If you want to become wealthy you must be willing to take risks. There are no two ways about it. There is not a single rich person who hasn’t taken risks in their lifetime. These wealthy individuals understand the importance of taking action even when they are not sure of the result because they know that the greater the risk, the greater the reward too and if you ask me, here are 7 risks you need to consider taking to get ahead financially!
Risk #1: Stepping out of your comfort zone
No one ever becomes great by remaining in their comfort zone. Now, your comfort zone does give you a sense of safety because you can easily predict the outcome of your actions there. However, the comfort zone is not the best place to be if you want to become rich. Your comfort zone keeps you limited and poor. There is seldom any rich person who is comfortable in their comfort zone. Therefore, if you want to be rich, you must be willing to take risks and step out of your comfort zone.
You have to learn to do new things even when you are not comfortable doing them. Learning to do things you are not comfortable with increases your capacity and develops you. You can start to do new things such as changing your career path or building new relationships. It can also be starting a new business or changing your location. These things may not come easy for you but you must understand that you can only grow outside your comfort zone. You cannot grow in the comfort zone because you are not challenged to become better than you are.
Stepping out and doing new things expands your knowledge beyond your current state. You will learn new things that you previously know nothing about and you can use this as an advantage to step into greater heights. For example, most people find it difficult to communicate with strangers effectively. Stepping out of your comfort zone and learning how to communicate with strangers can help you increase your sales and also make you become richer.
Risk #2: Risking failure
I understand that no one loves to fail because failure can be costly and painful. However, if you want to become rich, you have to grow beyond the fear of failure and instead embrace it because quite frankly not embracing the risk of failure is a risk on its own. Therefore, the fear of failure is more dangerous than failure itself. Now, no one can assure you that you are going to win if you try but you are definitely going to fail if you never try. Hence, if you want to become rich you have to do what the rich people do and embrace the fear of failure.
Whether you realize it or not, fear is just a means to keep us from trying new things because as humans we like safety. Safety is a good thing and that is why it is always better to take calculated risks. However, you may remain poor if you are always looking for means to stay safe and not risk failure. If you want to become rich, you have to step out and embrace failure. There is a common saying that if you want to succeed faster, then double the rate of your failure. Every great person that you know has probably failed more times than they can count. They know that failure is just an event and not the outcome of their life so they keep trying until they succeed.
No one is counting the number of the times that you have failed so don’t let it stop you. As a matter of fact, people do not care about the number of times that you have failed what they care about is your success. Therefore, see failure as an opportunity to try again but this time differently.
When you embrace failure you are no longer scared of failing. You can now think clearly. You will start seeing ideas and solutions in every problem. This will move you closer to your goals and ultimately success.
Risk #3: Dropping unproductive relationships
You are a reflection of the relationships that you keep. It is easy to tell whether you are in a productive relationship or an unproductive relationship. A productive relationship is one that moves you towards your goals and helps you achieve success. Unproductive relationships are the type of relationships which makes you feel less of yourself and draws you far away from your goals.
If you are serious about your life and want to be rich then you have to be more conscious of the types of relationships that you keep. You can’t keep being friends with poor people and expect to wake up one day rich. It is not possible. Unproductive relationships will stunt your progress no matter what your goal is. If you want to be rich, learn to develop positive relationships.
Now I know this may sound harsh but don’t feel sorry for dropping relationships that don’t benefit you. If they can’t help you become better then they don’t have any place in your life and will ultimately waste your time. In fact, staying in an unproductive relationship will give you an unproductive mindset. Poor people always have an excuse and soon enough they will give you reasons why you can’t be successful. Therefore, dropping unproductive relationships simply means you are dropping people with a limited mindset.
Ever notice how people who don’t get promoted in an organization are usually friends. They always have something to discuss even during the working hours and they stay out longer for their breaks. Such people will drain your energy faster than you can ever imagine and act as poor influences on one another. These types of relationships are ones to avoid. Not to mention, if you hang around with people who don’t raise you up, they will soon feel intimidated by your desire for success and will do everything to see that you remain on their lowly level.
