Calculating Your Risks

“Often the dif­fer­ence between a suc­cess­ful man and a fail­ure is not one’s bet­ter abil­i­ties or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a cal­cu­lated risk — and to act.“
– Maxwell Maltz

Real­ize that what­ever you choose to focus on affects your qual­ity of life, or what Zig Ziglar calls your “stan­dard of life,” and not just your stan­dard of liv­ing. For instance, if you focus on the future by set­ting goals, you may be forc­ing your­self to remain in your comfort-​​zone and prob­a­bly with­out ever know­ing how far you can really go.

Jim Rohn said, “To know how far we can go is to risk going too far.” To reach your poten­tial there­fore, you will unques­tion­ably need to con­front risks. They are inevitable. They are unavoid­able. You sim­ply have to take them if you want your suc­cess­ful­ness to man­i­fest, and there’s no way of tip­toe­ing around it.

How­ever, instead of ask­ing your­self “how do I elim­i­nate risk?” ask, “why do I avoid risk?” If you’re like most peo­ple, you’re avoid­ing risk because of fear and espe­cially the fear of the unknown. Fear is a pow­er­fully per­sua­sive force that can not only put your goals on the back­burner but one that can also put your life on the back­burner as well.

In fact, your goals may be uncon­sciously rein­forc­ing your fears.

A goal is not some­thing sep­a­rate from you or out­side of you. It is some­thing that is within you, some­thing that should be made a part of your life right now. You see, the more pas­sion­lessly sep­a­rated you are from the goals you set, the more unknown the unknown becomes and the more fear will build on itself.

Unknow­ing­ness cre­ates unwill­ing­ness. As a Span­ish proverb goes, “I fear not the man who tried and failed but the man who failed to try.” You can not elim­i­nate risk but you can cer­tainly elim­i­nate the fear with which it is asso­ci­ated. Granted, the elim­i­na­tion of fear is not an instant process. But you can cer­tainly reduce it by cal­cu­lat­ing your risks.

Peo­ple who take cal­cu­lated risks are peo­ple who turn chance into choice. If you take a risk you will be tak­ing a chance, but if you take a cal­cu­lated risk you will be mak­ing a choice. You don’t need to plot every sin­gle detail of your life in order to do this. All you need to know is what’s impor­tant to you rather than where you’re going.

This know­ing­ness doesn’t have to be in the form of some great goal backed by an elab­o­rate action plan with to-​​do lists and so on. It is to sim­ply be con­sciously pur­pose­ful. It’s like a map with check­points that tell you where you are along your jour­ney. Each check­point tells you exactly how close you are to your goal instead of how far you are from reach­ing it.

More­over, rather than being uncon­scious of a prob­lem until it’s too late, it is much bet­ter to know when you have one and that you can deal with it right away. If you’re too busy or focus strictly on your goals, it might pass you by unsus­pect­ingly and blow up in your face at some later point in time. There­fore, think of your con­scious pur­pose as your map where you can chart the course you want your life to follow.

Another way to look at work­ing on a con­scious pur­pose is like eat­ing a big meal. You can’t eat it all in just one bite but you can cer­tainly cut it down into bite-​​size chunks that are eas­ier to swal­low and digest. In the same way, by con­vert­ing your val­ues into a sys­tem of grad­ual steps, you will bring those things you truly want into every­day consciousness.

By cal­cu­lat­ing your risks, so to speak, you are mak­ing the unachiev­able achiev­able. Ulti­mately, by remov­ing much of the unknown you will auto­mat­i­cally remove — or in the very least, reduce — the fear of it.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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