The Cost of Not Taking Risks
Risk is all around us. Sometimes it shows up obvious, and in your face, other times it is small and fleeting. If you look at your day and it looks and feels exactly like last week, last month, last year, then you probably aren’t experiencing enough risk. What is risk? Most of us would probably say it is “something new or scary with the high likelihood of failure.” But, it just as equally can have a high likelihood of success as well. It would be great if we could see the percentage sign of success or failure floating above a decision. “45% chance of failure here ,” “89% chance of success there.” We unfortunately won’t get that, and if you think about it, that is actually a blessing. Imagine if we knew there was a 12% chance of success, we wouldn’t be very motivated to even try. The unknown of what lies ahead is what keeps life interesting.
We can take the necessary steps of planning, preparing, and practicing to increase our odds of success. Learning is a lifelong pursuit never to be completed. We need to keep our minds, emotions, capacity and beliefs constantly growing. Without it we lead a stagnant life full of frustration and disappointment. If we are waiting for something to be easy, fun or a guaranteed success we will either be waiting a long time, or it won’t be the type of thing that leads to a very fulfilling accomplishment. The struggle, perseverance, trial and error, and picking ourselves up from getting knocked down are all necessary steps in the climb to something greater. Facing risk isn’t going to look pretty or feel fun. The heat of embarrassment on our face as it turns red from us fumbling our words or actions is very humbling. It’s not a sign to stop, in fact it is a sign to keep going. Some of the best memories are on the other side of taking a risk.
The feeling of breakthrough, accomplishment, the giddy smile and spark of excitement in the eyes when we are on the other side of a risk that we did anyway is so empowering. As we look through our day, we need to get off autopilot and start becoming hyper aware of the risks in front of us. The person we want to talk to or confront but don’t, the activity we want to try and sounds fun but we don’t want to look foolish, the business we want to start but don’t want to fail at. These are all things in our life that involve risk. There are however, a few things we can do to help lessen the “pain” of failure when taking risks.
Be the first to laugh at yourself- We’ve all been that person watching someone else try something new and then look foolish. We may not show it on the outside but on the inside, we are laughing and saying “I’m glad that’s not me”. When the person failing knows they look dumb, they might get red in the face and show their embarrassment as clear as day. They are silently chastising themselves for looking like a fool. Now think of the times you see someone try something new and yet when they fail, they laugh at themselves and keep trying. When we see them laugh at themselves, we automatically soften our judgement and laugh with them too. Why is that? It’s because they didn’t give us permission to feel embarrassed. If they don’t show embarrassment then we can’t make them feel embarrassed. Our embarrassment happens solely in our minds.
Learn the take away- Every experience whether it goes well or not has the potential to teach us greatly. More often than not, the undesirable outcome can teach us more than a successful outcome, but only if we take the time to stop and reflect. When we take a risk, we are not just taking it to be reckless. We should be taking it to gain something we currently don’t have. That could be a new skill, a new or better relationship, another income stream, or getting out of our comfort zone. Whatever your reason, if we approach it the same no matter the result, we will always insure we are coming out with a valuable lesson learned. That could be something as simple as cutting loose and doing that karaoke song helped us relax and have fun. Or that business idea didn’t work out as we had planned, but it was a good starting point and now we know what needs tweaked. As long as you come away with some silver lining, you will never go wrong.
The fear of regret is much bigger than the fear of failure- This might be hard to believe the younger we are, but if we truly were to look at our past, we would definitely find things that we wish we would have gone for. Taken the plunge, stepped out into the unknown, been brave enough to try. There have been many interviews of people on their deathbeds and a common thing that is shared is the feeling of regret. Not regret over the things they tried and failed, but the things they were too scared to try, didn’t make the time to do, or never got around to saying. As far as we know, we only get one life and we don’t know how long that life will be. If we live in fear of trying new things, taking calculated risks, or giving it our best effort we will never truly live up to our potential.
We have more capacity than we think- We all know deep down that when we are forced to push through something hard, we come out the other side stronger. As a child we see riding a bike impossible, asking that girl out on a date terrifying, landing our first sale is nerve-racking. When we see this mountain looming in front of us it seems so big and insurmountable. All we have to do is take one step at a time, one day at a time, one task at a time. We can do that. When we string enough of those together, we can then look back at what we used to be capable of and see how much farther we have gone. We see our capacity has expanded larger than we could even imagine possible.
As you go throughout your day, weeks and months, keep doing the necessary steps to plan and prepare you for your next goals. Then when the risk is in front of you, it is no longer this scary unknown. You have been preparing, growing and expanding your capacity, and now you can take calculated risks that will help you live a much fuller life no matter the initial outcome.