Have you ever done a risk assessment on your personal circumstances?
For those that don’t know what this is, this is where you look at your situation and assess different areas of your life and evaluate whether any are prone to the risk of going wrong, or something bad happening. You then put plans in place to eliminate, reduce or mitigate that risk
Now of course you can’t cover all eventualities of course, but by putting in place plans to cover if things go wrong, you are softening the blow if something DOES happen, or you can reduce the risks of something happening to a really low level so the likelihood of it occurring is very very small.
So for example, if you assess your health and see how you look after yourself and grade it based on a number of factors, such as:
- what fitness regime you have in place to stay healthy?
- do you smoke?
- do you drink alcohol and if so, how much do you drink?
- what sort of foods are you eating?
- are you overweight?
These are just some of the questions you would begin to ask of yourself and you then grade how good (or bad) they are for you. Obviously, you must be truthful when doing something like this or there is no point in doing it.
I have just touched the surface of the sort of questions you would begin to ask above if you were truly going to look at the answers and then make steps or direct changes, in place to reduce your chances of becoming ill.
You can apply this type of risk assessment to other areas of your life, such as your job or career, your finances and your property too
It makes sense to do this, to see area’s that are more at risk of potentially going wrong and what steps you can put in place to ensure they don’t go wrong. If however, some are out of your control because they are totally dependant on others (such as a job), then you can put mitigation steps in place. These are plans ahead of time, in case they do go wrong, thus reducing any pain points if they did go wrong
An example of this, is if you have a job, what steps are you doing to ensure your boss values you as an asset to their company? Are you working diligently and being a “can do” individual?
If you can’t do anything more than what you are already doing in your job, then what other forms of income do you have in place that aren’t dependant on a job? What other forms of income do you have? So if you were to lose your position, then you haven’t lost all your income. If you don’t have any other forms of income, then have you got any insurance that can cover you “should” you lose your job?
Again, I have only briefly touched on this risk assessment, but doing it properly for all areas of your life, will mean you can be more comfortable dealing with issues should they arise
A risk assessment is NOT however to put yourself in a state of fear. You just need to sensibly weigh up what is a genuine risk to you and balance that with enjoying life too.
It takes time and effort to do this, but if done sensibly, you can be more at peace with your situation!
Other than that, I wish you all a Merry Christmas for those that celebrate this time of year and wish everyone else Happy Holidays!