Not taking a risk is RISKY

On Friday, I went to IKEA for the second time in two weeks. As I like to be efficient (i.e. do two things at a time), I was listening to Anthony Robbins' "Choose Your Destiny" audiobook while shopping. So I ended up listening to Anthony Robbins for five hours!

I love Anthony's audiobooks. They give me such great ideas and inspiration to keep going. In this audiobook, Anthony was talking about how people have a need for certainty. People want to know what is going to happen, that they will have a job, that things will work out. But if you have too much certainty, how much fun is that. Would you really be happy if you knew everything that was going to happen to you over the next 30 years? Not really! Life would be boring.

So, even though people have a need for certainty, they also have a need for uncertainty. People want to be surprised; they want things to change; they want to try something new without knowing how this new thing is going to feel/taste. That's when Anthony said the statement that really made me think: "The quality of your life is directly proportional to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably live with." I wholeheartedly agree with the previous statement. I do recognize that not everyone will agree with the previous statement but it is something that I have embraced in my life over the past couple of years.

I/we have been making decisions over the last couple of years that have involved increasing levels of uncertainty. Even though not all of our decisions have gone the way we planned, I feel a lot more confident about our abilities to make things happen. We are more flexible, resilient and ready to make 'risky' moves. I hear people ask us how come we do all these 'risky' things, while at the same time they do not realize that NOT doing what we are doing is also risky.

I believe that there is a not a single safe, guaranteed thing in the world. (Dying is guaranteed, but definitely not safe.) Staying in your current job is not safe since you could be laid off, miss on a great opportunity by not changing, or stagnate personally. I understand that what we are doing is risky, but so is doing nothing.

I just realized that I have never really verbalized what I had just said. The idea has been in my head all this time, but this is the first time that I have actually put it in writing. Please comment on the the risky/non-risky decision thinking. I would really love to hear your comments! Remember, nobody is wrong, we all have a right to our opinion, and I would love to hear yours. This applies to my Croatian/Bosnian readers too. Don't think I did not know. :-)