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Risk-Taking; An Important Factor in Life

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Not every event has a guaranteed outcome, sometimes one has to gamble in the game of life.  However, people in the course of their life activities, surrender themselves to the easiest way of working and carrying out the daily activities regardless of their potentiality and their enthusiasm such that the simple way of going with the flow has the guaranteed outcome. Quoting the well-reckoned quote of Ralph Waldo Emerson who once said, “Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.” Life is all about getting off the comfort zone and trying to gain new things out of an experience. There is no gain without any venture, we realize our full potential only when we step out of our comfort zone. A person will never learn swimming unless he/she jumps in the pool, a man will never know if he/she will fail in the corporate sector unless a corporation of his/her is built. If the motto of Thomas Elva Edition had been “Safety first!” light bulb would never have been discovered. From the day we are born till the time we are buried or burnt is ashes, we take risks. It is actually impossible to take any steps in life without the factor called as “risk”.

However, risk-taking does not mean flying an airplane with the mere knowledge of aerodynamics. One should take the ‘calculated risk’ on which he/she has back up plans and can further precede the work. It is the risk which has undoubtedly helped to personify any of the character or an object that is recognized today. Risk implies the chance of things not working out as we planned. Risk taking is a contingent activity, which is unknown to what happens next.The unknown is scary. We probably keep ourselves drowning in the thinking of “what happens next”. It is the human nature that we submerge ourselves in the catastrophe and disassociates from actual probability. If we look at the positive aspects of risk-taking we can drag our level up from where we are now. Ronald Heifetz, the professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, says that if you make one real decision in your life, that’s more than most people According to him, “Peoples’ choices to take or refrain from risk are over-determined by their culture,”

Risk taking is the thin line which works as the bridge to gap the thinking and enthusiasm to the reality and achievement of goals and following are the three reasons which explain this:

Great unforeseen events or opportunities can be seen coming from risk-taking

Risk-taking always does not comes as a positive outcome. Sometimes taking risk results to the negative results as well but however, sometimes risk helps and results as an opportunity to an unseen event. Tim Westergren, 44 who is the Founder of Pandora Radio could not be successful now if they had not taken the risk of running the money during the loss rather than cut the losses and throw in the towel.

Risks help us overcome the fear and advance ourselves

one cannot just think of pursuing their dreams, they have to be vocal and should be actively carrying out the works which they want to succeed on. Dreams never take place in a vacuum. One must actively participate in the leadership activities rather than being satisfied with the status-quo.

Christina McHale, 17, Professional American Tennis player, competed in the 2009 U.S. Open says “The biggest risk I ever took was deciding to leave traditional school to be home-schooled. I put aside a normal high school experience for my tennis court dream–a dream with no guarantees. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to get into a top college with a home-school diploma if tennis did not work out. In the end, I decided to take this risk and I am still working toward this goal today.”

Risks let us learn new things

Learning can never be done in a vacuum, and doing things without taking risks cannot make us learn new things and in a new way. We may fail while taking the risk but this leads us to learn and realize where we went wrong and what can be done next to achieve it in a completely different way. Overall, risk-taking helps us in our internal growth.

Lauren Luke, 28,  Makeup entrepreneur and YouTube sensation and has her own Sephora cosmetic line, says “I was working at a local taxi office taking bookings on the phone. I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. So I started selling makeup full time online. I put myself on YouTube knowing I didn’t look like a model, but I didn’t care.

Risk-taking is a way of playing a game. Play in a calculated way, you win, but play haphazardly, you lose.

By: Grishma Gauli