Bad Things Don’t Happen

“No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”
– Edmund Burke

We have way too much stress in our lives. I grew up in a world of safety harnesses and warning labels — since I was born, I’ve been indoctrinated into a society that is absurdly concerned with danger. I’m not here to tell you that warning labels are bad things or that parents shouldn’t teach their kids about the danger of certain activities.

I’m just telling you to ignore it all.

Every weekend I try something new. I’m an adrenaline junkie, so I usually choose something with some amount of danger. I cliff jump, rock climb, SCUBA dive, and skydive. As often as I can, I travel spontaneously and often find myself in foreign countries without a plan, a map, or a guide. Every time this happens, I get the same lecture from my security-conscious acquaintances.

“Someone is going to mug you!”
“You’re going to fall and hit your head on a rock!”
“You need to be more careful! You’re going to die before you turn 30.”

Every time, I respond the same way: “Bad things don’t happen.” And guess what? I’ve never been mugged, my head is in perfect condition, and I’m not dead yet. I’ve had some close calls, but nothing seriously bad has ever happened to me.

Ever.

The greatest change I ever made in my life was to adopt the Bad Things Don’t Happen motto. Since the day I changed my outlook on danger, my life has been more exciting, more joyful, and more productive.

Recognize the Futility of Worry

Fear accomplishes two things. It can prevent us from doing something or it can make us so terrified that the entire experience is ruined. It doesn’t do anything good for you, so you should get rid of it ASAP.

This doesn’t mean that you can forget about the consequences of your actions. Positivity does not equal stupidity. If you jump out of a plane without a parachute, you’re probably going to die. Unless your name is Travis Pastrana or Jeb Corliss, of course.

The Bad Things Don’t Happen mentality doesn’t deny that some activities are dangerous. Rather, it revolutionizes the way we look at risk. Instead of seeing risks as something to avoid, BTDH simply states that most risks aren’t worth worrying about.

Let’s continue to use skydiving as an example. When I first jumped out a plane, the other rookie divers in the plane were close to having panic attacks about their jumps. My friends warned me to be careful. My girlfriend at the time was so nervous that she had her entire church (some 1,000 people) take five minutes to pray for my survival.

I wasn’t nervous at all. I’m not trying to prove my courage or manliness by saying that. I just recognized that nothing bad was going to happen in the jump. The chance of a parachute failure is something close to 1 in 100,000. Unless I am an incredibly unlucky person, I could jump every day for 40 years and there would only be a 14.6% chance of anything bad happening.

That’s over 14,000 times jumping out of an airplane, plummeting to the ground of 200 km/h, and using a piece of fabric to slow myself down enough to land safely. And I would only have a one in seven chance of having a potentially fatal accident.

Looking at skydiving from that angle, it doesn’t seem so dangerous anymore. But I know far more people who are too afraid to go skydiving than people who have actually done it. There’s a reason why skydiving is on most people’s lists of “Things to Do Before I Die.” It’s an incredible experience that you’ll never forget, but fear paralyzes people and prevents them from living out their dream.

Bad Things Aren’t.

When you adopt the YBW philosophy and charge at life with passion and reckless abandon, you’re going to face trials and setbacks. Whenever you hit a roadblock, you have to remember that “bad things” aren’t actually bad. If you’re tackling life hard enough you are going to fail every now and then.

The path to succeeding and continuing to follow the BTDH lifestyle is to see these failures as positive experiences. I’ve fallen off countless cliff faces in my rock climbing career. I botched several landings before I soloed in a Cessna for the first time. Failure can teach us how to be better, it can teach us if we’re on the wrong course, and it always provides invaluable experience that will help us down the road.

Michael Jordan once said something that has stuck with me to this day. If I had any particular love for basketball, I would get it tattooed on my chest:

I’ve missed over 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Successful people know how to bounce back when they hit rock-bottom. But you won’t even hit that far down. If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume that you have a computer, a house, electricity, and secure access to edible food and potable water. Congratulations! You have it better than four billion people. The fact that anybody in the West can be afraid of failure is laughable. Even the worst-case scenario would leave you better off than most people in the world.

If you get injured, your body is designed to heal itself (and there’s probably a hospital within fifteen minutes of your house). If you get fired, use it as an opportunity to pursue your dreams (check out this Mental Floss article about eight famous people who were fired before they achieved success). If it costs you money, recognize that money is a tool through which we can achieve happiness. It won’t make you happy until you use it.

Your life will make a dramatic shift when you start looking at problems as opportunities to grow. Use your failures to become a better, happier, healthier person and you´ll never face “problems” again.

You´ll never be afraid of anything again.

I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always.” — Yann Martel, Life of Pi