Don't deal too early

'No Deal' - on the face of it means: 'I am going on, I have looked at what's being offered and its not enough'. But of course there is more, there is acceptance of the risk, a decision that what was offered can be sacrificed (at least where a player fully considers the decision).

Often players break down at the point where they 'Deal', sometimes it is probably with joy, but for others, such as Sam, I think it is the violent recognition that they have a limit, that they are not free afterall. On Saturday Nancy dealt at the end of round four - 'I am an OAP...I couldn't take the risk'. Nancy was not upset but then she had attained a certain age, accepting limitations was nothing new to her - I think this is a threshold we see some of the younger players actually reach for the first time while sitting in the hot seat of DOND.

More generally its been my experience that many people have reached that limit in their lives far too early, they want to do something such as travel, change jobs, explore or even get divorced, but they have children, or a mortgage, a career, a significant other, or even a pet, that stops them from changing course. They can laugh all they like at DOND players who miss out on an extra £70,000 by calling time, but would they still be laughing if they looked at themselves the same way?

When I was 24 (22 years ago) I hiked across the Sahara Desert from Algiers to Tammanrasset and back again. It took 96 days. I was alone much of the time, and nearly died at one point on the return journey - I will write a book some day. In travelling through Europe and Africa at that time, I met many people who said 'I'd love to do what you are doing'. On asking why they didn't there was always a reason; job, family, lack of money. These reasons were given as if I was different from them, but I had no money, I had a family but they weren't rich, they couldn't bale me out if things went wrong. Before travelling I had a career, I even had a girlfriend - I just decided that it wasn't enough.

I spent two years travelling through 15 different countries, working along the way to pay my keep. I met some incredible people who forced me to look at life from different angles, I had some great adventures, and I made a pact with myself - 'life is too short for me to do things I don't enjoy'.

In life I think people tend to say 'Deal' too quickly, the world (the universe for real explorers) is an amazing place and we are capable of fantastic things if we keep pushing the barriers, we just need to keep saying 'No Deal'.