Life is defined by risk. From sub-atomic physics to the growth of the global economy, risk is the governing instrument.

Sub-Atomic Physics (Risk = Energy)

Particles split when the risk of staying bound is too imbalanced. The constituents of the origin particle give up their combined high risk state in exchange for a more comfortable low-risk state of being two separate sub-particles.

Global Economy (Risk = Debt)

Wars start when the risk of staying in peace is too imbalanced. The constituents of the countries give up their treaties in exchange for a more comfortable low-risk state of being two distinctly value-opposing bodies.

 

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If you re-read the above post substituting risk with the words opportunity, energy, and debt, in the indicated sections, and you will see the other side of the nature of life.

Google “risk vs opportunity” and you may find the quote,

“A risk is a potential occurrence (positive or negative). An opportunity is a possible action that can be taken.

Opportunity requires that one take action; risk is something that action can be taken to make more or less likely to occur but is ultimately outside of your direct control.”

– Google preferred StackExchange response by Magister Ludi

which may or may not be insightful, but in every high-risk decision that I’ve encountered thus far, there has always been strong resistance from others.

Newton’s Third Law

In keeping the spirit of Newton’s third alive, I am starting to associate strong resistance from others in high-risk situations as a strong indicator of high-opportunities. It is in the fundamental nature of our world to take the path of least resistance, or of lowest risk. This is why our family, friends, and the majority of the relationships we build with the world influence us to be cautious and live low-risk.

Growth of Risk

As people with finite lifetimes, we experience life linearly. We make predictions about the future based on our linear memories of the past. In the below diagram, take the horizontal axis to be time, and the vertical to be happiness.

Linear Life

In the pursuit of happiness, we tend to amortize our lives so that what we live matches our expectations for life, this tendency to seek a moderate balance of high and low risk results in a constant rate of change in our lives illustrated by the black line growing linearly in the diagram below.

In concrete terms, linear life is characterized by a short period of rapidly increasingly high-risk events (doing well in school, pursuing higher education, partying and traveling the world, getting married, having children, etc.) followed by a long period, usually 5 times the length of the short, of increasingly low-risk events to compensate for the accumulation (getting a reputable job, maximizing taxes withheld –we like refunds, saving our earned income, investing in diversified retirement accounts, etc.) until we finally reach the ripe old age of retirement that society has attributed for us where we will continue to live a comfortable low-risk  life (spending time with family, writing our memoirs, grocery shopping with bogo coupons, etc.) until the end of our timeline.

Throughout our linear life, we adopt the belief that “time is money” and that the only way to increase our happiness (the slope of our line) is to put more time and effort into our life. For every extra hour of work, we will get an extra hour of money that we can use to increase our happiness.

Exponential Life

Early on in our lives, when we encounter disappointment, we will project ourselves linearly into the future and not like the picture of the linear image (the risk of continuing on that way is perceived to be too high) so we make a quick correction to return to a linear projection that we justify is an amortized perception of our internal standard for happiness.

But what if when we encountered disappointment, we projected ourselves exponentially into the future instead of linearly? What would that picture look like? The green line in the diagram below. For a lot us to project this into our own life, that requires imagination since we live in a linear world.

With imagination, disappointment has become opportunity instead of risk. In concrete terms, exponential life is characterized by a long period of high-risk events that often extend beyond a person’s lifetime.

Disappointment Phase

The high-risk disappointment phase can sound like dropping out of school to start a company and failing at it, being betrayed and abandoned by people we thought were friends and believing that we are crazy for it, delaying starting a family despite family pressures, leaving our day-job to dedicate ourselves to a full-time unaccredited software bootcamp, applying for 10 credit cards and hurting our credit scores, working during the day to pay for the time we need to work at night on a business idea we believe in at hurting our performance at our day job, just to name a few.

Exponential Meets Linear

This is the cross-over where our disappointment from the high-risk phase of exponential life is reduced (we’ve begun to learn from our mistakes and are passing our lessons on to our businesses that generate us money) to the point where we reach the same level of happiness as a linear life would have at the same time in life. As we compare the linear life to the exponential life at this instant, although the happiness is the same, the momentum is radically offset. The exponential life has built systems that amplify it’s own efforts, while also amplifying it’s own mistakes, averaging thrill and stress to a linear level of happiness even though the level is in an imbalanced state. The linear life, on the other line, is content with life: we’re making more money than we spend, saving up for retirement, getting ready for a promotion, children are doing great in school and family vacations are great but you’d like them to be longer and more frequent, however all this good is offset by the sadness of our parents reaching the end of their timelines but you’re tight for money and the life insurance claim will get you past 30% on your mortgage.

Chaos Amazement Phase

The high-risk chaos/amazement phase is where the exponential life has become skilled at translating the tough lessons from the disappointment phase into systems that operate autonomously, freeing up all the time previously invested in running the system. Systems that have been shaped into place are now allowing the exponential life to take a 6-month family vacation and be even happier when it comes back. Life has gotten exponentially better without the exponential life having to put extra time or effort in. It is the period of the exponential life where every linear projection that you or someone else makes about the future is not as good as what actually happens… life is better than anyone can rationalize that it will be. You can start companies and have others run it while you check-in after your 6-month vacation. You can go horseback riding and forget the world exists and come back to an exponentially better situation. You can inspire communities, be on hosted tv/radio shows, write books, act in movies, run for office, all while knowing that you’ll be happier after you try those things no matter what happens. And if you’re paying attention, when your timeline concludes, those you love will only be sad for your passing, and thankful for you exponential abundance that you’ve left behind with strong, positive, and enduring systems that allow them to live their dreams even after you’ve left their lives.