Have you become institutionalized? The danger of not taking risks.

By Isaiah O’Connor
a 2 1/2 minute read

Last time I wrote about managing your risks as you jump out into the wild and woolly world of business. I did mention that there were always risks involved, and you should learn to manage them enough to prevent the risk from becoming a wild gamble.

Today I am going to talk about another type of risk that I would say a large majority of the population takes without realizing it. That is the risk of not taking risks. You, my reader most likely would find that to be a strange concept I know. So what risk am I talking about? The risk of lost opportunity.

You see there is a concept called “Opportunity Cost.” This is a concept that few people seem to really think about or consider with their business, their life, and their money. Even though the concept is rather intuitive and we use it in our decision-making process on a daily basis. In finance, the concept is pretty straight forward. If you spend the money you have, say on a vacation, or a very nice car, you by default lose the opportunity to put into some form of investment.

Matter of fact, this is just how most decisions in life are, this is why I called it intuitive. The problem is we often tend to take the path of least resistance, become extremely risk-averse take as few chances as possible. This type of behavior can often cause us to become stuck in a rut. Wake up, go to work, come home, eat, watch YouTube, sleep, repeat until the weekend or vacations comes in. This goes on to the point where they cannot escape the cycle, or as Morgen Freemen “Red” said in the movie Shawshank Redemption

““These walls are funny. First, you hate ‘em, then you get used to ‘em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That’s institutionalized.””

— Morgen Freeman (Red) Shawshank Redemption

They say opportunity knocks but once. Perhaps this is true, and if you depend on your routine for safety, anything that threatens that is to be feared. So you let your opportunity pass you on by. The internet is full of missed opportunities, such as when Decca records passed on a four-person band out of Liverpool. If you have not heard of Decca its for good reason, the band they declined? The Beetles. Whoops.

Now the good news is, while opportunity may knock only once that does not mean your life is over. You see opportunity only looks for you on rare occasions. However, the road map to find it is available to everyone, so you can go out and seek it.

If you are considering making the jump from being an employee to an owner, look at the opportunity costs of not making the jump. It may be bigger than you think. Break free of the mental walls you put up, even if it takes crawling through a sewer, just bring soap to clean up and get going.

I will end with nother great quote from The Shawshank Redemption