Risk #4: Starting over
When you are playing a video game and you lose, you are required to start over. This gives you the opportunity to try again and this time you will want to change up your strategy in order to succeed. Although life is not a video game, it gives you the option to always start again. And starting over means that you have the chance to give it all it takes to win this time around.
Starting over is not a bad thing. It means that you didn’t do something well the first time and you now have an opportunity to make it right. You must be willing to take risks and learn to start over again. The good thing about taking risks is that it doesn’t matter the number of times you have done it, you can always try again.
Don’t expect that everything you are going to try will be successful. Sometimes you will fail a number of times before you finally succeed. Most rich people did not just start a business and become successful overnight. Most of them started several businesses and probably failed in almost all of them before they finally found the right one.
There is nothing holding you back. Learn to pick yourself up from the dirt each time you fail and tell yourself that you can do it one more time. You now have experiences behind you that you can leverage to help you succeed the next time around. The advantage you possess is that you can learn from what made the previous endeavor unsuccessful and go from there. Let me give you an example to help you better understand what I mean. Becoming rich is like learning to ride a bicycle. At first, you may stumble and possibly even crash but did that stop you from learning how to ride a bike? Likely not. You kept trying even when you had a scar but this scar helped you learn and eventually you learned from your mistakes and mastered the skill of biking.
Risk #5: Being misunderstood by your peers
Someone once said that if everyone understands your dreams then it means that they are not big enough. Successful people are seen as crazy people by their peers because of the ideas they have. They don’t think like others and their ideas are usually too unbelievable that their peers misunderstand them. Such people are willing to resist being misunderstood by their peers because they believe in their ideas so they don’t care if their peers believe it or not.
Most rich people do things differently. That is why their peers misunderstand them and they think they should play it safe or try to stop them. People will want to reduce your dreams to their current level of understanding. Risking being misunderstood by your peers means you are giving them control over your life. You are letting them decide how your life will be and that way you are never going to make progress. You are not going to grow beyond their own limitations.
Therefore, it is not important that your peers understand you as long as you understand yourself. Learn to motivate yourself as you work on your ideas and don’t be afraid to risk being misunderstood if you want to be rich.
Risk #6: Living in financial uncertainty
Nobody wants to do a job that they don’t like however that is what most people are doing today. The reason for this is that they are scared of living in financial uncertainty so they will therefore keep working jobs that they think are stable. However, nobody can become rich by depending on such jobs.
The fear of living in financial uncertainty makes one become less productive. People who have this fear always worry about their finances without doing anything about it. They are not sure if they will make enough money. They are not sure they will have enough to start. The truth is that you can’t be sure of what will happen next so it is always best to expect uncertainty. If you want to become rich, you just be prepared to live with at least some uncertainty and this may involve ending your reliance on a paycheck. Whether you want to admit it or not, there is financial uncertainty in the work that you are doing right now. The security of a salaried job does not exist in this day and age. Recent happenings have shown the world that there will always be things that we don’t expect. People who thought their jobs were secured are now losing their jobs. The person you are working with is not loyal to you. They will easily replace you when they find someone who is better and more affordable than you.
Therefore, the only thing you can expect is uncertainty and when you can become comfortable not knowing exactly what the future may hold, you will be in a much better position to break out of the current financial rut you are in and make the moves necessary to exponentially increase your income!
Risk #7: Achieving more success than you ever imagined
The human mind is powerful and it can think of anything. Sometimes, when people think about great ideas, they limit themselves because they think they are not possible. That is why the grave is the home to some of the best ideas on this planet. It is the home to many untapped potentials because so many people were not willing to take the risk to achieve more success than they ever imagined.
The imagination of the rich doesn’t see limitations. They believe they can achieve anything no matter how difficult it may seem and that is why they are rich. Learn to open your mind and don’t be limited. If you have a big dream now you can still have a bigger one.
Don’t allow your current situation or surrounding to limit what you can do. You can achieve more than you can imagine. Take the risk and go beyond your imagination. Surprise yourself!