. Maybe you, you aim for that. You say, Hey, since we have so many expenses upfront, we're just gonna go with things that are cheap. And then when they need to be replaced, then we'll put in the more quality ones.
But if you are cutting corners just for the sake of, hey, you're looking at only at budget and you're not thinking through the effects of it. So if your appliances break early. Then you might have more replacements, and so that's costly. And then also if you had custom made your kitchen based around certain things, like my in-laws had a condo in Mexico and they built this whole custom kitchen based around this unique sized fridge that they had put in. And when that fridge went, it was going to cost $20,000 to reconfigure their kitchen because they couldn't just put in any old fridge. They either had to go buy a super expensive custom fridge or redo the whole cabinets, which is what they were planning on doing until they decided just to sell and not have to worry about the kitchen themselves.
So if you've got something in that's a custom thing and it breaks, that affects more than just, okay, let's just switch this out. The last time we had to switch out our fridge, we actually have two fridges, double fridges, and the only fridges we could find that fit the width of our space were too tall and we had to remove the cabinets above the fridge and just put some shelves in because it didn't work with the cabinets. So these are some of those ripple effects that, okay, you buy the cheap appliance, you think no big deal, we'll just switch it out. But you might have to switch out your cabinets, make some changes. That's more time, more energy, more money.
Things like poor insulation. You might have higher electric bills every single month, and if that adds up over 30 years or however long you are in that house, that can be really expensive. Way more expensive than if you had just put the proper insulation in from the start.
And then going back to that natural disaster, if you've put super cheap things in or you decided not to use hurricane impact windows, and then what's a ripple effect there? You need something to protect your windows. So you might need to then go out and buy shutters and then you're drilling holes in the outside of your walls. And we had issues with when we, before we put in our impact windows and we had put plywood up as our hurricane protection. Then you've got storage issues of half of our garage was taken up with these sheets of plywood that we needed for our hurricane protection that you have to store, and then they start getting warped because they got wet during hurricanes and didn't get fully dried out before we had to take 'em off and stack 'em up, or they just warped because it's wood. And then we've got holes in the outside of our house and bugs were starting to come in, like wasps would go in and make their nests in the holes. And then we had issues where if you didn't get the the screws perfectly straight in the hole, then the next time we'd go to hang the hurricane shutters, next season, it would not go in right. And so these are the consequences of certain choices.
And let's say that you cut corners on just the perfectionism of your house or hiring the cheapest contractors. You could have things that start to leak or break or things that aren't level, and that affects things down the road. So we even had a roofing contractor that we, we hired middle ground. We didn't go with the cheapest. We didn't go with the most expensive. Like, okay, we'll go in one of the, the medium range there. So we hired this roofing contractor and they made some mistakes and they did some things that ended up leaking not that long after we had put the roof on. It was long enough that it was outside of their warranty that we didn't discover it until we then had to pay the extra to have it fixed.
So when you hire people that are the cheapest or cut corners, later on, then it's like, okay, well now we've got water damage here, so now we need to replace that, and that means we need to repaint. So it just escalates.
So think through the long-term implications of your decisions.
Example 2: Moving Away from Family
So let's look at another housing example. But this time, let's say you live near your family and you decide to take a job and move away.
And so maybe you might look and say, hey, the cost of living is better in the new area. Or you might think, the salary they're willing to pay you is better. But what are the long-term effects and those ripple effects of moving away from family?
The obvious ones are you don't get to see your family as often. You won't have as strong of bonds. Your kids might not know their grandparents and their cousins as intimately.
But what else are the effects? You might now have to travel for every holiday if you actually want to spend those holidays with your family members, which means you are flying or driving at the busiest, most expensive times of year. If your family can't accommodate you in their house, if you need to rent a hotel or get an Airbnb, it can be harder to find and more expensive.
Then, if you're taking paid time off and spending your vacation time to go see family, then you don't get to spend your vacation days going and doing other travel that you might want to do as a family. Instead, you have to go see your parents, see your sisters, see your cousins.
And then plus, let's say if you had family nearby before and they were able to help with some free childcare for you to go on date nights or for you to be able to work. Sometimes the grandparents watch the kids for those that are local. And so now if you're moving away from that, you have to think about all of the date nights that are now double in price because childcare and babysitting is so expensive.
