Well, the other night was an interesting one...

I gave the kids a bath, and my wife and I were in bed just playing around with them afterwards, laughing and goofing off.

And my daughter, who is 7, decides to try playing a practical joke on me. She finds the acupuncture mat that I use for my back sometimes... here is a rolled-up picture of it so you know what I am talking about...

...basically, a mat with a thousand short plastic spikes on it, and my daughter unrolls it and puts it next to the bed so that when I stand up, I will step on it.

It would certainly give me a bit of surprise, to say the least...

Anyways, my 2-year-old son is jumping on the bed and falls off the bed onto, guess what, yup, a giant spiky acupuncture mat...

It's not just that he fell into it; that would be terrible on its own; it's that he fell onto it face first, literally.

I saw the whole thing happen, and there was nothing I could do. The look of pure terror as he hit this thing, that moment before the pain came, was just agony for me to watch.

Then he put his hands down to push himself off and stabbed his hands...

I scooped him up within 2 seconds and held him as he screamed; it was brutal, blood everywhere, hundreds of small holes all over the right side of his face up to his head, plus holes all in his hands.

It was a horrible experience.

I had to hold him for half an hour until we could calm him down enough to clean the wounds and put antiseptic cream on it and bandages.

Thank God it missed his eyes.

My daughter was beside herself. Of course, she didn't mean for anything like this to happen; she actually cherishes her little brother and is always looking to protect him.

My wife stayed with our son for hours until he fell asleep, and she was obviously extremely upset. Which Mother wouldn't be.

So my job was to hold my son, protect my daughter's feelings, and console my wife who was crying and worried about scars all over her son's face.

Not a good night.

After I had to have a conversation with my daughter, this time, Decisions BAD Decisions. Yes, it's true she didn't mean for her practical joke to turn out like this, but it did; she created an unsafe environment, she didn't think through the consequences, and someone was hurt.

Not an easy conversation to have with her but we are trying to turn it into a learning experience on situational awareness and to think through what can happen from our actions.

I was very careful not to get angry with her or blame her for anything. She doesn't understand and is not mentally prepared for something like this, but nonetheless, it happened.

Anyways, since this accident, I have been thinking about my own life and, what I can take away from an experience like this, and how it actually relates to things I see all the time in my work...

People put themselves (and their families) in dangerous situations by not paying attention to the environment they are in.

They don't think through the consequences of their actions (or inactions).

And when something happens, the people around them are hurt.

We are seeing a very hostile environment come up back home; a lot of people just want to ignore it or just treat it like some joke, but it's not, and people are going to be hurt.

In my work, I focus on protecting people, managing risks, and having a safe environment for our families (and our businesses and our wealth) to thrive in.

It's 2024 now, a New Year; maybe you and I should consider working together to make sure you are set up to protect your own downside risks.

Fill in an application at the bottom of this page to work with me:

https://expatmoney.com/important-letter

With the environment we find ourselves in, we ALL have to set up a proper Plan-B.

Looking forward to working with you,

Mikkel

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