Take the Chance Even If You Can Spectacularly Fail

You need to take the chance when it’s offered to you for the taking. You have no idea how boring and dull life is if you don’t take chances every so often that can dramatically impact your life. Standing still is worse than taking the chance and ending up falling backwards. You don’t want to be stuck in one place, it gets frustrating.

Most people seek comfort and prefer for things to stay the same. They are so terrified to fall backwards that they don’t mind letting go of potential gains. In investing, the physical pain of losing money is greater than the physical happiness of making money. The great recession of 2007 – 2008 shaped and molded so many people’s investing preferences.

I’ve met people in their 40’s and 50’s who’ve completely given up on investing in the stock market since the great recession. That is what’s wrong! It’s a painful feeling when you take the chance and then fall flat on your face. However, after some while, we should get back to our baseline level of confidence and keep going.

Personally, I’ve made and lost $20,000 of winnings gambling in casinos. I lost $10 – $20,000 more in the past ($30 – 40k total). However, while I believe gambling is VERY risky and 99% of people should not do it, I still don’t mind going back for fun. It did sting more than ever when I experienced those losses.

However, I’m back to my baseline level of confidence now and I might start dabbling in it and tapping my fun money budget to do so. If I win, awesome. If I lose, I was already going to spend that money on fun anyway, so it was money well spent.

Definition of Take the Chance

Take the chance means to take advantage of an opportunistic event or situation that has the potential to benefit your life. Our lives are full of good and bad opportunities. If you think that there’s a good chance that you can make something happen that benefits you, you need to go for it.

When you take the chance and try something new, you may actually even surprise yourself and surpass your expectations. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. If you are unsatisfied and unhappy with where you are going, then it’s time to make a change.

If you are unsatisfied with where you are but satisfied with where you are going, it is NOT the time to make a change. Rather, it’s the time to be patient and let time do its magic for you. When time is on your side, you are on the right path to success.

The biggest chances that I take are on the stock market. It’s not easy to put almost 100% of my net worth into equities, which are highly volatile to begin with. It is not fun when I lose more than a month’s worth of paycheck in a single day. During the coronavirus pandemic start of March 2020, I actually lost close to $90,000 in about a week’s worth of time. I still don’t let that stop me.

One way you can take the chance is for you to utterly destroy that social share button to your favorite social media platforms. Maybe sending your friends this article will make them take risks themselves and better their own lives. Whether it’s financial, relationship, or business wise. There’s a lot of people who can make use of this information.

Why Take the Chance?

You should take the chance if you literally have nothing meaningful to lose or if you only have a perceived loss. There’s little chance that you’ll be put in a worse position, anyway. Most of the loss that we think happen are in our head. When you ask out that girl, the worst she can say is “no” or any form of other rejection.

When she says no, what did you actually lose? Absolutely nothing. You’re not going to see her ever again for the rest of your life. You only have a perceived loss of pride, ego, and emotion. In actuality and reality, you lost absolutely nothing. Maybe you lost some time to talk to her but there’s always free time in your day that you can sacrifice.

From a mathematical and logical perspective, it makes sense. If you take the chance every time that there’s a 50%+ of you making it, then you have a positive net result. If there’s less than a 50% chance, then you will end up with a net negative result. Very rarely do things have a less than 50% chance of success.

There are extreme case exceptions, sure. Choosing whether to go through with surgery that has a 25% chance of survival rate comes to mind. Most situations aren’t this extreme. Most people don’t have to make that surgery decision at any point of their lives, thankfully.

So then, it’s prudent for you to go out, take the chance, and ask for things that you want. I outlined the specific instances where you should take the chance and ask for what you want. Without caring about other people’s feelings or emotions.

When to Take the Chance

Here are instances where there’s a good chance there’s a 50%+ chance of success and getting something that you want.

In these situations, it’s a no brainer but to actually go out and do it.

1) Negotiating Your Salary

People fear negotiating not because they’re going to be told no, but because there’s a chance the company can yank the offer away. It can absolutely happen but it won’t happen as often as you think. The most that will happen is that you will get told no.

Think about it. You actually have the power here, it’s time to realize it and have the courage to swing your leverage around. Companies spend an exorbitant amount of time to identify and interview the right candidate. Out of every other candidates, they chose you. If you say no, they have to go through the entire process again.

It not only costs money but it also costs time. Time is more expensive than money. As a result, companies are at a lower negotiating power after extending an offer out to you.

When I was in college, I received an offer from a top 4 accounting/consulting company. They offered a $63,000 starting salary. When I negotiated, what I really wanted was a $5,000 increase in salary. My professor told me to disguise it and ask for that second after picking something that you’ll get rejected on first.

So I did just that, I ended up asking for an extension of the offer and an increase in salary. By the time it got to the salary question, the recruiter got so mad, she started yelling and started lying that a $63,000 salary was adjusted for cost of living (which I knew was complete fraud). Even though she got mad, what she didn’t do was pull the plug on the offer.

Through all of her yelling, the offer remained intact. I promptly rejected them afterwards.

2) Approaching that Attractive Stranger

Most people are not as stuck up or prideful as you have them in your head to be. Most of them are actually very friendly to talk to as long as you don’t go overboard. I would argue that you are at a stronger position than theirs because they are subject to society’s judgement that they shouldn’t be so stuck up.

