The United States of America was founded by a group of guys who made the risky decision to go against the British and the crown. They were willing to risk everything they had for an idea of a new country, a new world that was founded on principles of liberty and a true democracy.
One of the things that isn’t talked about enough when it comes to risk is the “risk of doing nothing.” Which is often what most people tend to do when it comes to managing risk.
Our founding fathers new the risk of doing nothing. By doing nothing, they knew nothing would change and the 13 colonies would be susceptible to British rule indefinitely and forever. When you look at it this way you realize that the risk of doing something is not as risky as doing nothing.
Nowadays, we do the exact opposite. Whenever we see a potential for risk, we run away from it. The reason for this is because nobody wants to be wrong and have to deal with the consequences of being wrong. This is how far our mentality has changed. As a society we are making decisions on the possibility of risk versus actual risk.
As a leadership trainer for over a decade, I spent thousands of hours in business and organizations speaking to the top leadership in those companies. I watched the lack of decisions being made across the board that impacted their employees negatively. In most cases it wasn’t that leadership didn’t know what the problems were. Instead it was the lack of leadership willing to say and definitely do what needed to be done to address those problems.
Oftentimes the decision that needs to be made isn’t going to benefit everyone.
As the great Thomas Sowell said: “There are no solutions, just tradeoffs.”
In these organizations they felt more secure to do nothing instead of attempting to fix the problems for the most people to benefit. Meanwhile productivity, morale, and ultimately the bottom line was impacted negatively because of the lack of leadership to make the hard decisions.
Security really is an illusion. We don’t have to go back very far in time to realize that we shut down our entire economy and world based off the illusion that a virus was going to kill everybody. I understand that early on while we were figuring out what we were dealing with, we should have been cautious.
However, we knew rather quickly that we weren’t dealing with something that was as significant as it was promoted to be and unfortunately we didn’t pivot back to normal as quickly as we should have and now we are all paying for those decisions.
Right now millions of people think that their current employer is secure. Maybe you have been there for many years, the company is doing well, and you have a great position. I understand why you believe there is security there.
However the reality is that your employer can part ways with you at any point and they really don’t have to tell you why. How many times have people felt that the company is doing well and come to find out it was all lies and someone was fudging the books and the company is a complete mess.
My point in sharing all of this is to say that security really is an illusion. There are millions of examples that make this point.
I want to encourage you to be willing to go against your natural inclination. Which is a human trait that is in all of us. To avoid any risk.
Ask any great entrepreneur how much they had to put at risk to create the successful company they now have. Ask any financially independent person what type of risk they had to take early on to get where they are today.
When it comes to investing, which is what I write about most. I know for a fact, keeping my money in the bank and not putting it to work is far more riskier than investing that money in to something that could provide me a return.
My suggestion for you is to look at your life and ask yourself where have you been unwilling to take risks and how has that impacted where you are today and where you would like to be instead.
To your success and your future.
Please connect with us by completing the form below.
Pennies into Fortunes 
Leave a Reply