True Comfort Comes From Being Uncomfortable
From a very early age most people are conditioned to believe that “playing it safe” is the way to live life. Go to school, get a job and try not to take any risks. Now, this may work for some people and that is fine, I am not here to judge anyone but, I would like to make a few points on the matter.
Just for a moment look back through history at the people who have done great things and the people who have amassed great fortunes, you can search high and low, far and near it is a simple fact that those people, each and every one, learned to live far outside the comfort zone. They began taking calculated risks at a very early age and the more risk they took the more they grew and the more they learned.
Weighing Risk v Reward
In a seminar series I was doing I had someone raise their hand and ask a great question. He asked “when it comes to risk and decision making, how can you make quick decisions and how does due diligence fit in?” This certainly is a good question and a valid one. The people that learned at an early age that stepping outside the comfort zone and taking calculated risks were also learning an incredibly valuable life skill. THE SKILL OF WEIGHING RISK AGAINST REWARD.
The fact is that there is risk in risk, what I mean is when an opportunity presents itself successful people are able to stack up all the risks, quickly calculate the potential loss or harm and then stack up all the possible reward or upside. A skilled decision maker will occasionally take a hit but more often than not they will come out the other side of the venture with a healthy gain.
I know what you may be thinking…SOME PEOPLE ARE LUCKY!
What is Luck?
I read an interesting study about luck. A Professor named Richard Wiseman studied the concept of luck for better than ten years and he made a number of amazing discoveries. He took a large group of people one half self described LUCKY and the other half UNLUCKY. He put them all in a classroom mixed together and gave them a newspaper, he asked them to go through the newspaper and count the pictures in the paper. Conspicuously in very large print greater than 1 inch high he put a half page ad that read STOP COUNTING TELL THE EXPERIMENTER YOU HAVE SEEN THIS AND WIN $250 (100BP). Incredibly most of the LUCKY people saw the ad and made money that day and most of the UNLUCKY people completely missed it and went home broke.
“Unlucky” people spend so much time carrying out mundane activities that they literally don’t keep their eyes open for opportunity.
“Lucky” people on the other hand are always open to opportunity and when they see one they quickly weigh the risk and reward and if the “math” works, they move!
Stepping out of the comfort zone is the only way you will grow as a person. Each time you do get out of your comfort zone you improve your self esteem and improve your self confidence because the outer walls of the comfort zone are expanding and soon you have a belief in yourself that you can accomplish great things.
Bob Proctor wrote, “Indeed, as one has the opportunity to observe the performance of individuals from all walks of life, it soon becomes evident that whoever “plays it safe” in life, dies, and dies relatively young. Although many of these individuals remain clinically alive for numerous years, when their hearts finally cease beating it is merely a formality, because the truth is, they have never really lived!”
Now that you know that luck is something that can be manifested and a decision can be made to add luck to your life, I leave you with a question.
Are you lucky?
To your success,
Phil Cicio