The real risk is staying.
Good morning,
In another life I was an expert in modelling. Not the catwalk kind. I built computer models that measured risk, mostly financial, and a good deal of the work was testing what would happen if everything went wrong.
I was with someone today talking about exactly that, and it struck me how badly we carry the idea into our own lives. In business, risk is real and worth measuring. If you are putting in money you cannot easily replace, run the numbers and be honest about the downside.
It goes wrong when we use the same logic on decisions that were never financial. You cannot calculate the net present value of staying in a life that no longer fits you. You cannot discount the future cash flows of who you are becoming. Those choices have to be felt, lived with, and usually only understood properly long afterwards.
When I left a career to write a book, no analysis on earth would have called it sensible. By the end I was selling furniture to buy food. And when the last full stop landed, I am not sure I had ever been happier.
Most of what we fear in those moments is not real risk at all. It is inherited. Family, social expectation, institutional caution dressed up as wisdom. Stability gets praised, curiosity gets questioned, and slowly, leaving something that no longer fits starts to look reckless, while staying and quietly shrinking yourself looks responsible.
The real danger was never in the leaving. It was in staying, and telling myself the discomfort was maturity.
I am still working out how to say this part cleanly, so bear with me. I only know I do not want to reach the end and find my last words are, if only I had.
Gerry