Risk Management

I'm finally reading "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki.  My own Dad has been telling me to read it for years.  And...despite the fact that one minute ago, a Google search informed me that Kiyosaki has filed for bankruptcy for this very company he's built for himself (scoff), it has helped me re-think finance and my own goals.

I'm a creative, expressive, communicative person: the exact person Kiyosaki says needs to boost his/her financial intelligence; the exact person who runs away from numbers.  That's me.  (Meet my Dad, and he'll eventually tell the story of how, when I was in 5th grade, I wrote in a journal, "2 + 2 = WHO CARES?!"  Hence, Communication was the right major for me.)

But -- money is important.  Money makes the world go round.  Money helps the wanderers/idealists like me, contribute more to society, and travel to see other societies.  Financial freedom leads to empowerment.

We - the right-brained - must learn how the left-brain works and combine forces, to be successful.  It's how the world works.

Digging further, it led me think about risk management.  Where does risk management lie in our lives?  I'd say it's in three sectors:

1. Money
2. Relationships
3.  Career

What's worth doing is looking at how well we manage or approach risk in each of these pillars of our lives.  They all intersect, and I should think that how we manage each will translate to how we manage life.

After all, I just read a quote that really stuck with me: "How we do anything, is how we do everything."

Do we invest our money, albeit "peanuts" for some at my age, in a safe manner?  Do we invest at all?

In terms of relationships, I've learned that there is a direct parallel between lessons learned from love and life.  Great risks can lead to great rewards.  We must take blind leaps of faith.  To fall in love is the biggest risk worth taking.  Reflect on your own life - how risky have you been in love?  It may correlate.

Career.  With time, I've learned that time itself is needed, at least for me, to make decisions I feel 10000% secure with.  I've made irrational decisions before that were emotion-based, but of course learned from them, suffered at times, but always grew.  That's my biggest lesson now: think about your decisions, and when you make them, stick to them.  Stick to them with all your might.  And always, always try to find the positive in them - because there is.  There's always lesson in everything, and if you don't think there is, there is.  There is a purpose.

/////

I've learned that I must manage my risk equally on all parts of the spectrum to get all wheels of my life turning.