I once saw a bunch of guys near a cliff with hand gliders, running fast to the edge and letting themselves fly on the wings of faith and physics.  Many of you will say, there’s no faith required, the hand glider will glide, but I can tell you that as I got close to the edge to look down on them, let alone to jump, my heart sank.  My fears reminded of two numbers, 6.6743 and 9.8: the gravitational constant and the acceleration rate on this earth’s gravity.  Plus a few other thoughts, what if the harness malfunctions?  what if I catch a wrong current?  So many variables that are known and many others that are unknown add up to too much risk for this desert dweller.

As we often face challenges in our lives, and at times we find ourselves hovering near a metaphorical cliff, whether we’re divorcing, and some big company with deep pockets is suing us and we can’t afford to defend ourselves; whether some scammer sold us yet another crypto project, we’ve been working for a year without pay and the mother-lover takes off with the results of our hard work — it really doesn’t matter why we feel so close to our edge, our fears take on and sometimes we freeze. We stop. Well, we should, if we don’t stop to assess the situation, gather our thoughts and strength and keep on keepin’ on, then for sure we will not overcome. This, I believe is the true nature of risk, or at least what I will call acceptable risk.

Before I move on to acceptable risk, let me describe some unacceptable risk, in my humble opinion, and why I don’t consider unacceptable risk a risk worth taking. To me there is a difference between gambling, or taking bets, and what I consider acceptable, or good risk. Spending my days and money on random crypto (or whatever speculative investment you choose) is simply taking a chance, sprinkle some research on it and now you have a better bet, but it’s still a bet that the market will go where you want. Whether this is acceptable to you or not, this is not the risk I speak of when it comes to the way I do business and how I want to succeed in life.

picture of roulette

Everything in life has gravity. The stuff that pulls us down. So we accept gravity as a constant, both physically and metaphorically. It takes effort for us to stay aloft, afloat or afoot as the case may be; it requires a constant struggle that we often think goes aways if we build more power — so some of us hit the gym — some of us build the bod, others build their spirit or their mind, and some build their wallet — all this building gives us a sense of control and purpose because … we believe that when we get stronger, in whatever regard, that we will no longer need to struggle as much any more. I’m reminded of working nights when I was going through college, I saw every toilet I cleaned as a way to my dream: my degree. Financially I was earning just a few hundred dollars a month, so I told myself, if only I could make 2,000.00 a month, I’m home free! Then I graduated and the first offer came for 3,000 a month, and finally, I accepted 4,000 a month: hallelujah! I hit my payday. A young wife and 1.5 kids later I realized 48k a year wasn’t gonna cut it, a mortgage, a car, and some failed investments brought me back to life. Now, many years later I realized that this was a cycle, more like a helix or an upward spiral that builds itself through change in our lives, and every stage or our lives simply means more of the same in different forms. Humans, it seems, we expand to the limit of our boundaries: financial or otherwise. The trick is to continually break through those boundaries.

When I consider all the risks that it took for me to go through my life and to consider myself a success in some measure, I first start with realizing that it never ends; we are like sharks, if we stop moving, we drown — so the thing that keeps us alive, is also the thing that requires the most of us: strength, focus, effort, dedication. So expecting that the pain goes away is not just a fallacy, it’s also wrong: the pain leads to change, and the change leads to growth. And while I my sound masochistic, we must welcome the good pain. At a phase in my life I took up the gym and light body building, I remember the sore muscles, I remember the early mornings where I fought sleep to get to the gym, I remember the injuries and the desire to give up — who was making me do this? am I crazy? But I persisted and one day I saw the 12 pack of bud on my gut turn to a nice 8 pack of abs after years of hitting the gym 2 hours before work and 2 hours on the way home. During that time my mentors and cheerleaders helped me work through the good pain, to recognize the bad pain and to know when push through and when to quit.

When to quit is probably the lesson we need to learn the least because it takes the least effort: it’s so easy to quit. When to get past our fear, and our pain, to get our mind to believe that we can lift one more rep, or add one more plate to the stack. It takes knowledge, we observe, we read, we research and we discover what are the theoretical limits, and we experiment to find our own. The risk is that we do all the effort and we don’t reach our goal; but this is where I want your mindset changing — what is for sure true is that if we don’t start the journey, we will never reach its end, and if we do our preparation, wherever we end up, in the end is profit. So the risk is not between achieving something good, the risk is that we achieve a different good than intended — and often, and this I can tell you is for sure, often, when we discipline and persist, the result is even better than we imagined.

