Dead Ends: How Do I Avoid Them?

The purpose of life can be many things and can include successes and how well we lived. While avoiding Dead Ends is not necessarily a guarantee to a better life, knowing when they occur and how to avoid them at the beginning generally means we waste less time on trying to get out them, thus giving time to spend on things of greater value. Once again, it seems an ounce of prevention prevents a pound of cure.

But how do we learn to avoid Dead Ends? Especially when we're young and perhaps lack knowledge (or wisdom), we enter into things and relationships that serve us ill in the long run yet we've not the ability to see it. Is there some sort of screen or filter we can use now - and teach to those who are younger - on what to look for in anything to try to verify, as much as possible, that it is not a Dead End?

1) Plan: Things go better in anything - vacations, getting ready in the morning, life- with a plan. Knowing where we're going and having it documented by a map, a list, or a life plan make it less likely we'll veer off track and end up some place that we didn't intend. Again, this is an activity that requires thinking and consideration on our part. Example: If you plan to become a veterinarian, there are certain things you have to do to prepare yourself to get accepted into Veterinarianary school. It is probable that doing poorly in school leading up to that point is not one of those activities that will support that ultimate goal. Knowing that, we can make the better choice for the ultimate destination.


2) Learn : In reality, many of us know through painful experience the outcome of choices leading to Dead Ends. We simply need to learn to leverage that knowledge from our past into other areas of our lives. This also requires effort on our part: we need to train ourselves to extract principles from the experience of our lives. An example might be that we know that other jobs in the same industry will have issues needing to be confronted, although perhaps not the same issues, so the idea that a simple job change will completely change a career that we consider a Dead End is probably not an accurate one.

3) Consider: This is a Stephen Covey concept which he so clearly elucidates in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People as "Knowing the end from the beginning". Look a period of time down the road (Covey suggests the eulogies at your funeral). If you started with this choice - person, activity, career, lifestyle - where do you think it will lead in 20 years?

It's a careful needle we need to thread here - too often we veer to the extreme of "Blue Sky Thinking", where nothing bad will ever happen and we'll be massively successfully. Yes, we should look at that - but we should also look at the failures as well. What's the worst that could happen? It may take some research on our part - for example, what is the happiness of people in a chosen career field after 20 years, or do marriages with alcoholics tend to work out well - but for many things, we can at least gain the knowledge of potential outcomes.

4) Teach: We all - especially those of us that have racked up the "hash marks" of living known as birthdays - have our own tales of Dead Ends we have arrived at or chosen. It's not enough to try and find our own way out. We need to take that experience and share it with others - our children, our relatives, our coworkers, our friends - anyone who is in the place or process of making decisions. We need to share our past, help them to extract the principles of good and bad decision making in the short and long term, help them to understand and create a plan. Ask anyone who's suffered from a miserable Dead End brought on by bad choices and their fervent wish will be that no-one else has to undergo what they have undergone.

If time is the stuff of life, then the less time spent in Dead Ends, the more time we have to make effective choices that lead to desirable results and success. The ultimate difference: thinking before we act rather than acting before we think. Acting without thinking in driving in life leads us to Dead Ends. Acting without thinking in life is no different.