Often one of the first steps to becoming more safe and secure includes performing an evaluation of your risk assessment components, which consists of assessing both your home and personal risk. This sets the stage for managing any potential threats to your safety.

The truth is, at some point, many of us have had it with leaving the protection of ourselves and our families up to fate. Instead, we decide enough is enough, and it’s time to take charge of our future safety and security. When that happens, if you want to be effective and efficient with your time, effort, and resources (including money). You’ll need to take stock of the threats you face and the vulnerabilities you have to those threats.

Taking stock of your threats and vulnerabilities is a less technical way of stating that you will conduct an evaluation of certain risk assessment components. After all, unless you perform a personal and home risk assessment, managing your risk will be at best, a guess.

What is Risk?

Before we dive into risk assessment components, though, let’s discuss exactly what "risk" is. Risk is when we know a potentially lousy situation can happen to someone or something. However, at the same time, we don’t know when or if it will happen. For example, in my case, every time I cook food, there is a risk of it tasting awful! However, I don’t know when I’ll whip up that terrible-tasting meal. Ultimately, it depends upon some factors. Those factors include the freshness of the ingredients, my knowledge and ability around the kitchen, combined with the randomness of chance.

Similarly, the same is valid for risks related to our safety and security. It’s no secret that we all run the risk of having our cell phones stolen. Unfortunately, while we know people take cell phones, we don’t know if, when, or where it will happen. In other words, risk is something that we know is possible, but at the same time, we don’t know if it will ever happen to us.

Another way of looking at risk is to consider it as the probability of an unfortunate event happening. Now, if you eliminate the possibility of something wrong happening, you’ll remove the risk. Unfortunately, as we’ll discuss later, the potential to eliminate all risk is highly unlikely. Heck, I’ve spent decades working in professions that attempt to eliminate risk. Unfortunately, despite that, I can still break myself on occasion or have other bad things happen.

The Bottom-Up Risk Assessment Components

A personal or home risk assessment is required when managing your risk. The purpose of performing a personal risk assessment is to identify potential threats, their chances of occurring, and their potential impact. While there are various ways to assess risk, for our purposes, we’ll use the more straightforward-to-implement bottom-up approach.

The bottom-up personal risk assessment requires that we identify as many of our potential risks as possible. In other words, before you start making safety and security plans, sit down with a pad of paper. Then, make a list of all the potential risks you think could impact you, your family, and your home. Another great way of creating that list is to have a brainstorming session with friends and family who can help expand on your list of possible risks.

Risk Assessment Components Can Cause Overwhelm and Worry

It’s good to know upfront that some people may feel overwhelmed and worried when brainstorming potential risks. If that happens, remember that it’s normal to feel that way. Thinking about the potential for future problems can be difficult for some. However, while it may be difficult, it’s good to consider that most of us get nervous when thinking about unknown possibilities. The fact that we’re thinking about unpleasant options makes it even worse.

One way to overcome the unpleasantness, overwhelm, and worry is to think less about the potential problem and more about the results....