So what is the key to beating the gravity of life? The ability to take our assets, physical, mental, spiritual and financial .. mind, body, spirit and wallet and use our mind, gain the knowledge and the confidence we need to invest our assets in pursuing those goals where we can take it one step at a time; one second at a time — so it’s just one more step and we’re closer to our vision; one more painful breath, lift, or trade. But I won’t leave you with an incomplete metaphor … can we agree that at this point i’ve convinced you that just like bad pain, there’s bad risk? and that good risk involves planning, persistence and discipline? There are a few tools we can use.

The first is recognize the we must be able to measure ourselves in order to reach an end. And what must we measure? Time is the most critical resource we have in our arsenal, it is also the most scarce because you can’t make more of it, and it’s also the most variable since you can’t predict when it will stop for any of us. Therefore measure and be stingy with your time—that means treasure it, don’t waste it on unproductive relationships or activities, if you reach the point where something is taking up so much time that it’s interfering with the goal, dump it. Pay the price of dumping it and move on. Is it a relationship that got toxic? Either fix it quickly or move on, if you tell yourself there’s no quick fix, move on. And this is true of investments, they are after all, relationships; you bought into a project that is feeling toxic, if you can do nothing to change it, and if it’s even worth cashing out, cash out and move on, but move on. If you lose big, lift your head up high my friend, we’re all grinders, and we pay the price of educating ourselves in life through its hard knocks. No matter what, tho. Measure and if you look at what you’re doing and you can’t measure it — stop till you can, or I can guarantee you, it will bite you if you don’t get it under control. We can’t analyze and predict what we can’t measure. Measure. Measure time as your biggest cost, and the cost to those around you also is important.

Second, as you measure, evaluate often the importance of one dream against the other and don’t confuse movement for progress. Just ‘cause you’re busy, it doesn’t mean you’re being productive, but if in doubt, it’s better to keep moving than to freeze. This continual movement, may at times feel tiring and like a great burden or risk, but if you stop too often or too long to analyze your next move, this leads to analysis paralysis … and remember we’re sharks, we have to move. Move your body, move your mind, move your spirit and your heart, and move your money — money, like our bodies, if it sits it loses value. Evaluate constantly, am I spending too much time on no return, or am I simply being persistent and patient? Evaluate. Because evaluating allows us to measure our different dreams and goals against each other. It allows us to plan how much of our assets, our time, our money, our physical and mental effort we can apply to each activity. So Evaluate continually.

Third: Prioritize. No man can serve two masters, so says the bible, and so I say too. Or he will love one, more than the other, which really means whether we intend to or not, we will serve one more than the other. So as we continually evaluate our progress, and sometimes our few backwards steps, we must take them in context and decide whether this has sufficient importance to outrank other pursuits. Continually evaluate your priorities, and if necessary re-arrange to make sure the big rocks are going in before the sand. If you don’t remember the object-lesson of filling the jar with rocks, sand, pebbles and water let me know, I’ll send you the write up. Put your big rocks first … look at your life and create a hierarchy of goals, life goals, life-stage goals, 3 year goals, 1 year goals, monthly goals, weekly goals and daily goals and tasks. This is how I break down my life, but you may find different time periods useful, the important thing is to make sure that everything we do every day moves the needle, like the speedometer in our cars, everything we do should be moving the needle (or the digital meter on your tesla) forward, faster … if we fail, fail forward faster; if we’re achieving good results, accelerate. Move the needle by organizing and prioritizing your life.

I can go on forever with this article, but even i’m falling asleep by now and I’m in love with the topic! Let’s leave this as the first 3 rules … and I reserve the right to change them in the future, or at least re-arrange them since there’s some other models of successful living practices that I like. If you use these 3 simple rules, the risk is measured and it reduces the possibility that you will find unanticipated gravity as you leap off the edge in your flight to freedom.

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