The reason I can guarantee it, is that we are all subject to two other tendencies:

• We only do what we think is possible to do. The possibility of some actions is simply so out of reach of our imagination, that we will not even consider it. Before laser assisted eye surgery to correct short-sightedness and other refractive eye defects, I am sure that many thought they would have to wear glasses or contact lenses for the rest of their lives.
• We only truly believe it is possible to do what we have sucessfully done before. Those who call themselves risk-takers are those who take a leap of faith and try something new in spite of this tendency. It is important though, to remember that until one acutally succeeds, it will not seem nearly as real in your mind as afterwards.

These two tendencies combined cause us to repeat using the same strategies we have used in the past, and to never even consider that they would need to be improved.
We need to counter these tendencies if we are to improve our lives. The best way to counter them, is to educate yourself about what it possible for others, and then simply “turn off” thinking and take massive action towards achieving the same for yourself.

When you do this, you will probably find that it does not work out for you at first. It is new to you and you will make mistakes, but if you struggle through the hardships at some point it becomes much easier and one day you have totally forgotten that the activity was once thought of as impossible for you.

So don’t get discouraged, this is a struggle that affects all of us, even those with a lot of succes will have a doubting voice within:

If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced. - Vincent Van Gogh

You probably have a similar voice inside your head - do not let it rule your life, or you will end up old and bitter, wondering what might have been (for an illustration see Morgenthaler). I do not want that to happen to you, and I am pretty sure that I have your support in this matter

Well, that is actually what the proponents of the Law of Attraction will tell you. I just happen to think that it is a huge scam.

I am a big believer in the principle that if something false can be allowed to spread, it is because there is some truth to it, people are not stupid. So what is it that is true about the Law of Attraction even though it is actually a scam?

First of all most proponents will tell you that it is not exactly that simple, and that is true of course. For the law of attraction to work, it must feel right and you should be careful not to let negative thoughts reverse the “process”.  In other words the law of attraction includes the (true) idea that positive thinking will help you in your quest for personal development.

You will also be told that you need to focus intensely and continously on whatever you want to manifest. If what you want to achieve is on a personal level, this seems an awful lot like another well known personal development technique, affirmations.  I am not a big fan of affirmations but I acknowledge that they have the (true) potential to help with lack of self esteem and other internal problems. Focusing on what it is you want is also the basis of two other valid personal development methods, goal setting and visualizations.

In order to leach some credibility from scientific studies, many proponents of the law of attraction will say that your thoughts “activate a vibration within you” and that we are all “Vibrational Beings”. Supposedly the goal is to be “in tune” with the Universe and then let your thoughts affect the world around you by sending out the right vibrations. It is true that all atoms vibrate, this is called heat. It is also true that heat can be transfered (or transmitted if you like) as you will remember from putting you hand on a hot object, your hand will become warmer. It is, however, entirely unfounded to propose that your thoughts can control these vibrations(heat) and that it will have any consequence for your future succes.

So what is the law of attraction? It is parts from positive thinking, affirmations, visualizations and goal setting with a new spin on it. This also explains why you will hear examples of people having (some) success with it. So why do I call it a scam? I do it because the traditional personal development methods are designed to help improve YOU, so that YOU will take action and YOU will improve your life - in this case the Law of Attraction proposes something very alluring instead: that you do not need to do anything, just send out the right vibrations (thoughts) and the Universe will take care of this for you. If you have always dreamt of owning a Lamborghini, just focus your thoughts intensely on it and someday it will be given to you. If you have always wanted to win the figure skating gold medal at the Winter Olympics, forget about training - just focus your thoughts intensely on it!

Hopefully it is clear from these last two examples how preposterous the Law of Attraction really is. Hopefully you will not get persuaded by their pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo. Hopefully you will acknowledge that if you want to improve your life, you will actually have to work for it.

