Gains and Losses of Taking Risks

We have learned in schools that taking risks is part of the game of life. Many articles and books have written many different topics about risk taking and its gains and losses. Advises have been presented and provided by experienced people who have claims of being successful after numbers of failures due to risk taking. What some of them fail to present is the number of times you have to fail before you achieve success.

One thing that bothers me though, how do these experienced people define "success" and "risks." In general definitions we can look up and search using books and dictionaries, it shows the similarity of its meaning.

"Success" is when one achieves and obtains high level of satisfaction to the fruits of their hard work. The same goes with "risk".

"Risk" is a situation wherein one can see the possibilities of a success and failure and still pursues to take actions and accepts the possibilities of gains and losses.

But do we know what lies behind gains and losses in taking risks? Yes we all wanted success, but we were only fed of its general idea. What really is behind success other than taking risks and facing both gains and losses? Today, lets answer this.

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Gains and Losses

What are "gains?" I define gains as product and services that we got and accumulated from buying or purchasing, or it is something that was given or provided. These are things that you keep in your control. Being able to keep our gains will depend on our management skills in utilization either for safe keeping and disposal (disposal leading to loss).

What are "losses?" I define losses as products and services we lost through expenditures, disposal, and or something that you have given or provided to others. As long as it is something that you let go from your control, these are your losses.

Gains and losses are always connected. Whenever you have gains, expect that you will also have losses. This is something that I believe we really do not need to elaborate.

I just want to emphasize one thing:

"It is important to understand what other people will lose when they gain something from you, and what you lose when other people gain from you"

I emphasized this quote of mine because this is what most people fail to see or what most people often ignore. We only know what we lose but we don't pay attention to what others are losing from us. We might have been raised to be kind and caring, but the reality is we really don't. That is the reason why we often use this phrase "at your own risk".

Taking Risks

It is believed that we will not be able to gain anything if we don't take risks. While this is true, this belief has been used for many different strategies. Example, when we purchase something, we must first know if we want it or we need it. Wants and Needs are being considered to balance gains and losses. You buy that something, you gained what you want or need and then lose money because you need to pay for it. Now it is going to be about whether or not it is worth to buy it or not or if the cost of your purchased item is worth the price. We take risks everyday in our daily lives but it does not mean that we will achieve success everyday in our daily lives. What I am getting at here is, we risk a lot more than we achieve success. This is the reason why the statement: "you will not be able to gain anything without taking risks" is quite vague in my perspective. We were raised that we can only obtain great things in life when we work hard and take risks. Although hard work is explanatory, risk will always be equivalent to "losses". So like achieving and obtaining great things would mean risking accompanied by massive losses. Now would that be worth it?

We have heard many stories and even testimonials that explains how they have achieved success. They include in their stories of advices how others can do to achieve what they want to achieve. There are articles that offer tips and tricks as well. I don't know if it works for others but in my case, they did not.

Some of these advices include:

- Skills enhancement and development

- Knowledge base

- Practice and repetition

- Routine modification

- Perspectives and personal views modification

These are just some of it. There are still a lot. Although these 4 ways and advises have been all over the Internet. You have to have skills, knowledge, you need practice, and change of routine or basically change of how you view things. While skills and knowledge are vital and important, the others would require most of your time (and even would require "you"). When I say that they would require the "you", I really mean "you". The "you" is one of the most important aspect in gaining and losing. The "you" can be used for gains and only the "you" can alone have losses. There are many examples out there about this and I believe readers who stumble upon this blog knows exactly what I am talking about.

There is really nothing wrong personally regarding gaining and losing as long it is not making you insane. But this is also the reason why some people go crazy and went insane. They have been taking risks for far too long and have not yet achieved success. They have lost more than they gain due to the belief of "taking risks" and even more so, telling people to "take risks". We already know that this is one hell of a manipulative trick to push people to take risks and then work hard only to find out that their hard work is not worth it. Of course they will go crazy. Why? Because they cannot make complaints anymore for it is already done and disclaimers are already made. Like a point of no return and there is nothing they can do about it anymore. All they can do is just get angry and rage.

Manipulators are just going to laugh at it because they have gained already from them. Sad, and this is a Sad Truth. So yeah when someone tells you to take risks, study first and be very careful. We already have access to many things online and we can even ask the right people around whether it is worth to take risks or not. You can even do calculations if you want to be detailed in your study. That way, you can decide whether it is safe to take risks by gaining and losing.

Sometimes when you have gained the truth behind it, it is the only time you realize how much you have lost.