So these are just some ripples to think about. Not all of them are deal breakers, because maybe if you were absolutely miserable in your job that was close to family and that you literally cannot find a position of what you want to be doing, what you would enjoy doing near your family, then it makes sense to move away, have a life you love, and then just have to spend your vacation time and spend a little more money to go see family on holidays or whenever you go to visit them.
Overwhelmed by a Big Decision?
Hey friend, are you facing a big decision? Maybe it's whether to go back to work, whether to let your mother-in-law move in with you or should you have another baby. Whatever your big decision is, it's time to stop stressing over the decision. Stop losing sleep over, wondering what to do and make your decision with ease and confidence.
You need my Questioning to Confident Decision Guide to help walk you through my signature decision-making framework, The SAIL Method, which will help you sail through your decision. That's Self-Awareness, Impact, and Litmus test to make sure you have covered all of your bases and make an informed decision based off your preferences, passions, personality, priorities, to make sure you're making the best decision for you.
So head on over to anchoreddecisions.com/decisionguide to grab your copy today.
Use code “podcast” at checkout for 10% off your order.
Now back to the episode.
Example 3: Lying at Work
All right, so what's another example we could look at? Let's say you lie at work. And maybe it's something that you're lying to help your patient. You work at a hospital and your patient wants to go to rehab, but they don't quite qualify, and so you just kind of fudge something on their paperwork in order for them to qualify to go to rehab, which you think they might not fully need, but if they're requesting it and you think, you know what, it could be helpful.
So you lie at work and then you get caught. And so now your boss is kind of in a weird position where they either have to support you in that lie or report you for putting false documentation down. And so you kind of sever that relationship. And now let's say you get fired. So now that's the first kind of layer of this ripple is that you're fired.
But now when you go to look for a new job, you don't have a boss that can write you a review. You have to let people know you were fired, which never looks as good as if you had left on your own. And you might be losing your benefits. That might put stress on your family at home. If you have kids, your kids might be a little nervous and fearful, like, okay, are we gonna have to move for my parent to find a new job? Do I have to cut back on sports and activities that we can't pay for in the meantime?
You know, what are those other effects and how does it emotionally affect your family for you to not have a job in this moment? And financially? And spiritually, are you now connecting with God or are you becoming self-reliant? Are you able to attend church during this time or do you have to be out picking up side jobs to make ends meet while you're waiting?
So when we're looking at the consequences of your decision, it's not just surface level. It goes deeper. It goes emotionally, it goes spiritually, it goes physically, relationally, financially. It impacts more things than just one. And those can have effects later on in life. When you go to get a different job at another hospital and they see, oh, you have false documentation written down as a reason for being fired. Is that going to impact your role? Are you able to move up and take on higher positions at your job if they see that this is in your past?
So there are just consequences. And sometimes things are out of your control. Like you felt you were doing the best thing for that patient, but now you're suffering a consequence for it.
Example 4: Homeschooling
So let's look at one more example. And this one is more of positive ripple effects. So some of these ripple effects can be really beautiful. Can be really, really good things that you want in your life and that have those positive implications.
So now I don't homeschool my kids, but after talking with a lot of moms who have, I can see the positive ripple effects of parents who homeschool. And more than just having school hours that are flexible, because that's what a lot of people look at. Like, oh, we can do school anytime. We don't have to spend as long because you can get through the curriculum so much faster than what people do during the school day. And then you have all this freedom.
But one thing, you know, I love to travel. I've been itching to travel. I talked about this earlier in the episode. But basically, you can travel anytime you want when your kids are homeschooled because you don't have to wait for summer break and spring break. You can go whenever, which means you're not fighting the crowds as much. You can go when things are cheaper. A lot of times cruises—you know, living in Florida, we're so close to cruise ports—but the cruises have kids sail free during the school year. So you either have to pull your kids out if they're in public or private school, or you have to wait till summer and you pay a lot more. So there's a ripple effect of public school is if you're going to take a cruise, you pay a lot more to have them go when they're out of school.
