Friday, March 6, 2020

Life Risk Matrix

Life risks that we routinely take
1. Money - Better to lose money than to lose time over something/someone. Money lost can always be earned with skill and hard work. Plus money risked and lost will teach you how to treat and respect money, so some early losses can help you grounded and teach you the skill of making peace with some risked-and-lost money.

2. Time - Better to lose time and money than to lose sleep being disturbed over someone/something. Time once lost will never come back, but you will learn the skill of not risking too much time over something that you are not getting better at.

3. Emotion - Better to lose emotional attachment towards someone than to lose your own health. There is enough kindness and love out there in the world. You can build relationships with other people, if one goes bad, with honesty, integrity, care and love.

4. Health - Never risk health and well being over anything for a long term. A slightly damaged health can be recouped back with some solid work on body and mind. Not so for long term risks such as long term smoking, drinking, gluttony, laziness, work-alcoholism and substance abuse.

5. Reputation - Never risk reputation as it severely damages your social presence, much more than the harm done. Also, once damaged, your social connections will always remember that and you will never be able to walk away from that narrative. The narrative itself will paint the act with 10 times more ferocity than the act itself. This risk is also the most insidious of it all, as it would spew out from thousand mouths, behind your back and hidden by social banalities. This is also the one risk that is most difficult to salvage. Stay away from dubious people, un-ethical ventures and unscrupulous people.

These are learnings from my own life.

As I look back at my own life and my own decisions regarding life risk, I find that I have :

1. Fretted the most about money decisions, been penny wise and pound foolish several times.
2. Been reckless with my time, spending it on tasks that gave me no pleasure and added no skill.
3. Tolerated toxic emotions too long due to stupid social norms such as "What-would-people-think" and soul-deadening thoughts such as "I-am-not-good-enough-to-come-first"
4. Been careless about health by being lazy and indisciplined about my eating, exercising and sleep habits, taking my body for granted, beautiful though it is.
5. Have ignored the attacks made on my reputation, choosing to not standing up for myself, and avoiding the unpleasant dirty insinuations, as the slander came from once-loved people.

So, be careful of what you do and with whom, be careful to rest well and eat well, be mindful about your own interests and passions, be aware of how you spend your time and build skills and relationships with it, and do risk some money for buying whatever money can buy - experiences, hire people and buy things that give you pleasure.


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