Sucessful Risk-Taker part II
Well, my last post on being a successful risk-taker certainly created a bit of controversy. I’ve had everything from applauds to people accusing me of encouraging people to endanger children… lol. In any case, one thing that came out of the whole curfuffle is that the concept needs a bit of explanation. So here goes.
First of all, a lot of people asked “How do you really demonstrate being a successful risk-taker?” After all, your average date or meet-up at a bar doesn’t really provide many opportunities for risk-taking.
Realistically, it’s more important to avoid looking risk averse, than to try and look risk-taking. So when you are telling stories, you want to avoid any signs of being risk-averse.
So for example you don’t say “I really wanted to go into medicine, but life sciences were really competitive, so I decided to take psychology”. That’s demonstrating risk-adversity, and loser mentality.
Likewise, you want to tell stories about how you did risky things, and how it turned out. I’ll talk about starting my business, and how I took a big risk in quitting my job, but look how it turned out. I’ll talk about how I foolishly wound up in a riot while I was trying to get footage for a documentary. I’ll even talk about some stuff I did that was actually kinda dumb (to avoid looking like I’m bragging), but how it turned out fine anyways.
Also, you should keep in mind that what qualifies as risk-taking is dependent on your age, and your place in life. I’ve broken into abandoned buildings on dates with girls, and it was awesome, but if you’re a 45 year old stockbroker, that would probably be inconsistent with who you are. For older guys, for whom it’s more important to come across mature and respectable, it’s still totally ok to talk about crazy things you did in your twenties, while also sub-communicating that you’re beyond that now.
This is a bit off-topic, but it seems you have a misformatted URL in your blogroll. CJ’s blog has the http:// bit two times, so it redirects to the W3C.
March 6th, 2007 at 5:03 am2 great posts 10mag. These came at a good point in my development: I am able to see why this makes sense from my personal experience.
I went to a leadership conference sponsored by Lockheed this weekend. The various speakers (executives from Deloitte, P&G, Highmark, K&L Gates) talked about winners vs losers. The overall consensus was that a winner is someone who has an internal reference point for success, takes experiences as feedback, and uses that feedback to take action quickly. Passion was the one concept that all the speakers emphasized, as taking action related to passion usually means you are taking what are called “risks” by average citizens.
Frankispassion8.blogspot.com
March 6th, 2007 at 1:07 pmVery nice.
After reading Part I I reviewed my routine stack and noticed that ALL my A2 stories/routines have Successful Risk-Taker sub-plots already built into them. I had never noticed I had them in there.
I will now consciously include Successful Risk-Taker into all my routines.
Props.
March 7th, 2007 at 10:21 amPerfect risk-taker, in addition the perfect ex of the alpha male;
Tom Cruise. Top Gun.
March 11th, 2007 at 8:56 amTop gun is a gay film
March 11th, 2007 at 6:44 pmMy friend met a girl who went to the same high school as he did, so on their date they went and toilet-papered the high school together. Fun stuff!
March 16th, 2007 at 3:12 pm