What I have been focusing on is starting my own business. This sounds like a risky endeavour to most, but actually I am hedging my bet by doing it part time with the blessing of my employer. I am fortunate to have an employer that said “no problem” when I asked whether it was ok to start my own business on the side - but I think that most employers will be willing to listen as long as your business is not in direct competition and you still will be able to put in the same working hours as you used to. So if you have a dream of starting your own business, do not take it for granted that you will need to resign from your job. If you are doing a good job for your employer, most employers will want to keep you on board, rather than force you to quit in order to pursue your dream.

Starting your own business is an intense education in personal development. Unless you are a veteran entrepreneur, you are effectively jumping into deep water hoping that you will learn to swim before going under. Almost nothing that you will learn as an employee will help you when starting a business. It is a whole different mindset that you will need to acquire. For me, it is the second time that I am starting my own business and that is probably why it feels more like activating a dormant mindset than acquiring it. Do not think that this mindset is something that you need to be born with, or something that can be learned in school - it is a mindset available to everybody with an open mind and a willingness to “learn by doing”.

It is no coincidence that many successful entrepreneurs have a history of failed businesses behind them, they needed those “failures” (think of them as educations) to learn the proper mindset. When I started my first business I learned so much that I had to close the business instead of continuing, as I knew that I needed time to contemplate all that I learned. Since closing that first business, I have spent most of my efforts educating myself in the areas that I found severely lacking in my education at the time. This time I hope that my mindset is close enough that my business will prosper, even in the face of problems. I know that I am much better prepared this time, and this gives me the confidence to redouble my efforts in order to make it work.

The 10th of October 2006 my business was born. I wanted a name for it that was different and at the same time symbolized my intent of delivering real value to people. You know that warm and fuzzy feeling you get when everything goes your way? That is the feeling I want my customers to feel when dealing with my business. I settled on “The Cuddly Bear Group” or just “Cuddly Bear” for short. When I mention it, most find it really strange - but really, a name such as “Google” is just as strange until you get used to it.

The first sign of my business having been born is the website (in danish) www.cuddlybear.dk, where I advertise my consulting services concerning internet technologies. My ambitiousness makes me envision much more than just a consulting business though, so watch this blog for more announcements of my plans materializing!

One of the stories was about the monkeys there. Now, in order to keep the monkeys from running away but still let them walk around freely they have put the monkeys on an artificial island separated by a bridge. The bridge is made of metal and the monkeys are not able to walk over it as it is electrified in the same way as an electrical fence. The staff started by letting the monkeys find out that the bridge would give an electrical shock and then afterwards they could turn off the electricity. They need to turn off the electricity during the open hours, so that visitors can walk on the bridge without the risk of getting an electrical shock, then during the off hours the electricity is turned on again. As long as the monkeys were scared of the bridge it did not matter that the electricity was not always flowing, they would keep away on the assumption that the bridge would still be electrified. What they forgot to take into account though, is that monkeys are way smarter than you think. The monkeys were smart enough not to assume that what they learned initially was carved in stone. They discovered that the bridge was not always electrified and the way they discovered it was very clever. The little pranksters devised a plan: they would trick some ducks to walk onto the bridge and if the ducks did not react by quacking like crazy and flying away, they knew the bridge was safe. Not a very nice thing to do to the ducks but you have got to give it to them, it was a pretty creative way of finding out, especially for a monkey!

What really got me thinking though, was that the monkeys were testing what they initially thought to be absolutely true: that walking on the bridge would give an electrical shock. It seems to me that it is very rare for people to test their beliefs like that. Quite the opposite in fact: based on 1 try the diet is rejected as useless and a new one is tried instead, based on 1 failed job application the content of the application is thought to be poorly written, based on 1 failed attempt to get a relationship working you conclude that something is wrong with you and your ability to be in a relationship, etc. Evolutionally speaking it is extremely useful to be able to quickly decide on an initial conclusion based on limited information so you can get away from danger quickly, so it is not something that should be thought of as a bad thing. It is, however, a bad thing to forget that due to the limited information it is only an initial conclusion. Later you follow up by investigations to determine whether the original conclusion should be kept or a new one formed from the additional information acquired.

