You are faced with risk in every thing you do and at every moment in time. There is nothing you can do about it but try to manage it. Taking a stand and consciously deciding to improve your life through personal development is a case where you stop living entirely in reaction to your circumstances and use your actions to try and control those circumstances. This will reduce the randomness of your circumstances and in a sense this is a kind of risk management. When you decide that you will only eat healthy food and actually implement this idea, you reduce the risk of attracting a lot of diseases and health problems - and similarly in the areas of finances, spirituality and relationships a focus on personal development can simultaneously reduce the amount of risk in your life.
When I wrote my article Investing With Leverage For Wealth some were quick to point out that using leverage when investing can be risky business. I do not disagree that there is higher risk involved when using leverage but the whole point is that you also have a higher potential for return on your investment. Leverage can be a great tool for those situations where you have a good idea of the risks involved and are willing to accept those risks because the potential reward makes it profitable to do so. And this is key. Your focus should not be purely on the amount of risk but always on the risk in comparison to the potential reward.
A focus on personal development will in some ways reduce the risks in your life but in my opinion the best thing about personal development is not the reduced risk, rather it is the much greater potential for reward. If you have sucessfully reduced the risks in your life, chances are that you have also greatly increased your ability to mentally withstand hardships, you know that the “basics” are taken care of and you need no longer fear threats to those basics. With increased ability to withstand hardships comes the possibility of using the defensive power you have accumulated to accept greater risks in certain situations where it makes sense. Richard Branson and Donald Trump are examples of this, they are very different in style but both have made their names into such brands that even if they risked all of their wealth and lost it, investors would stand in line to finance their next big projects. Risking all your wealth when you got it by luck is very different from risking all your wealth when you got it by using your talent - you can always use your talent again, but you can never be sure to get lucky again. So from this we can conclude that all risks are not created equal.
Richard Branson is quoted as saying “If you don’t take risks you won’t achieve anything.” The key idea to extract from this is not that you should take a lot of risks in the hope that you achieve what you want. Rather if you look at risks as a sign that great things can possibly be achieved you gain an advantage compared to those with risk aversion. By focusing on your personal development to build up defensive power and remembering that all risks are not created equal it will become possible for you to take risks that others can not or at least should not take at their level of ability. This kind of intelligent risk-taking will really set you apart from those that view the world in a purely defensive “thou shalt not taketh big risks”-view.
At this point in your life you might not be totally ready to take big risks and that is perfectly ok. At any point in your personal development the risks you can intelligently take will depend on your accumulated abilities and defensive powers so adjust accordingly. Just do not fall into the trap of thinking that it depends on the monetary wealth you have, it really depends on the physical, mental and spiritual wealth you have accumulated. So do not listen to the nay-sayers, take intelligent risks from a place of personal power and energy, and have fun with it!
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