Sunday, November 28, 2010

Here's to taking risks in life

As you, the regular readers, of this blog know, I like to very strictly confine myself to my thoughts and opinions on stock markets and trading in this blog, and keep my personal life and opinions on anything and everything else (apart from stocks) out of these pages. If I might allow myself one slight digression just this one time, I find myself these days at the crossroads of life with some very important decisions to make. On one hand, there is the obvious path, the path that I have been trained for my entire adult life, the path I am told I am very good at, the part with the obvious ending. But as with all easy paths in life, there is a disclaimer attached. I do not like this path. The other path is full of risks and leads to the unknown, and quite possibly, failure. But I like this path. In my early 20s, I would have not been afraid to take some chances and take the second path. But as I am sure you readers know, as one gets older (am closer to 30 than to 25 now), one has other responsibilities and the equation is not so simple anymore. When you take risks, others are forced to take those risks with you whether they want to or not. Have I reached a decision? No. Not even close. But here are some quotes on taking risks in life that I found pretty inspirational. Actually, this wasn't as big a digression as I had thought it to be, as these quotes can be very well applied to trading to.

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” - Andre Gide

“Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act.” - Andre Malraux

“You have to risk going too far to discover just how far you can really go.” - T.S. Eliot

“It's not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It's because we dare not venture that they are difficult.” - Seneca 

“Yes, risk taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise, it would be called sure-thing-taking.” - Jim McMahon

“A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for.” - William Shedd  

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.” - Michelangelo

I hope you readers will pardon me this little digression. Take care and good luck.

3 comments:

Phil said...

Maybe you find this one interesting: http://tynan.com/risks. It's a lecture titled "Not taking risks is risky"

positiontrader said...

Thanks Phil! I will give it a look.

Anonymous said...

This was really interesting. I loved reading it.