What would happen if you never questioned your existing beliefs? You would get entrenched in them, is what would happen. Slowly but surely each area of your life would get populated by beliefs and since they were not up for discussion, there would be less and less space for new beliefs. You might think that the brain is so mighty that there will always be space for new beliefs - but even if that were true, it would not matter as what limits the space is not the capacity of the brain but the existing beliefs. Your brain needs some consistency in your beliefs, while it is true that you can have beliefs that are inconsistent, you can not have beliefs that are in direct conflict. You can not simultaneously believe that people in general are trustworthy and that people in general are not worthy of your trust. Without space for new beliefs personal development would be nonexistent.

It will probably take a full life of not questioning existing beliefs in order to reach a state where there is absolutely no space for new beliefs. However your mental growth can get stunted way before that. Consider a belief like “People are not worthy of my trust”, how do you think a belief like that will influence your relationships? Your career? Your ability to apply personal development techniques you get from books, articles and friends? Without ever trusting the noble intentions of others you will constantly question their words instead of your beliefs - and since your brain will come up with an answer to whatever you ask it, you can always find a way to discredit advice you do not like (and what you like is determined by your beliefs).

Do not fall for this trap, do not let your brain get entrenched in old beliefs that does not serve your goals and ambitions. Revisit your beliefs occasionally and test them rigorously to see whether they still serve their purpose. You will probably find that a lot of them are still very valuable to you and your development so it can be very empowering to test your beliefs, you discover how well your brain works. It is the few beliefs that fails when tested that are holding back your personal development though, and discovering those will guide you towards the areas of your life that needs some work. Do not get frustrated that some areas do not pass scrutiny - get excited! Knowing which areas are problematic is the first step to improving them and improving them is the first step to improving your life!

The first thing I noticed when I came back from the school was how much TV is used for getting news. Even though I never felt like I was missing news about the world, after all we often heard the news on radio, there was quite a contrast when I started to watch TV again. Now you might think that this is a point in favour of watching TV, as we all want to be up to date on what happens in the world, but the trouble is that the extra news in TV was all the news that we do not need in the first place! It was news like what was happening in the popular TV-shows, it was news like a story about the latest celebrity “scandal”, and it was news about the latest results in sports and so on and so on. The difference between the short news-stories we heard in the radio and what you get from watching TV is exactly the news about all the stuff that do not really matter. In other words I learned that you do not need to spend a lot of time on news to keep yourself updated about the world, it only feels that way because you are used to the kind of fluff-filled news you find on TV instead of the concise news you can find in other places (Here in Denmark we are lucky enough to get quality news from the state-financed radio channels). So consider this a productivity tip: you can actually spend very little time on news without loosing track of important changes in society.

Another thing I noticed was the lack of social interaction when you spend more time watching TV. Watching TV is really a rather poor substitute for real interaction with real people. Even though I am sure that your brain feels like it is a kind of social interaction to watch a soap opera or reality show, I am also sure that the extremely passive “fly on the wall” way of interaction is vastly inferior to the real thing with regard to learning life skills and social acuity. Watching TV can be pretty seductive though and when you are used to watching a lot of TV you will not notice how often you will just watch some TV when you could have gotten a much better experience by taking the initiative to meet with friends or spend real quality time with your family. The ease with which we can get our needs at least partly filled by turning on the TV means that you should always try to think of reasons not to watch TV. Otherwise you will probably be tempted to go the easy route when you should have chosen the most rewarding route.

Thirdly I learned that I can easily live without a TV. This might not seem like a big thing to you but I bet that if I threatened to take away all your TV-sets you would probably be a bit concerned about how it would affect your life. I have no such concerns, if I feel that I watch too much TV I just stop watching it. It is like a switch I have that can be either on or off but I have no preference for either state except for what serves me best in my current situation. When I talk to people about living without a TV they get this look on their face like it would be a major decision to do so and often they are not sure they could actually go through with it. Currently I only watch TV when I am at my girlfriends place and never when I am at home in my house. This is very beneficial to me as when I am at home I often have a lot of work to do and it really helps that I do not even have the slightest urge to distract myself by watching TV.

