I’m not one for preaching about how to parent your child; I know what works for me and what has worked for me, and I’m always happy to share that with those that are interested.
When it comes to the vices of the world, my parenting style has been one of not ignoring or demonizing things like gambling or alcohol but instead educating and teach personal responsibility and accountability.
My 19 year old son has recently taken an interest in the stock market and has started investing. As a rabid sports fan his whole life, he also has a little bit of an interest in sports betting and gambling.
Rather than telling him to run for the hills and don’t gamble, I choose to take a different approach, at the end of the day he’s going to probably do it anyway.
My advice to him was, “son never gamble with more than you are prepared to lose.” Most people would replace that word lose with risk, and it seems like semantics, right?
Never gamble with more than you're prepared to risk. Sounds the same right?
What’s the difference? Well, there’s a big difference when you’re talking about what you’re willing to lose as opposed to what you’re ready to risk. Risk is theoretical, risk is probable or possible loss is definite. It's about mindset.
When you go into a situation already prepared for that worst-case scenario, you‘re likely to make more intelligent and logical decisions.
Risk makes you scared and brings emotion into the decision-making, emotionally influenced decisions can cause you to ignore logic and reason.
This mindset shift is very valuable in the world of business and entrepreneurship. Think about this, what are you willing to lose to be successful in business?
Many fail because the risk was too high. They felt they were risking too much they were not prepared to lose. They didn’t understand that part of the path to success in entrepreneurship requires loss. The more you are ready to lose, the larger your potential and probability of success.
Ask yourself, what are you prepared to lose? What could you lose and keep moving forward?
I’d encourage new would-be entrepreneurs to go through this exercise, create a list of everything that you could potentially lose.
Start with your car, your house, your credit rating, your savings, your retirement, specific relationships. Write down everything that you could lose and put a checkmark next to everything you are OK with losing.
If that list of items you’re OK with losing is much more extensive than the list of things you’re not OK with losing, then you have a chance to achieve something great.
Going through this exercise will help prepare you mentally for what is about to happen. You will lose my friend it’s part of the process of success. The question is how much are you prepared to lose, how much are you prepared to sacrifice to get there.
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