Why allowing a little risk into your life is healthy

Ten years ago I was probably one of the most risk adverse people you could ever meet. Why? Well there have been certain points in my life that have sent me spiralling out of control. I have always been one for having things, life, opportunity always going my way. As an older teenager opportunities would fall on my lap like leaves from fall on a blustery day. I think at 21 I was earning more than the average 21 year old would be. I had three jobs and a thirst for life, I had my own apartment and plenty of money to sustain myself. I recognise I was lucky. Things happened at the same time I was looking for opportunity. I was fortunate.

But what goes up, must come down. I had a good life for three years, I thought I was over the worst, I thought nothing else terrible would wing its way to my domain ever. Because I had overcame the drugs, and had a healthy, happy social life and work life, that it was all plain sailing for there.

Then disaster struck.

From there I was hospitalised for six months in an acute Psychiatric ward, attempted suicide more than once and suffered from clinical depression for about five years solid. This is the easy version, I kid you not. Perhaps I'll write about it one time. I still look back and view them as wasted years, years I could have been adventuring and exploring, but, such is life.

After having such traumatic and mindfucking experiences in my life for an extended period of time the amount of risks I wanted to take were whittled down to almost zero. Why? Because wow, I didn't want to experience any more of that stress. What would happen if my decision was bad? I wasn't in the correct mind frame to turn it into a positive one, and make the best out of it. I was too scared to do anything.

The result? I stagnated for all of that time. Never accomplished anything, never did anything exciting, never ventured anywhere into the unknown, just sat there, watching re-runs of friends and doing very little with my life. Experiencing trauma can do that to a person.

It took a long time to work my way back to taking risks, a long time.

I've always thought in the previous instances of my life I was one of my friend-crowd that was the risk taker. I was always one for doing out-there things, and because of that opportunity seemed to land on my lap.

Forest Gump was a great watch. And, gave me the idea for this article. Remember when he had finished his college basketball season with great things ahead for him, and then he immediately started fresh in the army? I remember watching that and thinking, fuuuuucking hell! What's he doing?! I don't think that dude even understood the term risk.

But as it happens, through a combination of doing everything that lands on his lap and respecting his friends to the fullest he makes it. And he makes it as a bloody multimillionaire. Now of course, Forest Gump would be an extreme example but it definitely highlights the fact that some of us aren't taking some of the opportunities we should be.

I have a friend that lived in Glasgow, one of the most brilliant computer coders that I've ever had the blessings to brush paths with. I'm no tech person but I do understand the difference between brilliance and mediocrity. He was pushing paper in a dead end job in Glasgow that paid him slightly above the national minimum wage for managing the servers for a respectable local company.

During his time there he had the opportunity to throw it all in the air and go 'fuck it' and head off on an unknown venture to London where he would have to start fresh and begin again. The amount of man hours I spent convincing him to go down there was unfucking believable. To me? I'd have done it in a heartbeat, especially with his skills. After a month or three of uhmming, and ahhing he eventually jumped in his car and went for it.

The result?

He's now earning 100K+ with his own house, a ton of savings, and loving life. 

That was his risk to take, and it paid off. And I'm certainly not saying that every risk we take is going to be successful.

If we look at big risk blunders, I'll wholly admit that I lost about $500 in the POTcoin escapade this week. Thinking it would have risen to 10k sats I invested two bitcoins in it at 6k sats, looking to sell at 10. The next time I looked it was in between 3 and 4k sats. Mistake? Totally! Will it stop me? No! I still make good decisions! But at least it will learn me to investigate pumps in the future!

And to clarify here - failure is what makes us strong. If we are successful constantly then we don't build the tools to deal with failure, for example, me when I was younger.

Now I'm not saying go and put next weeks rent on a crypto venture in a huge display of risk, because that would be stupid. All I'm saying is that if you want to be successful learn to embrace failure. When I started to blog for the first time as a profession the actual amount of man hours I sat there and watched my visitors at 10, and on a good day at 20, was unbelievable. But don't give up. Don't ever give up.

Learn to embrace failure, and fail tons

Because that's what makes us stronger.

Hope this has been a good one for you!

@lifeisawesome