Reframing Risk

Used to be, I avoided risk like the plague. Or, so I thought, until one day someone told me how brave she thought I was.

Me? Brave?

Huh?

I didn’t think I was all that brave. I was just going after what I wanted. When you get like that, with a singular purpose in mind, onlookers can conclude that you’re a risk taker, when all you’re doing is dealing with the next obstacle in your path.

Webster defines risk (the noun) as possibility of loss or injury.

What if we reframed risk by focusing on the gains of risk, rather than the potential losses?

What if we declared (to borrow from my 10-year-old daughter, here) “Opposite Day” where risk is concerned? Isn’t that (the gain involved) what eventually moves us into taking the risk, anyway? We want the gain bad enough to risk the loss.

I took a huge risk – bet the farm, if you will – back in 2002 when I decided not to find another job, but to start my own business, instead. Sure, there was the possibility of losing my home, my FICO score…my mind!

But more important to me were the potential gains:

• being at home with my kids where I am truly needed (certainly more than in any office anywhere)
• the freedom of setting and living by my own schedule (to the extent that you can do that when you have kids)
• the opportunity to use my gifts, talents, skills and experience to make a difference for others (a huge draw for me)
• the ability to create my own “job security”

There’ve been many times over the last 7 years where I’ve wondered how the mortgage would be paid that month, and many times I’ve had to say ‘no’ to the kids’ requests for this or that because the money hadn’t manifested itself into my checking account yet. Even riskier, a few occasions where I’d turned down lucrative job offers because they meant I’d have to give up most of the list above.  Why’d I do that? Because I was brave? If you say so. I say it was because I was focusing on what I gained by saying no. I was just going after what I wanted.

Suzanne Bird-Harris would like to say she made the leap from Corporate America to web coach / WordPress developer on her own terms...but no, she lost her job after the CEO ran off with the 401K funds and went to jail. So, she started her own business with 3 kids, 2 dogs and a cat in tow on Dec. 6, 2002. It's been a wild ride, worth every risk, and she now proudly deems herself "pyschologically unemployable".

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