Why does it seem as though too much of our psychic energy and some of our efforts are spent protecting ourselves from perceived risks rather than producing something of benefit? I call a purposeful risk, taken to achieve meaningful progress in creating a vision affirming result, "risking to win".
Although you may feel anxiety or stress when risking to win, it is purposeful risk and when successful worth the investment.
Perceived risks result in more worry than action but they often result in misplaced action. Popular media is a big part of it but human nature is also a large player. The media uses "threats" to get our attention in a world of information overload. Every storm has become a potential "storm of the century" to keep us watching and we are promised that "poisons in our own homes are killing us", but we must stay up till eleven O'clock to find out what they are.
When it comes to human nature, familiarity breeds comfort and comfort diminishes the sense of fear. We tend to grossly over value the risk posed to us by something that is new or little understood. We also are more likely to fear something sudden to those things that threaten us slowly over time. The same principles apply in business, but I will take them on in my business oriented blog: On the Case: Business Solutions rather than in this space.
Speaking of fear, I have a master’s degree in Applied and Mathematical Statistics, and lot of student's have related to me their fear of that one course in statistics they need for their degree. But given my background, I am not afraid to delve into the data and test my own assumptions. I am 51, so I decided to take a good look at the population data from the US Census and the death data from the Center for Disease Control for the most recent data for people aged 45 to 54. (Each age group is different in its death rate and the causes of those deaths.)
When it comes to death, other than meditating or praying to transcend my fears of the finite number of days that my body will survive on this planet, is there some meaningful data to guide my actions or reduce my anxiety?
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) publishes cause of death statistics. In the most recent data available online (2004) there were 180,000 deaths among people aged 45 - 54, my group. The total population of this group was 41.5 million people. (Therefore, 4,150 deaths in the CDC data equates to approximately 1 death in 10,000 people.)The survival rate my age group was 9,956 out of 10,000 or 99.56%.
Cancer at 50,000 and cardiovascular disease at 47,000 were by far the leading causes of death with chronic liver disease next at 7,700. The old adage of eating healthy food, exercising regularly, avoiding smoking and drinking alcohol in moderation seem to be the most important actions that you could take to move your survival rate upward.
All accidental deaths were totaled to 19,675 with 8,200 deaths due to accidental poisoning and 6,600 due to automobile accidents. I do not have the information on the poisoning data but suspect that it's primarily related to medication and it was a surprise to me. (This probably leads to the spate of local news stories when it is published annually.) In the intentional category the leader was suicide at 7,400.
At age 50, the real risks to our health and safety come from our lifestyle, our household and things that we are comfortable with such as driving our car around town. The violence, disasters and exotic diseases that the news is filled with total less than 2 deaths in 10,000. That is, if they were eliminated our survival rate would move from 99.56% to 99.58%. They are neither likely nor are they a significant relative risk factor.
Personalization of one's experience often distorts our assessment of risk as well as our fears. Airplane travel on a mile traveled basis is incredibly safer than automobile travel. We tend to drive every day and are in control of our own vehicle, so even reckless drivers tend to pass off being lucky as skillfulness and are comfortable with their own driving.
In relation to creating our own legacy and "risking to win", we also tend to associate going along with the group or what's popular with being safe. Employees in a large multinational corporation are far more likely to lose their jobs due to a business decision that has nothing to do with their work or the success of their work group or business unit than someone working in a small owner-operated business. Small businesses are at a greater risk in the short-term, but the risk is in the open, is being actively dealt with and your personal efforts can have direct tangible impact.
The mistaken belief that one is "safer" when you go to work everyday in a beautiful office with well dressed people is the same mistake people make when they believe they are safe in a crowded night-club or stadium. As long as everything goes well, you probably are but when there is a crisis, you are less safe and may be damaged by the panic of those around you.
I will visit risk again in this journey to gaining wisdom and creating a meaningful legacy. I would ask you to reflect upon your fears and evaluate the underlying risks. Since there is a finite end to our bodies, we live most fully when we "risk to win" rather than merely try to avoid risk or worry.
Showing posts with label affirmation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label affirmation. Show all posts
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Spiritual Path: The Real Meaning of Affirmation
During the past two decades or so, small books of daily affirmations became popular. Saturday Night Live lampooned these affirmations with the Stuart Smalley character played by Al Fraken. The term affirmation has been subjugated to the self-esteem and meditation movement for too long.
When you make a purposeful choice to follow a spiritual path, the term affirmation takes upon itself a very different meaning. Affirmation is transformed from something you tell yourself to how you live when you begin to purposely affirm your spiritual path through your actions each and every day.
