1. Choices Have Consequences Objectives:  Determine the difference between immediate and delayed consequences.  Understand the choices have consequences.  Evaluate the effect of your choices on yourself, your family, and your future.

2. Choices have consequences…  All of the things we’ve covered so far concerning Personal Responsibility have brought us to this topic.  You are responsible for:  Your thoughts  Your attitude  Your actions

3. What are consequences?  Webster defines it as:  Something produced by a cause or something following a set of conditions/ actions  What kinds of things does that include?  Our behaviors…our actions…reflect our choices, and we’ve got to get in touch with the consequences of our choices BEFORE we make decisions.

4. Define “immediate consequences”.  Why don’t you stick things into an electrical outlet anymore?  What about touching an iron or stove and just laying your hand on it? Don’t you check it first or at least consider that it might be hot?  These are referred to as immediate consequences, because they are experiences almost instantly after the action.

5.  When you do something wrong, doesn’t it bother your conscience a little?  Sure it does! And that’s an immediate consequence, too!

6. Page 64, please.  With your elbow partner, discuss and answer the questions on page 64 in your Student Manual.  Be prepared to share with the class.  5 minutes…GO!

7. Delayed consequences…  One of the problems associated with learning by this method only (learning from delayed consequences), is that very often the consequences we experience occur a very long time after the event!  In many instances, we don’t experience the consequences of our actions until many years later.  Consider the consequences of over-eating or a fat-laden diet. Or what about the effect on a person’s respiratory system of smoking three packs of cigarettes a day for twenty-five years?  What would happen to an automobile if we never checked or change the oil? If I’m sexually permissive, how long will it be before someone gets pregnant or before I contract a disease? How many lives will be impacted by my choices?  If I’m robbing convenience stores or cheating on my taxes, how long before I get caught, and what will happen when I do?  What would my family do?

8. Consider ALL alternatives.  Why is it important for a leader to consider the consequences of his actions?  Why is it important for a leader to consider all of his alternatives?

9. Leadership counts the cost!  Far too often, people never stop to consider the consequences of their actions.  They never ask themselves, “Now, what will happen to me if I don’t study for tests or do assignments?”  Leadership counts the cost! Leaders look far down the road to see the long-term consequences of their decisions.  They never act rashly or without thinking through the possible alternatives of their choices.

10. Our choices have consequences!  …not just some of our choices…  ALL of them will produce a result of some kind.  Whether those results are good ones or bad ones will depend solely on the quality of our choices.

11. Leadership looks at choices and thinks about the consequences.  Very often, the choices that leaders make bring about either great good or great harm.  Consider the choice made by our forefathers when they boldly declared independence from England?  Or the decision made by the South to abandon the Union?  Or look at the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?  Or what about the decision to retaliate against Iraq for invading Kuwait?

12.  Someone has to make those choices. And I want you to be the ones making them in the future!  Will you choose to be ready?