Back to the homeschooling—you can also spend more time as a family together. So building those bonds, building more memories, special relationships with your kids. You can pour into them more on a spiritual level where you can choose curriculum that is based around God for every subject that you do. And you can choose the curriculum that fits your kids' specialties and their strengths and their desires and what they're interested in so that it keeps them more engaged in their schooling.
So I actually had a podcast episode—episode 22—with Anna McLaughlin that she shared how she uses homeschooling to help shape her kids' careers. She finds what paths and interests her kids are aiming towards and really interested in so that she can help build them up for their careers now while they're little. And she does that through homeschooling. Through, okay, if you need a writing project and her kid is really interested in sports announcing, go write a letter to a sports announcer and you have to come up with questions that you would ask them in interview style. And that way they're working on their handwriting, they're problem solving, they're thinking deep, and they're doing it in a way that interests them.
That ripple effect of thinking about your child's career when they're little and being able to pour into them and help them aim towards that now can set them up for so much future success because they can then go shadow and intern while they're in school—in elementary school, high school—well, maybe not elementary, but like middle school, high school. They can start shadowing. They can start interning. They can start, you know, looking at, do I actually really like this as a career? Do I want to do that? And then they can have the experience on their resume and they can start building towards that and get ahead in life because they're not going to be 25 years old graduating from school with a master's degree that they don't even care about or want to do the work because they just chose things that should be a “good career,” rather than finding things they're passionate about, they're strong in, and that they really could build a good, stable career out of.
How you can consider your decision consequences
So with this said, what does this mean for you? So whether you are facing a big decision right now or you have a big decision coming up, I want you to start looking at all of the ways it can affect you in the five impact zones.
This is from my SAIL Method. SAIL—this is my decision making framework that I use for my coaching and my decision guides. And I have that I is impact. And so you want to look at how does this decision impact me spiritually, financially, relationally, physically, and emotionally.
And most things fall into those categories. Like if you think about education, well, education, that would be somewhat emotional and somewhat physical. Look at all of the ripple effects in those five impact zones. And then start thinking, okay, if it affects this, take it one step further. What else could that affect? And just think about all the layers that it could be impacting in your life, in your loved one's lives, in anyone else who's affected by that decision’s life. So that you're able to really evaluate from a full perspective.
Action Step
Now every episode, I like to leave you with an action step. So today's action step is to look at either a decision you have coming up or look at a decision you've had in the past and look at those ripple effects.
So if you don't have a decision you're facing soon, then go back to a decision in your past and start to journal and write out what were the ripple effects of that decision. How has it impacted you and those around you in these various areas? And that way you're able to apply that to the next decision you make and really have a good grasp of how else it affects things around you.
So now this goal is not to have pride over, oh, look at all the good things that have come out of this decision. Or to have guilt over, oh man, I made that bad decision and now look at all the bad things that have come out of it. It's just for awareness so that you can move forward making the best decisions possible.
That is what I am all about here at Anchored Decisions—is helping you make wise choices that make for a better life. Because when we slow down long enough to see how far these ripples go, we can better anchor our next decision in faith, in wisdom, and in intentionality.
So that is all for today's episode. If this encouraged you, would you take 30 seconds to leave a review? You can just scroll down if you're on Apple Podcasts from your episode or from my main show page and it should show you where you can leave a review. I would love to hear what you think of the show and what else you want to hear on my show. Or share this with a friend so that you can be an encourager to them and help others make wise, faith-based decisions.
Closing Prayer
Father God, I thank you so much that you are a God of wisdom and that you want the best for us and the best ripple effect we can have in our lives. So may we make all of our decisions based on wisdom, based on looking at the long-term and the other implications, and how this decision we're facing can impact those around us and our circumstances—not just in our close proximity, but throughout as it radiates to things around us.
So, God, we pray that you would be the center of all of our decisions and that you would guide us with your full wisdom and that we would be aligned with you and your path. We lift up all of our decisions to you, Jesus. In your name we pray, amen.
Outro: Thanks for listening all the way through. I love that you're on this journey with me to be a better decision maker and make faith-based decisions. Go follow me on social media @AnchoredDecisions so that we can stay connected outside of your earbuds and have genuine conversations of developing your faith, finding your path, and really living in God's will.
Have a blessed week.