What ultimately guides your path?
Writing this in 2021, you would think that the dust has settled from the past year. So far I've realized that with each year that passes if you do the deep work you will discover more than any previous.
I'm not talking about anything personal growth or personal development-oriented. I am speaking plainly about the experience, risk, and feedback looping.
As I've mentioned I have realized a lot this year, and I think you have too, whether indirectly from something that has happened, or a eureka moment from the past.
Every decision we make is laced or spiked with an underlying layer calledrisk,and navigating life without knowing that risk is an active participant in what makes your present moment and future are, well, risky.
What do I mean by risk? Every decision that wedecide to enact, whether that decision is social, experiential, financial, has to do with risk management.
Managing risk isn't something we're taught in school, even at a college or university level. Most people go through life unaware of risk being one of the many materials that go into the structure of making choices.
Everyone is going to have a personal attitude towards risk and risk management. Some people ignore risk by not doing anything risky (which still implies risk), some play the middle of doing a little of both, and some people are all-around risk-takers. Everyone is at some point on the spectrum of how they view and utilize risk and risk management.
The purpose of this read is to elicit a remembrance of risk, that risk is something we do and use every day, in the most unexpected ways. Risk is a unique tool to help guide us in life when making any and all decisions.
Examples of risk could be how you manage your health (or not), how you strategize your performance at work and meet your goals, who you allow into your life, and the effects that have on your social life and network. You could even say that there is risk in what coffee mug you want to use in the morning, when one mug elicits a micro mood as opposed to the other and how that will affect your day.
When considering important decisions, consider the risks, your goals, and the expected outcome you want. When making the small choices in your day, how are you guiding yourself to manage the theme tied to these choices?
If you are easily stressed, do you manage the risk of being exposed to stressors in your day-to-day life? If you need to watch your diet, are you managing the risk of your exposure to friends, family, and places that encourage behavior that would go against your current efforts?
Poor risk management skills come at a cost, and that cost is what you want out of life. Managing risk can be the difference between seeing your dreams as intangible and seeing them as a reality
Thinking differently about how you approach to risk can change your life within days, given the attention.
If you are to leave this blog post with anything, I would only encourage you to think about risk, how risk is involved in your life both big and small, and challenge yourself to think about the magnitude in which you manage risk in your life.
What are your goals? Write them down, and then think about setbacks you've had towards those goals. You will find within every goal, every desire, the risk is there, mostly unmanaged and unmitigated.
What will you do differently knowing the risk is a key player in life and what happens to you?