Living without a TV-set is something I would warmly recommend you to try out if you have the possibility. You might need to persuade other users of your TV-set that this is a good thing but if you manage to do so, you have even more of a reason to ditch TV as you can then make it a group effort where watching TV is replaced by doing more meaningful activities together. It is true that some of what is shown on TV is really quality stuff that is educational and rewarding but if you start by experiencing that you can easily live without a TV it becomes much easier to later add in your favourite show without getting seduced into wasting a lot of time watching all the other stuff. The only real disadvantage I have found to living without a TV-set is that you can not always participate with others in their discussions about the latest shows - it is however a small price to pay for all the extra time you will get by not watching TV.

Statistics show that the average American watches more than 4 hours a day of television, this becomes 1460 hours a year or nearly 9 weeks! Just imagine what you could do with all that extra time in your life : you could work on an idea for a business to start, you could spend quality time with your family and friends, you could visit friends or family members you have not seen in a long time, you could go on an intensive training program to lose weight and build muscle so your looks are vastly improved and your self esteem skyrockets, or one of a thousand other worthwhile endeavours that are possible in 9 weeks or less. The choice is yours but I really hope that I have inspired you to at least try what it feels like to no watch any TV, perhaps just for a month or two, you can always extend the period if you get hooked

The structure I will talk about is not the division of the brain into different specialized areas like hearing, seeing and language. Rather the interesting structural aspect is that all the areas are built of a common component and they communicate in a common way. The brain has a lot of responsibilities but the remarkable fact is that all the functions of the brain is made up of a common unit namely the neuron. Each neuron has one or many inputs where it recieves signals and depending on these signals the neuron decides what kind of signal it will output. The output of the neuron is then used for input to one or many other neurons that in turn decide how their output signal will be like. Each neuron will learn to recognize the most common pattern in the input signals. The output signal is then a measure of how much this neuron thinks it has recognized the pattern it normally sees. Think of each little neuron as a man (or woman!) that recieves a message (the input signals) and if he thinks the message is addressed to him he will start to yell and scream to his friends that someone sent him a message

Continuing with the metaphor of the little man, your brain consists of about 100 billion men who on the average have 7000 friends With so many men and so much communication (and so much screaming!) it is possible for the little men to transfer the knowledge of very complex patterns from one part of the brain to another. Although the communication between the men happens very fast, it is not instantaneous and therefore there might be a slight delay from when your eyes see a piece of chocolate till you remember that you are actually on a diet and should not eat it. The delay is what underlies the experience of one thought triggering another, which then triggers another and so on and so on. Each thought you have is the snapshot of what the little men are communicating to the conscious part of your brain (the “you”) in that very moment.

The key point to notice about how the brain works with respect to personal development is that each neuron/man learns and adjusts the trigger-pattern as time progresses. Therefore the concepts that your little men communicate will change according to what kind of input they recieve. So in a very real sense what you feed your brain is also a controlling factor in what you will get out of it. Knowing this will hopefully strengthen what you already know : that a life of continual learning and stimulating experiences is also the best way to enrichen your “inner life” - that is the voice inside your head that encapsulates your thoughts.

That we are all born with free will (although this is debatable among philosphers, we can assume this without any consequence for the thesis of this article) is what makes it possible to direct the communication going on in your brain. You can not control everything inside your brain, in that you can not decide which thought is triggered by what thought (what is known as your associations), but you can control the communication by controlling your focus. When you consciously focus on one particular thing, you are in effect deciding what group of men you will listen to and all other men will then be silenced or atleast muffled somewhat - we all know how hard it can be to concentrate with loud music in the background or other distracting factors. While you focus on a particular group of men, the message that they tell you is what will enter your conscious mind and what enters your conscious mind is conveniently also used as input to the rest of the brain - this means that what you focus on will be part of the information the neurons/men learn from and therefore contribute to the development of your brain (and consequently you).

The techniques and ideas of personal development are all either directly or indirectly designed to affect the way the men in your brain communicate and the patterns they react to. Learning how to do this in an intelligent way will make your personal abilities a result of your design rather than the random product of the information and thoughts you have been unconsciously feeding your brain in the past. Learning such techniques will put you in the driver’s seat of your own personal development. Learning such techniques will let you design your destiny!

