The Life-Changing Lesson on How to Take Risk by Jeff Bezos

Would you go flying a plane with a person you met only a couple of hours ago who claims to have a pilot license?

That's what I recently did when I met Andrew, a friend of a friend who has a pilot license and he invited me to go flying with him.

When I mentioned this to my other friend at brunch, that I was going flying with a person that afternoon whom I had met early that AM, he said I was crazy.

He started telling me all these stories of a recent flight crash in San Diego where the charter plane (the one we were going to fly that day) crashed on his friend's house and people died.

My friend was looking at risk through the lens of his perception about how scary flying on a charter plane could be as it could lead to death.

But I was looking at it through the lens of what Jeff Bezos calls it Risk = f(Reality).

Let me explain.

When it comes to taking risks, we often get afraid. We fear of made up scenarios in our head.

"What if the idea bombs and I piss off my manager and get fired?"

"I can't risk all my savings into crypto assets because that market's going to crash soon."

"I'm scared to do my own thing because I don't have any idea."

You probably know of instances from your past where you wanted to do things but there was some sort of risk involved with doing it.

So you chose to avoid it.

But after years, you wish you had taken that risk.

That's what Bezos calls mathematically: 

Risk = function (Perception) is what the society programs us to be. That taking risks is a scary thing to do and we often look at risk as a function of our own perception of that activity we consider a risk.

However, Bezos recommends us to see risk through the lens of reality i.e.

Risk ≠ f(Perception), but

Risk = f(Reality)

Take the above scenarios:

"Even if the idea bombs, if you could walk away with 2-3 key insights about your experiment, implement the findings and lessons at work, wouldn't your manager be proud that you took a calculated risk?"

"In 2017, $10,000 put into the top 10 coins/tokens/altcoins had an ROI in the range of $500,000 - $1.7 million dollars (based on how you rebalanced the portfolio. Isn't the upside potential of the returns worth investing your savings on well-researched crypto assets this 2018?"

"Starting your own business doesn't have to be about changing the world. It could be a fun experiment that helps you to inculcate a strong bias for action and be resourceful."

In my case with the flying opportunity, I did a small Google search on 'Commerical Plane Crashes in 2017' and got to learn that 2017 was the safest year on record for commercial passenger air travel according to a Dutch consulting firm.

So I went flying and had the time of my life. Even got to say 'Affirmative' on the radio when the pilot's main radio was not working and the Air Traffic Controller was warning us to watch out for the surrounding traffic near the airport.

Don't play a fortune teller when it comes to taking actions towards a project. Let your risk be a function of reality and not the figments of your imagination.

Below are some pics from the flight.