Taking Risks
Some of you may have seen my Facebook Live event where I was discussing some thoughts on taking risks. For those that didn’t, or wanted something to come back to, I captured some of the thoughts here.
For me, taking risks has been A Big Deal. I don’t know when it started occurring that way but I have it that I am NOT a risk taker. Risk taking means doing scary things, and not “ride a roller coaster” scary but some unknown where failure is waiting around the corner. So I started looking at what it means to take risks, and to see if I can debunk my own thoughts.
I have it that risk taking is jumping into an abyss, deep into the dark unknown. I have no tools at my disposal and no way of knowing what I’m about to do. I have no plan, no safety net.
Is that true? Is that really what risk taking is about? And so I started thinking….
At one time, I was training for an endurance bike ride. It involved riding my bicycle over 500 miles in 7 days. When I first started my training for the ride, I hadn’t ridden 50 miles in one week, let alone 500.
Training for that ride never involved a plan of, “do the entire ride from start to finish to make sure I can do it before I do it in front of anyone”. I never intended to ride over 500 miles in 7 days until I experienced it on the ride.
What did I do? I started training, and I learned from my training. I started by getting a flat tire or dropping my chain. I progressed to extending my rides from 20 miles, to steeper terrain, to 30 miles, and so on. I found that when I didn’t eat enough I “bonked” (had no energy and couldn’t recover my strength on that ride) and when I ate too much, I felt sluggish and ill climbing hills. I “failed” those rides, having to walk my bike up the hill – or did I? I didn’t succeed in riding up the hill, that is true, but I learned something I would not have been able to learn without experiencing it.
And next thing I know, I’m lifting my arms in the air in celebration as I cross the finish line 7 days and 545 miles later.
By the time it came to riding, getting a flat or walking up a hill was no longer a risk. Sure, it was possible that it may happen, but it wasn’t an “unknown” – I knew what to do in those circumstances. There was a new risk I was taking in doing 7 continuous days, but it wasn’t an accumulation of all the previous risks. Those other risks were in the past, no longer risks for me. They were now knowledge I had gained and could use from there.
Okay, so that was all around planned training. What does that really have to do with taking risks in my life?
Not only do today’s risks bring me knowledge that fuels tomorrow’s venture, but the risks I’m considering taking now would not have even been possible in the past. I am not the same person from day to day, but a product of all that I’ve learned through my experiences, interactions, studies – through my entire life. Many were not planned experiences. They were risks I took at the time.
The best training to prepare for risk taking is to live my life, knowing that in every experience I am learning and growing in ways I could never have planned for, because I could not have foreseen many of them.
Which means… taking a risk is not blindly diving in, unprepared and unequipped, it’s using my experience in various areas of life to guide me to the next step that I haven’t taken before. I bring the total of my experiences and growth as I take on the next untapped, and maybe even previously unseen, area of my life.
What risks would you take if you felt confident and fearless? What difference would that make in your life?
Give me a call and let’s discuss!