How often have your heard : “If everybody else is cheating, why shouldn’t I do it too?”. It is common to hear a phrase similar to this in business, sports and other types of competitive environments. In such environments it is sometimes even questioned whether it is possible at all to be successful if you do not cheat like you suspect everybody else does. You can also hear it in regard to paying for certain services, like downloading illegal MP3 tracks instead of buying the music from the official sources. In both cases it stems from a kind of implicit peer pressure, where you feel like you loose out compared to everybody else if you do not use the same morally questionable methods. Such a fear of loss is a very powerful psychological motivator but in these cases it motivates you to compromise your moral principles!

There is validity in the question of whether you should cheat and cut corners like “everybody else” or (implicitly) loose out by following your moral principles. Without acknowledging this validity, it becomes much harder to feel good about doing what is morally the right thing to do. The validity lies in the obvious fact that all things considered equal it is harder to win when your competitors cheats. So if you narrowly focuses on what it takes to win and disregards everything else, the natural conclusion is that you should cheat as much as possible. I am hoping though, that the perverted nature of this conclusion tells you that there is something wrong with the premise of focusing only on what it takes to win. What you should do instead is to widen your focus to consider the consequences of cheating not only to you, but to the way you are percieved by others.

How do you want your family to percieve you? Do you want your kids to think of you as a cheater? When you are long gone do you want people to remember you as a cheater? When you look in the mirror every morning from this day forward do you want to see a cheater? I think for most people the way they are percieved by others and especially their family will matter more than winning a contest where your competitors cheats. And leaving a legacy where you are remembered for all the good things you do, is probably also worth a lot more to you than whatever advantage you can get by cheating.

When you are overly concerned whether everybody else is getting an advantage by cheating and decide to cheat as well, you are in effect letting others decide your moral standards. Naturally this is not a good thing and you can easily end up feeling trapped by circumstances and wtih a guilty conscience. Without setting your own standards it is also hard to feel like a free person. This means you should be on the watch for the situations where you are tempted to lower your standards in order not to miss out.

In another article I told you about my anti-impatience mantra : “Success comes in chunks” and for this article I have a mantra to tell yourself when you are tempted to lower your standards : “I am simply not that kind of person”. You need to focus on your individuality and that even though others might not act according to the same high moral standards as you; it does not mean you have to stoop to their level. In the same way that there probably exists certain kinds of food you do not like to eat, you should embrace the idea that there is simply moral principles that it is not in your character to break.

When you promise yourself not to give in to the temptation of lowering your standards it also becomes much easier to decide what to do in such situations. Giving in is no longer an option and you can focus your energy on doing things the way a person with your character does them, you become more effective. All in all you will be a happier and more effective person that people will like more and perhaps even see as a rolemodel of integrity and character. So who in their right mind would give that up to get a small advantage by cheating?

When I was in my teens I had problems with my toenails on my big toes. They were not growing properly and consequently for extended periods of time my toes were extremely sore and would cause excruciating pain should I bump them into something. Before this I did not think that toes were such a sensitive area but let me tell you they can be! Naturally this also affected my walking and every time I put weight on one foot my toe on that foot responded with a message of pain. Humans are very good at adapting and I started to adapt my style of walking to place more weight on the outside of the foot to alleviate the weight on the big toes. At the time I did not think much of it but years later I noticed that my shoes were not wearing evenly. It turned out to be because the extended periods of time walking without putting weight on the big toes had changed my walking style permanently! Since then I have corrected this bad habit a bit by conscious effort but I still find that if one of my big toes are sore the old walking habit will resurface.

This experience shows me beyond any doubt that leaving such processes on autopilot is not necessarily the best thing to do. It also shows me that it is quite possible to gradually change such automatic processes for better or for worse. When it is possible and probably advantageous to give a little thought to whether you are walking in a way that is good for you or not, what about breathing? I my view breathing is an even more critical task that your body does automatically for you, just try to hold your breath and you will agree after a few minutes

Breathing fills your lungs with vital oxygen and from each breath of air your lungs extracts the oxygen and delivers it to the cells in your body through the bloodstream. Just like you, the cells that your body is made of require oxygen to function. They need it to move, build, reproduce and turn food into energy. Cells are the building blocks that humans are made of and even though we have approximately 10¹⁴ of them, it is a given that we should strive to keep them happy.

