You hear about it all the time, but until something like it happens to you, it doesn’t seem possible.
I’m talking about making life-altering decisions and mistakes that profoundly affect the rest of your life.
Has this ever happened to you?
Here are some true stories from folks on AskReddit.
1. That’s a good story.
“Forgot hamburger buns.
Dad died, depressed, was without a job for over a year. Applied at a few different places and heard nothing back. Went to a bbq at a friends 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, am walking down the frozen foods aisle and run into an old coworker, 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 3 days later, I get a call out of the blue to come in for an interview at his company he worked at.
Ive been with the company 18 years, last month, all because of that chance encounter in the frozen food aisle, all because I forgot hamburger buns.”
2. A step up.
“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.”
3. Flunked out.
“I flunked out of my first school. I imagine if I’d stayed and gotten my degree, my life would have been a lot different. Instead I ended up working for a few years, realizing the value of a degree, and re-starting my life.
It’s made me realize that kids shouldn’t be forced into college right after high school. Some of them need to work, or travel, or whatever, to figure out for themselves what their path is going to be. 18 is way too young to point a finger at someone and be like “okay now you need to decide the rest of your life.””
4. To the pub!
“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, travelled around Australia and liked it so much that I applied for a residency permit.
Thirty 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 80’s.”
5. That’s all it takes…
“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 f**king 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 sh**ty but it’s doable. My life is simple as f**k now and I have literally zero friends but that’s still an upgrade from where I was a short time ago.
F**k heroin.”
6. Maybe it was fate…
“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 antisocial lifestyle, and I almost said no, but something that day 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.”
7. A happy ending.
“I failed an un-failable class at university because I totally flunk studying. I was so sure it is un-failable I didn’t study at all.
I had to re-take the class in which there were group projects. Second time over, I was in a team with this girl.
I married her last summer.”
8. Not good.
“Smoked synthetic cannabis.
Mental breakdown, antipsychotics, complete change in my physique and personality. 20 – 30 was a blur. I’m on very low doses of my meds with careful management from my shrink, but I know I will need them for the rest of my life.
Lost so many years and experiences that I’ll never get back.
Stay the hell away from Spice, K2, Black Mamba and the like if you value your mind.”
9. Quite a story.
“My wonderful 2 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 had 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 it’s 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 great glee during her teenage years when I’m trying to punish her.”
10. Close call.
“Years ago I was heading to Hawaii in February and I was pasty white. So I decided to go to a tanning salon first to get base tan and not burn in HI.
The bed was in a mirrored room and I noticed my left testicle was enlarged. Had surgery and radiation and I am fine. So getting a tan saved me from dying of cancer.”
11. All because of a book.
“I read the book ‘I, Claudius’. Loved it so much I scheduled a trip to visit Italy.
While touring the sites, randomly met an american guy who was an IT 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 4 amazing years and made some great lifelong friends.”
12. Life is funny.
“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 5pm to 5am in a nightclub 3 nights per week and it suuuucked. 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**k 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.”
13. Years of struggle.
“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.”
14. Nice!
“Was working a dead end service job in the early 90s. On a day off, had a couple friends over and we were bored so we decided to go bowling – which we hardly ever did. But for extra variety also decided to go one suburb over to a different bowling alley than we would normally go to.
Bowled a couple of games, and then the next lane over starts filling up with a group, two guys I knew from high school are in that group and we get to chatting, one of them works for a software company that needed a phone support guy and he recalled I was into computers (this was 1991 so there wasn’t a flood of kids from college looking to get into the industry yet).
So he asked me to come in for an interview at the place. Went down 2 days later, got the job, spent 7 years at that company, and now going on 28 years in the tech industry – all with a high school diploma and a basic network evening course that first company paid me to take a couple years after I started with them.”
Now we’d like to hear from you.
Have you ever made any life-altering decisions or mistakes?
If so, please share them with us in the comments.
Thank you!