Some may actually turn out to be total jerks. These people are in the minority of cases, not the majority. I bet you’re afraid to take the chance and approach that stranger not because you’re afraid of rejection. Rather, you’re afraid to approach because you think you are in a weaker position when you do talk to them.

You are actually in the stronger position.

3) Reach Out to People You Admire

The biggest low risk chance you can take is to reach out to the people that you admire. I’ve sent an email to Mark Cuban and I’ve sent an email to Andrei Jikh (from Youtube) before. Did I get a response? Absolutely not, but that’s ok. All I lost was 10 minutes and a little bit of brainpower to draft the email and send it.

Maybe you have a favorite author you would like to reach out to. Introduce yourself to them. Say why you’re reaching out to them to establish rapport and connection. They may ignore you because they’re so busy, but then that means you didn’t even get told no! How great is that?

You will never face the sting of rejection in the first place! Did you know that Gwyneth Paltrow reached out to Jeff Bezos and never got a response? She doesn’t take it personally. If a huge celebrity like Gwyneth gets rejected and ignored, who cares if you do as well. Take the chance and go for it.

4) Side Business

So many things ran through my head when I started this blog. “What if I can’t offer unique content”? “If no one reads my blog, then I wasted my time creating content for others while getting nothing in return”. I just decided to go for it and see what happens. If nothing comes out of the blog, I already met some amazing people and have immersed myself to the personal finance community.

That’s plenty of enough success for me to go on. I’ve learned so much since I started blogging as well. If I can help just a couple of people better their financial life, I’m all for it. Hopefully my story has helped a few people already. I’m glad that I took the chance and built it into reality.

The Biggest Failure is Not Trying

It’s better to take the chance and end up at the exact same spot rather than never try and ask the question “what if”? At least with the latter, you’re not going to regret trying. The biggest regrets in our life is on things that we didn’t do, instead of things that we did do.

I don’t ever regret asking girls out, even if they’ve said no. I never had to ask the question “what if” because I found out the answer. They did me a favor! At the end of the day, I literally lost nothing in my life. I’m the same person as before and life goes on as normal. Better things might have happened if they said yes, but that question can never be answered.

Failure is a part of progress. If you’ve lost a lot of money in the 2007 – 2008 crash and left the game, you lost out on the biggest and longest bull run the world has ever seen. A way to avoid missing opportunities in the future is to start caring less the next time you lose money. The pain of loss will start to go away.

After continuous practice, a 5% decline in the stock market will feel like nothing to you. That’s how you can stop it from happening in the future. I never stopped investing even after losing $90,000 in investments in March 2020. It’s quite demoralizing to lose 80%+ of my yearly salary in two weeks. I felt my heart sink every day I woke up and it made me sick to my stomach. However, I got through it and I am now stronger than ever.

I still take the chance and dump as much money as I can into stocks.

Shift Your Mindset

Instead of thinking “what if it doesn’t work out” when you take the chance, think “what if it does work out”? Why are you asking for the worst case scenarios before it even started? Why not ask for the best case scenarios before you even start?

The first step to change and bettering your life starts with you. You need to change your mindset and think about the positives that can come out, instead of the negatives. Change the way you are thinking about things so that your life can improve over the long term.

Taking risks are an inherent part of life. Even if you prefer to build wealth the traditional way through a 9-5, you still need to take risks and invest, preferably in the stock market. You still need to take the chance and negotiate once in a while and make sure that your compensation is in line with the value that you provide.

It’s statistically better for you to fail at a lot of things and succeed at a few. However, I understand that it’s not a logical decision that you’re making, it’s an emotional. one. It physically hurts us when we fail, mentally and emotionally. I dislike it too.

However, slowly build up to it. Slowly work up the courage to negotiate your salary. Slowly shift your mindset to thinking you are just as equal to the person you are talking to, if not better. There may be other focuses in your life that you would rather pay attention to. That’s good.

Your life is long so you will have plenty of opportunities down the road to build it into something that you want. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Take the Chance, the Odds are Better Than You Think

It’s more than likely not that big of a deal. You’re probably not going to spectacularly fail, but rather just fail. It may be wild imaginations that are never going to come true that’s holding you back. We tend to overestimate our chances of failure and underestimate our chances of success. One reason could be a lack of self belief.

Whatever the reason is, the chances of success are probably better than the chances of failure. As a result, take the chance. The person who will most likely be pleasantly surprised is you. When I used to work at the University call center, my goal would be to get 10% of people to donate to the university.

One out of 10 people that I talked to would be the goal. I used to get something like 15% of alumni to donate. Alumni would actually cuss and yell swear words at me, that built a lot of character. However, in other news, it means that if you fail 9 times and succeed once, you are doing fantastic!

Most of the risks that I mentioned above have a higher than 10% chance of succeeding. As long as you’ve provided good value to your company, a salary increase request shouldn’t be out of the ordinary. As long as you’ve given more than you’ve received, your bosses should be receptive to rewarding you for it.

If you feel you aren’t being compensated fairly, then it’s time to switch employers and look elsewhere. You may even decide to take the chance and start a side business to avoid dependency on one income. You have no idea where you can end up if you put in consistent effort for a year, you will learn so much along the way.