Since there’s no living without risk, you might as well learn how to deal with it.

Here’s  some important guidelines before you take risks, as proposed by David Viscott, a well-known psychiatrist, in his book “Risking”.

1. Don’t risk out of fear, anger, hurt, guilt or depression. These feelings should be resolved on their own, not through a risky act.

2. Do make a plan, but don’t stick to it like a religion-it may be wrong. You are responsible for everything in your life, including changing plans. Just because you make a plan doesn’t mean that it’s right or that all the factors were properly considered.

3. Don’t change horses in midstream. If your plan is a good one, it should allow you to expect and accept the negative results of your risk without panicking over them, so don’t run at the first sign of blood.

4. Don’t risk just to prove yourself. This is hazardous risking. You get away with it a few times if you are lucky and grow up in time. A lot of the time you don’t have the chance to grow up.

5. Don’t blame others for your failures. It’s always your fault.

6. Don’t give up to soon. It is not going to be easy, so have patience and perseverance.

7. Don’t hold on forever. If the loss is overwhelming and you have no choice, hanging on might be better than letting go, but this risk is one that should not have been taken in the first place. Let a bad situation end.

8. Don’t risk your life unless the odds of death are certain. If the doctors give you two years to live without the operation, but claim that in a year you will be too weak to survive, you’d be better consider having it now. You risk when the odds are best.

9. Do try to understand how the odds fluctuate. Know the factors that influence your risk. Use the odds in your favor. When conditions are changing, observe them as long as you can without giving too much away.

10. Don’t trust blindly. Know your own base qualities: your greed, your self-centeredness, your dishonesties. Then no one can play to them and lead you by the nose. You have to be your own master when you risk.

11. Do take your own risks. Whenever you allow someone to take your risks for you, you are putting your fate into the hands of someone who cannot take your interests to heart the way you would. If you need someone to take your risks, you are gaining no experience and when the day comes that you will have to risk on your own, you are more likely to be overwhelmed, more likely to fail.

12. Don’t take anyone else’s risks. If you take someone’s else risks for them, they do not have the opportunity to grow. When you take a child’s risks for him, you are acting as protector. To act as another adult’s protector implies possession, invites resentment and is sticking your nose in other people’s business.

Life is a matter of taking risks, but it is only by doing so that we grow, learn, gain experience, and make living worthwhile and enriching.

What about you? Are you thinking of becoming an entrepreneur?

If you have the “never say die attitude”, don’t like to quit and can stomach failures and crisis, then you may have what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.

The entrepreneurs and businessmen and women who make it to the top and became successful are not familiar with fear of failure. In a Forbes study of 50 of the top entrepreneurs and business leaders some years ago, it was found out that almost all of them said that if their business had gone under, they would have started another.

To become a successful entrepreneur, you need to have the following qualities:

1 . Self driven and confident, and have the ability to inspire confidence in others.

2. Persistent, patient, and wanting to keep on trying, despite failures.

3. Flexible, able to keep on trying, and believe in the adage that “try and try until you succeed.”

4. Daring, not afraid to take a risk.

5. Independent, getting more satisfaction and fulfillment from being responsible to yourself than from getting the praises of superiors.

6. Visionary, knowing where you want your business to go and how it should get there.

So, do you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur?