Episode 32 - Risk, Adventure, and the Legend of Zelda

Here are my notes from Episode 32!

Risk

Take a risk! Risk taking can be really hard. You may wonder if it’s even worth it. Better to play it safe, right?

WRONG

Risk is your friend!

“By reaching for what appears to be impossible, we often actually do the impossible; and even when we don’t quite make it, we inevitably wind up doing much better than we would have done.”  -Jack Welch

We often become fixated on comfort, but discomfort and the risks that come with it can often lead to positive change.

“When it comes to meaningful achievement, comfort equals boredom and low engagement.” - Michael Hyatt

Benefits of risk: Discomfort can lead to happiness, is a catalyst for growth, signals progress 

John Maxwell called this the law of the Rubber Band. To get somewhere meaningful, sometimes you have to stretch yourself.

George Lucas took a lot of huge risks on the original Star Wars. A lot of people in the industry expected him to fail, but he took a big risk and created one of the biggest movies of all time.

There are little ways to take risks too. Sometimes these can be just as hard as the big ones. You’ve heard it said you should try to drive to work a different way sometimes. I heard that I almost never did because I didn’t want to risk being late for work. The risk can be as big as quitting a job to start your own business, or as small as saying hi to someone across the room. They’re both hard, but they both just might improve your life.

The Legend of Zelda

Speaking of risk, in today’s trivia we’re going to cover the classic Legend of Zelda video games, a series of adventures where you play as the hero Link (NOT Zelda)

If accomplish one thing with this podcast, I’d be ok with it being setting the record straight on who Link and Zelda are.

The first Zelda game was published on this day in 1986. Now 32 years old, there have been 19 games published to date. In each game Link boldly sets out to have adventures and vanquish evil, but that’s not the risk I want to talk about.

Last year the most recent game in the series, Breath of the Wild, was released. Nintendo took a huge risk with this game. They completely rethought the formula they’d mostly been following for the past 30 years and 18 games and shook it all up.

They threw out the structure, but they kept all the things that make Zelda fun, the combat, the adventure and exploration, and they told an even better story than anything they’d done in the past.

Don’t be so stuck on your strategy that you can’t change. They let go of the strategy they’d been using for years, and they completed a work of art that honored their past and hit all the right beats, but in a fresh and very clever way.

I want to hear about risks you took, risks you didn’t take, and if you have any, your favorite memories from the Zelda series. As always, be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram!