5 Reasons to Take a Risk in 2021
2021 is a year of tremendous opportunity for you. While everyone is lamenting how challenging the last year has been, you should be gearing up to stretch yourself to take a risk.
There is no reward without risk. The last year has been challenging on so many levels, but I hope it has given you an opportunity to reflect on where you are as an individual, as a leader, and where your organization is headed.
Do you like where you are? Have you become too comfortable?
Are you afraid of where the uncontrollable currents of a pandemic and divisive politics are taking us?
Don’t take the “wait and see” or “ride this out” approach.
Do you have dreams and visions of what could be different for you personally, for your marriage, family, or the organization you lead?
Let me offer you Five Reasons to Take a Risk in 2021.
Reason #1: You have one life to live and you are not getting younger
Every warm Sunday afternoon during the COVID shutdowns, I would take my family for a walk through a local cemetery. Scanning all those names on the tombstones gives perspective. Each of us is headed to that same sobering destination.
In sports, I learned the motivational phrase “leave it all on the field.” You can walk off the field, even in a loss, with your head held high, as long as you knew you gave it your best effort.
None of us know the number of our days. I want to go out of this life, like a flame burning brightly, with all the energy God gives me.
People come up to me after watching me play guitar or piano and say, “I wish I could play an instrument.” I always reply, “What are you waiting for?” A flimsy list of excuses inevitably follows.
Do you know that taking guitar lessons and practicing for only 30 minutes a day, for six months, will enable you to actually play guitar? That’s a pretty low cost to do something you will love for years to come.
Reason #2: You are wasting precious life on your smartphone
The average adult is spending over three hours per day on their smartphone. You will look back one day with deep regret at the goodness you missed because you spent hours mindlessly scrolling.
Think of what you could be doing with those hours: building relationships with loved ones, serving people in need, exercising, investing in your faith, trying new recipes with your kids, or learning something new.
Reason #3: The world is changing rapidly
We are delusional to think that we can just ride this moment out and maintain the status quo during this “temporary” disruption until things go back to a pre-pandemic “normal.”
People have embraced new technologies. Working from home is normalized. We have developed new habits as homebodies. The political landscape has shifted hard. Deeper levels of distrust have grown between groups. More people are ordering food and groceries through mobile services. Home shopping through services like Amazon has exploded.
The world has changed and continues to rapidly evolve.
I was talking recently to one of my high school seniors in the personal finance class I teach. This student is admittedly a glass half-empty type who was fretting about the future of education. My advice to her: the future will belong to the creatives and entrepreneurs who refuse to sit around and worry about where the future is headed. These creatives won’t wait for the status quo to continue or for someone else to decide their fate. They design and create exciting new alternatives for a changing world.
Reason #4: The cost of failure is not that high
Any entrepreneur worth their salt has experienced a lot of failure. The best entrepreneurs are resilient at gloriously failing. They birth an idea, generate energy, creatively design, find resources, and more often than not, fail.
The project didn’t work. The design didn’t turn out to be an improvement. The new service wasn’t embraced.
Every entrepreneur mourns the failure, but not for too long. They are resilient. They bounce back quickly to try something new.
Most will tell you that the cost of the failure was not that high. Yes, there was time, energy, even money lost, but it was never so great that it kept them from getting back on their feet to try again.
Reason #5: The cost of not taking a risk is extraordinary
Both Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan are quoted as saying, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Hope you never miss a shot? Don’t take the risk that you might shoot an air ball that elicits chuckles in the crowd.
Naysayers will deride the risk-taker who fails 10 times. The smart entrepreneur ignores the naysayers because she knows it only takes one successful venture to alter the course of her life.
So many of us refuse to take risks because we are worried about what other people will think about us or what they might say. What a wasteful way to live the one precious life you have been given. I absolutely guarantee that, if you have the opportunity to reminisce on your life as you near death, you will not be worried about what the naysayers in your life said about your efforts. You probably won’t even remember their names.
How empty my life would be if I had not taken the risk of asking out Gail Traylor in college. She could have said “no” and my feelings would have been momentarily hurt. The risk was very low.
The upside of Gail saying yes? Almost 24 years of marriage, six beautiful children, and a life full of joy beyond what I could have only dreamed.
2021 is your chance to take a risk. Fail gloriously!
Start a business. Explore faith. Go back to school. Write a children’s story. For the love of all that is sacred and holy, take a risk and try something!
Don’t be fooled into the silly thinking that says taking a risk is costly. It is not. Refusing to take a risk, well, that has the extraordinarily high cost of never knowing what could have been.
