Deep Dive With Dr. Carrie

Hey, Cadre family doctor Carrie here. We are going live with deep dive with Doctor Cary today, and we're going to talk about making decisions every day. We are forced, or we get, whichever way you want to look at it, to make multiple, numerous decisions, if not thousands of decisions on a daily basis, from what we're going to have for breakfast to where we're going to park our car at the store, to maybe it's some bigger decisions in life. Maybe it's where am I gonna take a new job? Or where am I gonna move?

But every day, we as human beings are forced, or we get to make thousands of decisions. And I wanna share with you about a story when I had to make a decision and the consequences that come from decisions, and just shed some light on this topic. So I was in two car accidents a few years ago, kind of back to back. The first one, I was t boned on the driver's side. I had very little time to react. I literally looked out my side of the door, looked out the glass, and saw headlights coming at me, and was t boned.

Didn't have a lot of time to correct my vehicle. I ended up with a pretty severe concussion, some herniated discs in my neck, and just was in rehab for a little while with the post concussion syndrome. It was not fun. Let's just say it was not fun. And then four months later to the day, I was in another car accident. Still had not recovered from that first car accident. I was still not even back to work full time from my concussion, and I was in an eight car pileup on the freeway. So I was in the middle lane, it was a three lane freeway, and I was driving about 60 miles an hour.

Right. It was rush hour time, but not too many cars. And in the left lane, the driver, I wasn't paying attention or something, ended up hitting the concrete median, and then the two cars behind him hit him. So three cars are now spinning on the road, coming into my lane, and there's cars in the right lane. So I literally had a decision to make because I'm looking ahead and I either go towards this mass of cars that are swirling on the freeway at 60 miles an hour, or the right lane is literally still full of cars.

And then, oh, it just happened to be construction time. And there was really no shoulder. So the cars to the right couldn't necessarily even move over to the shoulder on the freeway. And I had to make a decision. And I literally had two or 3 seconds to decide. Do I want to go straight into that or do I want to try to get over? And I can't just slam on my brakes because I have a car behind me. And what I ended up doing was, thankfully, the cars to my right started to move over, so I was able to avoid the swirling mess.

There were pieces of cars, like, flying all over the road. I drove over, like, a bumper in the process, and I also then got rear ended because the person was traveling behind me was a little bit too close to me. So I got rear ended in the process. Not super hard, but I still get quite a decent bump, and my poor car needed to be repaired again, and so I made it off to the shoulder. And it was interesting because as I was talking to my therapist after this for the next few weeks, I just said, I'm really struggling to get behind the wheel again.

I am, like, so triggered to drive. And my concussion got significantly worse to the point where I had, like, post concussive syndrome for, like, a good year, year and a half after this because my already poor, bruised brain got more bruised from just the light bump I got. And I said, I just don't understand because why is this one so much more traumatic for me than the first car accident? I mean, that one was a little bit more traumatic, right? Like, I literally just see headlights coming at me and smashed into me.

But this one was actually more traumatic for me to recover from. And she said, it's because you actually had time to make a decision. Like, you had to decide, how do I want to die today? You know what? I'm not saying that to be graphic, but, like, literally, how do I want to get injured today, right? Like, I'm either going to go into this mess or this mess, and you had to make a decision, so you're second guessing your decision. Should I have done something differently? Should I have slammed on my brakes?

And, like, when we make decisions in life, we have consequences, regardless of if we had time to plan for them or not. But sometimes when we make decisions, we second guess ourselves and say, gosh, I should have done something differently. I don't know if that was the right decision I made for my team at work. I don't know. I mean, there's just. There's so many things. And if you're an over analyzer like me, you will overanalyze every decision you make, and it'll keep you up at night. But I just wanted to inspire you today that if you think about every decision you have to make every single day, right?

Like, you can decide where you want to park at the store where you want to put your car. You can decide what you want to pick up to drink for first thing in the morning. You can decide how much time you want to spend on your phone. You can decide how you want to interact with human beings, how you get to show up that day. You get to decide how you let life impact you every single day. I mean, there's just thousands upon thousands of decisions we make every single day. And there's consequences for all of them, right?

Some of them might be small. Some of them might be. I chose to drink a pop, as I call it, because I'm a Minnesotan over a gossip water. Right? That might be a small decision in the moment, but that might add up to, like, a lifestyle habit that I consume a lot of sugar in my beverages, and that's why I struggle with being overweight. Or it might be, you know what? I choose to be a jerk to people on a regular basis. And it just. It's no wonder I don't have any friends, like, you know what I'm saying?

There's just. There's so many ways we. We decide to do things, and every single one has a consequence. Some of them might be instantaneous consequences like my car accident, and others might be more over the course of time. But I want you to think about some of the biggest decisions you make. And maybe it's how you show up every single day. Maybe it's how you let things affect you. This was an honest reflection for me today. How am I letting things affect me? Am I letting them get me all worked up into a frenzy where I don't even enjoy my workout at the gym?

Or am I letting things go because it doesn't matter that much and I'm making them out to be a bigger deal than they really are? So you get to decide what kind of consequences you want in your life based on the decisions you make. And it's super empowering feeling, because you actually get to make all of these decisions every single to then decide what kind of consequences you reap as a result. Now, there are some things in life that have consequences that we don't plan for, but in general, majority of the decisions that you make in a day, on a daily basis, you get to decide the outcomes and the consequences.

So I hope this was inspiring for you and maybe gives you a little bit of reflection of, like, gosh, what decisions do I make? And how am I ever thinking about even the consequence of some of those decisions and maybe play those out a little bit and see how that goes and decide do I want to make different decisions then in that way? So thanks, Nick. Thanks, Alec, for tuning in with me today. I hope you guys have a fantastic rest of your Wednesday. God bless.