The Risk of Living on the Edge

Everything comes with risk. Even staying in your safe little comfort (uncomfortable) zone. By now, if you are reading this, you have probably felt the risk/danger/consequence of not growing into more of who you are meant to be.

The Risk of Living on the Edge
Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Everything comes with risk. Even staying in your safe little comfort (uncomfortable) zone. By now, if you are reading this, you have probably felt the risk/danger/consequence of not growing into more of who you are meant to be.

Did you know that the word risk originates from a Greek root word rhizikon and that it meant “to sail around a cliff?" Expanding on that risco in Spanish means cliff, and is associated with the verb rescare which means to cut off.

Have you ever seen Greece on a map? Or been there perhaps?

Greece is a country largely bordered by the Mediterranean Sea. It is 80% mountainous and contains thousands of islands. Before air travel and modern roadways, travel by sea was imperative for Greece's very survival, not to mention its ability to expand and thrive. When it came time to explore and initiate trade with neighboring lands, sea travel was virtually the only option, and cliffs (or risks) were everywhere.

Risk wasn’t something to be avoided, but managed…if not embraced. The word risk later came to mean taking a chance in an economic enterprise or business endeavor.

Managing Cliffs

More than obstacles to sail around, the cliffs we encounter in our personal lives are our very edges. To manage obstacles, we cannot rely on the supposed tried and true methods of yesteryear. We have to grow personally, expanding our very being in order to not just go around obstacles, but to transcend them.

Growth always happens at the edge. Even when something happens inside, the growth pushes outward at the edges of what we are thinking and who we are being.

When I say 'what we are thinking,' I don't necessarily mean 'in the moment.' I am talking more about our habitual ways of thinking, that largely determine who we are being.

Personally, I know that for years despite my best efforts at thinking positively, my habitual and largely unconscious thinking was truly stinking. In fact, my thinking had the effect, not of growing and pushing out at my edges, but of shrinking. Stinking thinking is shrinking thinking.

To grow, we must manage our personal cliffs, and those are generally the ones we need not so much sail around, but leap from.

What Logue and Apollinaire Knew

One of the quotes that inspired EDG coaching is this quote by Christopher Logue, a 20th century English poet and playwright, (but supposedly erroneously attributed to Guillaume Apollinaire, a French poet and playwright of Polish descent. According to some online sources, Logue dedicated the poem to Apollinaire.)*

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Come to the edge," he said. 
"We can't," they responded. 

"Come to the edge," he said. 
"We will fall!" they responded. 

"Come to the edge," he said. 

And so they came. 

And he pushed them. 

And they flew.

Regardless of who wrote it, the idea is timeless and powerful. It's not so much about sailing around cliffs in a vessel, but of taking a leap of faith into the unknown and finding heretofore undiscovered power in invisible, albeit metaphorical wings.

Both Logue and Apollinaire lived lives on the edge. They dared challenge conventional thinking and created movements, however controversial, that moved society forward, despite resistance from status quo thinking. I challenge you to google them and see why their ideas were revolutionary for their time.

*I use this quote on my printed and mailed invitations to a 2 Hour Coaching Experience and some show it attributed to Apollinaire. I have since corrected the invitation to include both Logue and Apollinaire, since the true source (actual written work) seems to be unknown.

The Edge is Necessarily Scary

I just read on etymonline.com that one of the meanings of scare has a sense of being "alarmed by rumor."

Read that again. Largely, when we are scared, we are simply alarmed by rumor. Rumor has it that doing this will lead to that (insert your this and that, and notice that by and large, the "that" will be something that is meant to cause you to shrink back and "stay safe."

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Largely, when we are scared, we are simply alarmed by rumor.

Let's rework this word scary in our minds with a synonym or two. Terrifying is a jaw-dropping synonym, possibly eliciting even more fear than the word scary. Related to "terror" are the awful and also terrific.

Terrific, largely used in a positive sense in today's vernacular, literally means frightening, causing fear or dread. Awful, on the other hand, means full of awe, something worthy of and commanding a healthy fear and respect. In the same way terrific is now used positively, so is the word awesome.

What does all of this have to do with edges and risk?

What is Beyond the Edge?

Beyond ALL edges is the unknown. The only way to know them is to grow into them. Here, there is inherent risk because we don't truly know what awaits us.

Unfortunately, we generally believe the rumor. What awaits us can only be bad, negative, SCARY! That's what they tell us.

And then the other side of that coin is that we believe that we are incapable of meeting the unknown. We have bought into the lie that we are not powerful, creative, beings of genius.

So, what IS beyond the Edge?

Beyond the edge is possibility, power, and growth! EVERY SINGLE TIME.

That's not to say there won't be challenges, upsets, and discomfort. They are guaranteed. The rumors always forget to mention that there is also JOY and the SATISFACTION of accomplishment.

Think for a moment about how much you HAVE grown in your life, despite a human tendency to stay in the comfort zones. Up to now, you have successfully met every single challenge thus far, or are meeting it in some way.

How do I know? You are still alive.

Think about a couple of big challenges from your past. Did you overcome them? Yes, you did! In some way you have, even if not the way you would prefer to meet those same challenges, or your new and present challenges today.

To meet today's challenges and truly GROW, you have to be willing to come to the edge and leap into the unknown. (EDG in EDG Coaching stands for Every Day Growing)

What do you say? Are you ready?*

Here's to living on the edge,

Michele Jennae


*Conventional thinking would say I need a call to action on this page. I may insert some Calls to Action here and there but I won't do it on every post. Why? Because I want the call to action to come from you! If you are hearing that urge, you'll scour this website looking for a way to get what you want and need from it, whether that means working with me or not.

THAT'S HOW MUCH I BELIEVE IN YOU!