You're a risk-taking expert (yes, you)
Image: Sally Anne Carroll
Recently, while watching a BBC documentary on the Galapagos Islands, I was reminded of that old saying about turtles and tortoises. They don't get anywhere without sticking their necks out.
The same is true of the folks I have been interviewing for coaching slots.
The same is true of the clients I have been supporting as they transition into a new level of their career, develop a new business, prepare for and settle down into a big geographic move or establish a new reality in some part of their daily lives.
The same is true of me and of you, too.
Whenever we want to close the gap between where we are right now and where we might like to be instead, the way there requires us to stick our necks out. Repeatedly.
And yet, many of us would rather do just about anything else. Our aversion to taking a risk might show up as resistance or inaction or stuckness. It can be seductive to make this a big deal.
It's not. We can all learn to feel more comfortable with risk. We can grow our tolerance and listen to our instincts. We can be honest with ourselves about the vast differences between reckless risk-taking and smart, aligned choices that happen to make us feel vulnerable.
The truth is, we are all risk-taking experts. We do it so well that often we don't even think about it.
Every single morning that we are blessed to wake up, we enter 24 hours filled with risk and uncertainty. For all of our brain's attempts to stay safe, the reality is we are each taking large and small risks every single day with every choice we make. Each of us is turtling our way along, sticking our neck out to move forward.
We do that just fine. We get where we want to go because we're not focused on the uncertainty and we have downgraded the risks in our mind and through practical actions. We don't let them hold us back.
Anything can happen in a day. We're just not overthinking it.
The same thing can be true as we approach the changes we want to make in our lives and careers. As we dream what we want into being, we'll be asked to step up, to be open to new possibilities and to think things we may not yet have thought for ourselves. As we design and walk the paths that we're mapping out, we'll at some point be called to do what we may not have done before so that we can create that new reality into being.
We instinctively know when we're holding ourselves back, when a well-timed risk might well pay off.
Any time we are uncertain of the outcome, it can feel as though we are risking ourselves. We feel vulnerable... because we are. Yet, inside that vulnerability is exactly where our power lies.
Every time we stick our neck out, we create a little more movement. We step forward, and we end up a little closer to where we are headed. We create, build, invent as we go. We also court the potential of not succeeding. We might be wrong about the step. We might have to answer for ourselves. We might not have seen the obstacles and mapped out the exact plan to get around them.
All of that is real. Life is like that. All forward movement requires a little risk. Creating takes risk. Change takes risk. Reinvention takes risk.
Evolving into that new version of our lives or our work — the one that we are aching for — takes risk. You can do that. In fact, you do it every single day.
