Risky Security

• Don't risk working for yourself. You should get a good-paying job as it's more secure.
• You're 40 and single - you should be married.
• Pay your home off first, don't invest until then.
• Make sure you are always seen to be strong. People can take advantage of you if you are vulnerable.
• Being a musician, dancer, actor or artist is too risky. Go to uni and get your degree first.
• Don't upset the apple cart.
• Make sure you're insured to the hilt.
• It's too risky travelling overseas.
• You might fail and lose everything if you start that business.
• If you express your true feelings to them you might get hurt.
• Work hard for the next 40 years, play it safe, build your nest egg, then, when you retire you can live the life you always wanted to.
• Save for a rainy day.

Ever come across any of these - the well-meaning voices from our loved ones, friends, family, society or self?

Security is needed in different realms but taken to the extreme, it will override the voice of the heart and the accomplishment of what is truly important in our lives.

The chase for security can cause:

• the reversion to (or the existence in) the realms of certainty and the known rather than risking the pursuit of our heart and intuition.
• putting up with paid life-sapping work rather than truly working in our strengths and passions which promote happiness and joy.
• the blinding to opportunity.
• lack of personal growth and stretch.
• the maintaining of our personal walls and shields to protect us from being fully known by others.
• maintaining the treadmill tedium, the rat race run, the tail chasing circuit.
• a dulling to the beauty and magnificent of all life has to offer.

Those who highly prize security generally encourage the same - don't take risks, just play it safe. They tend to watch on as others get on with their lives and comment how lucky the person was if they succeeded and are the first to say "I told you so" when the person fails. When we live solely to please others, we sell our soul to buy their approval.

Better to take a risk, designing your security needs on that path than only heeding the voice of security and risk missing the whispers of your heart.

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." Theodore Roosevelt