A recent scientific study shows that certain yoga exercises will improve your breathing capacity. With increased breathing capacity comes a lot of health benefits not just for those with asthma or other respiratory diseases but for all people. Even though you might not think that you have a problem with breathing, it pays to make sure your cells are given the vital nutrient of oxygen since oxygen deprivation have been associated with all sorts of diseases including cancer. And even if you are already breathing in a way that provides your cells with what they need, your oxygen intake can still be put to test by the fact that oxygen concentrations in major cities have been measured as low as 30% below normal levels.

As a yoga practitioner myself I naturally find it to be great news that there is now scientific proof that yoga will improve your breathing. Improved breathing is only one benefit in a long list of benefits you can get from yoga but even considered by itself it should be reason enough to give yoga a try. At the local fitness club the class I am attending is a mix of Tai Chi, Yoga and a bit of Pilates. This mix seems to fit my body very well and in contrast to the lifting of weights I am actually looking forward to each class. I will heartily recommend that you give Yoga a sincere try and even if this style of exercise does not fit you, you can be sure there is no harm done. In fact the scientific study says that if you stick with it for just 18 sessions, your breathing habits will improve. You have nothing to loose and everything to win!

Traditional time management focuses on what I would call outside-in time management. This is when you start by making a list of what needs to get done and sorts the items according to some system. This system could be by giving them A, B and C priorities and start with the most important item. It could also be a system like urgent/important classification by Covey (see my article : Transforming Shoulds Into Woulds for more on this system). There are all sorts of ways to to design such a system and you have probably tried one or many of them.

Some of the systems are designed in ways to facilitate the other type of time management, what I would call inside-out time management. This is where you at any moment in time will work on whatever you feel like working on. What you feel like working on might coincide with what needs to be done and vice versa for the outside-in philosophy. Although the goal of the inside-out philosophy, to make sure that your time is spent doing things that you value and think are worth your time, I think most people would quickly reject an inside-out philosophy of time management on the basis that without a need to take care of the uninteresting responsibilities (like paying the bills) your life would probably become a downward spiral. On the other hand a lot of very sucessful people would tell you that they do not go to work because they need to but simply because they want to - and in a sense they have adopted (at least partly) the inside-out philosophy.

The fact that some highly succesful people use the inside-out philosophy and are both very productive and very satisfied with their lives, makes it difficult to categorically reject any variant of the inside-out philosophy as fruitful. I think the inside-out philosophy deserves proper consideration.

Taking another perspective, in addition to living a happy life we all want to live long lives too, at least as long as we are physically healthy. Even though there is a saying : “Time flies when you have fun”, I do not think anyone would interpret this as a reason to live a long dull life. I also think that you have experienced situations in your job that were probably stressful and not very fun but also made you loose track of time simply because you were so mentally preoccupied with the work you were doing. Probably a better statement would then be “Time flies when you are busy” with the addendum that when you have fun you are often very energetic and act quickly, in a sense of being busy but in a good way.

This brings me to the term I call “Time Development”. Time Development is the conscious act of trying to improve the quality of the moments in your life given the constraints that your duties and responsibilities impose on you. This aims to transform your life from a life dictated by outside-in time management to a life that uses inside-out time management but just happens to take care of the necessary duties and responsibilities. The living proof that this is even possible are those highly succesful people who have pulled it off. Of course this is no easy task and probably something you will need to work on perfecting for the rest of your life. With this article I hope to spark in you the idea that there is such a thing as an ideal way of time management and although it is something you will need to work on and not just a specific technique that 1..2..3 will make your life perfect, it is still preferable to either of the outside-in/inside-out extremes.

Another way of saying that you should transform your life from using outside-in time management to using inside-out time management is to say you should transform shoulds into woulds and if you have not already done so, I would suggest my previous article on exactly that subject as further reading.

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!