Risk and Exploration: A Marriage for Greatness

Here’s How They Can Work Together To Make Your Life Great

Here’s How They Can Work Together To Make Your Life Great

I often pull word inspiration cards when journaling. When I did so recently, these two were stuck together. Exploration and risk. Are they meant to be linked? Risk and exploration. Upon further investigation I discovered the two words often appear together when talking about science, business and space: Exploration and the risk assessment thereof.

It also got me thinking about how a marriage between these two ideas offers an interesting allegory for life.

Pondering Exploration

I think of exploration as a road of discovery. Forging around corners of the unknown. Being open to newness. Trying things on for size. Dipping into an experience before fully committing. Digging deep in the microcosm of a thing and then connecting the dots and finding meaning therein.

So, an explorer? An explorer is a seeker, a questioner, a non-settler. Can an explorer ever really be settled, or are they not happy unless in the field of exploration? Always looking around the next bend?

“There are things known and there are things unknown and in between are doors.” — Jim Morrison

Explorers open a lot of doors.

Risk is No Matter What

Risk on the other hand, to my way of thinking, takes exploration to the next level. Without the sense of risk, the experience is coloring within the lines. Certainly nothing wrong with that, although often the outcome can be rather beige, or falling short of what could be.

“When you take risks you’ll learn there will be times you succeed and there will be times you fail, and both are equally important.”- Ellen Degeneres

Risk-takers often jump without a net, the ultimate in self-trust. They dance in the precipice between staying small and living large.

Risk Plus Exploration, Sittin’ in a Tree…

However exploration with risk, k-i-s-s-i-n-g, skating on the edge of discomfort, where a choice made could be dangerous in terms of success or failure, yet doing it anyway: that’s risky exploration and is about being truly alive.

It is also exploration before risk that leads to some of the greatest successes. Calculated risk comes from a thorough exploration phase.

A time that comes to mind in my life — when risk courted exploration — was when I made the big cross country move from Michigan to LA to pursue the arts. I had never lived more than three hours from home and I was leaving my comfort zone and everything I knew to forge and explore the bumpy road of discovery. It felt like a big risk because I was heading into the unknown in a much bigger way than I’d done before. I could fail, fall flat on my face. But, I went anyway and it was such an exciting, temperature-raising time in my life. Much of was jumping without a net, while at the same time exploration took me to places I’d never dreams. And, much of it was a planned calculated risk that took a year of creation before the big move happened. It was a thrilling courtship, to be sure.

Permission is the tie that binds them, the chemistry that keeps risk and exploration on the dance floor. When you give yourself permission, the sky’s the limit.

Risk doesn’t have to be through grand public gestures, either. Internal risk involves leaping outside of our comfort zone. In fact, the switch often has to happen there, internally, before the great things transpire in our world.

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning how to dance in the rain.” — Unknown

Within greatness, exploration and risk abide.

The pillow talk between these two bedfellows is passionate and limitless and at times volatile, volatile only in terms of their mutual vibration, vibration that pushes them beyond what or who they were before.

Surrendering to this powerful marriage means to continually step up, to grab onto exploration and risk. Then go, simply go. It’s momentum and marks the powerful agreement that this undeniable nuptial demands.

“Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing at all.” — Helen Keller

Now that’s a tête-à-tête I want to be a part of. I’ll even share the pillow.

Want To Push Your Own Limits?

To further expand your thinking while elevating and operating your life at a higher level where risk and exploration rule, check out my simple 8-step checklist that will help you get there.

Click here to get the free CHECKLIST right now.

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