Some rewards are great enough to ignore risks and take big chances

By David McElroy · September 7, 2011

I was talking with a friend earlier today about risks and rewards. She’s more conservative than I am about risks, so she sometimes has trouble letting herself mentally commit to something risky — especially when the reward is something she really wants.

The conversation reminded me of a story I’d like to share with you.

…I attended a lecture being given by a man who had made millions of dollars speculating in commodities. Along with several hundred other people, I had paid five dollars to hear how to make a fortune in the commodities market using the system developed by this highly successful trader.

The air in the packed meeting room was charged with excitement. We all felt as if we were being let in on a valuable secret that would make us all rich. By the middle of the lecture, the speaker had built up a full head of steam, explaining his charts, talking about margins and contracts and the different kinds of orders he placed with his broker.

Suddenly a spectator near the back of the large room stood up and said, “Hey, wait a minute. From what I can see, all this speculation is very risky business. Don’t you realize that you can lose every penny you have — and then some?”

The millionaire responded without hesitating. “Why, yes. I certainly do realize that.”

“Then why do you continue to speculate.”

“I don’t know exactly why,” the lecturer answered. “I just know I’m willing to take the risk.”

“Well, I’m not,” the spectator snapped.

“The rich man smiled, paused a moment, and said, “That might be why I’m giving this lecture and you’re paying for it.” The audience exploded with laughter as the spectator blushed and sat down. He didn’t ask another question that evening.

I’m not trying to get you to consider speculating in commodities. (In fact, straight speculation in commodities tends to be disastrous.) But I am suggesting that most of us are too scared to take reasonable chances to get what we want. What’s more, we’re most afraid of taking chances when it comes to the things we most desperately need.

It’s scary to take risks. It’s sometimes scary to think that we might be worthy of the things we most want and need in life. We might easily take a sudden and momentary risk at the wheel of a car to shave 15 seconds off of an arrival time when we’re running late, but it’s much harder to take emotional and psychological risks that can allow us to attain the things that matter most to us, whether it’s love or other important life goals.

I haven’t always been willing to take risks. As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I have a long history as a closet coward. I know that the chances I’m willing to take right now might not all pay off. I might lose everything. As the commodities speculator said, “I just know I’m willing to take the risk,” because some potential payoffs are worth risking everything for.

Note: The story comes from Mike Hernacki’s book, “The Ultimate Secret to Getting Absolutely Everything You Want.”

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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