While the destination you seek will be a reflection of your specific beliefs and the values you choose to affirm, your progress down the path is a direct function of daily practice.
Dr. Shinichi Suzuki, founder of the Suzuki School of Talent Education had a very simple example he used to demonstrate the value of daily practice. In his book, Nurtured by Love, he spoke of pointing out to his students that they now possessed a strong hand. (For most of us it's the right hand). Then he reminded them that on the day they were born, both of their hands had equal potential and equal ability.
He continued on, that each and every day they had paid more attention to their strong hand and practiced using it to do things requiring both skill and strength. They had developed their strong hand through simple actions and efforts on a daily basis. Today both hands still contained the same potential but the strong hand now had much greater ability as a result of thousands of days of focus and practice.
Although the American branch of Dr. Suzuki's school has focused almost exclusively upon music, the Japanese branch took upon itself a much broader curriculum including mathematics and more importantly character development. To read more about Dr. Suzuki and his philosophy, methods and accomplishments follow this link. http://suzukiassociation.org/about/suzuki/
I will use more examples from Dr. Suzuki in future blogs as I have found his compassion, wisdom and methods to be astoundingly effective in the transformation of individuals and development of true mastery.
One of the simplest decisions that I needed to make for myself was that I would not allow external circumstances or pressures to define how I express my values. Part of my spiritual path was to de-link my experience of external events from my internal sense of self. The de-linking was the hard part and it took years and it took help.
I attended a meeting a few months ago where I was subjected to the angry venting of frustration and some inappropriate statements were made by the frustrated person in front of a group of a half dozen people.
I did not react to the venting nor the inappropriateness of the comments, however I did respond by acknowledging the other person's frustration and then walking back through the process we had all followed together. I did not defend myself. I did not point out the inappropriateness of the comments. I did not allow this other person to dump their anger, frustration and inappropriateness into my soul.
If I have done my best, then I am at peace with the resulting successes or failures. I do not need to react to negative comments made by other people. If I choose to respond rather than react, then I have just a little bit of a chance of checking in to my values and affirming them. You will find no perfection with me but you will find someone committed to being at peace with myself and working on it every single day with small, medium and on rare occaision large acts of values affirmation.
When you make a purposeful choice to follow a spiritual path, the term affirmation takes upon itself a very different meaning. Affirmation is transformed from something you tell yourself to how you live when you begin to purposely affirm your spiritual path through your actions each and every day.
While the destination you seek will be a reflection of your specific beliefs and the values you choose to affirm, your progress down the path is a direct function of daily practice.
Dr. Shinichi Suzuki, founder of the Suzuki School of Talent Education had a very simple example he used to demonstrate the value of daily practice. In his book, Nurtured by Love, he spoke of pointing out to his students that they now possessed a strong hand. (For most of us it's the right hand). Then he reminded them that on the day they were born, both of their hands had equal potential and equal ability.
He continued on, that each and every day they had paid more attention to their strong hand and practiced using it to do things requiring both skill and strength. They had developed their strong hand through simple actions and efforts on a daily basis. Today both hands still contained the same potential but the strong hand now had much greater ability as a result of thousands of days of focus and practice.
Although the American branch of Dr. Suzuki's school has focused almost exclusively upon music, the Japanese branch took upon itself a much broader curriculum including mathematics and more importantly character development. To read more about Dr. Suzuki and his philosophy, methods and accomplishments follow this link. http://suzukiassociation.org/about/suzuki/
I will use more examples from Dr. Suzuki in future blogs as I have found his compassion, wisdom and methods to be astoundingly effective in the transformation of individuals and development of true mastery.
One of the simplest decisions that I needed to make for myself was that I would not allow external circumstances or pressures to define how I express my values. Part of my spiritual path was to de-link my experience of external events from my internal sense of self. The de-linking was the hard part and it took years and it took help.
I attended a meeting a few months ago where I was subjected to the angry venting of frustration and some inappropriate statements were made by the frustrated person in front of a group of a half dozen people.
I did not react to the venting nor the inappropriateness of the comments, however I did respond by acknowledging the other person's frustration and then walking back through the process we had all followed together. I did not defend myself. I did not point out the inappropriateness of the comments. I did not allow this other person to dump their anger, frustration and inappropriateness into my soul.
If I have done my best, then I am at peace with the resulting successes or failures. I do not need to react to negative comments made by other people. If I choose to respond rather than react, then I have just a little bit of a chance of checking in to my values and affirming them. You will find no perfection with me but you will find someone committed to being at peace with myself and working on it every single day with small, medium and on rare occaision large acts of values affirmation.
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