Life is a Risky Business

Life is full of risks, and we all have different ways of coping with them. Some of us might try to reduce the risks in our lives to zero, and others might try to maximise the level of risk, to fill our lives with adventure and gambles. Both of these approaches have their pros and cons and, ultimately, the extremes of each fail. Let’s look at why that is. After that, we’ll look at how to embrace risk in our lives.

Taking Risks CAN HURT

Though risk is a natural, and maybe unavoidable part of life, taking risks can have major downsides. All of us likely have a childhood memory, maybe even beyond recall, where we took a risk in the playground, and, painfully, it didn’t go well - we fell, scuffed a knee, maybe even broke a bone.

That pain, that physical damage, echos on in our minds and memories: we took a risk; it hurt. Will we take the same risk again? Is it worth it? Risks can hurt, emotionally as well as physically. They can even be fatal, as thrill-seeking rock-climbers will tell you. Graffiti artists take risks that might result in arrest. Leaving a job or gambling might incur financial losses. To a lesser extent, taking risks can take energy, and taking too many risks too often, might result in burnout.

Faced will all of this, we might aim to avoid risks altogether, and for sure, that has it’s immediate advantages.

The Relief of No Risks

Seeking to avoid all risk can result in an immediate psychological reward - relief. “No, I’ll choose to stay in my job. Phew! I don’t have to worry about that any more.” The child might look at the next monkey bar up, and, faced with the anxiety of going on, feels the instant reduction of tension moments after they decide to go back down. Basically, the relief we feel is the escape from fear that comes with taking risks. But, by avoiding risk we also get to avoid other things, like responsibility, like deciding not to go for that promotion. We also get to avoid commitment, like deciding not to let your partner know that you really love them and want to take the relationship to the next level, which, it should be noted, also helps avoid the risk of rejection.

There are very, very many gains to avoiding risk. So, many might wonder, why we take risks at all?

The Costs of Avoiding Risks

Sadly, most people learn about the downsides of avoiding risk after having decided to avoid risk themselves. Though initially they might feel relief, safety, and security, even a great sense of liberation or freedom, given enough time, or no time at all, negatives arises.

In the short-term, opting out of taking that risk might result in feelings of guilt or shame. We are avoiding taking a risk that we feel we should take - if only we had the courage! Basically, a part of us may feel we are being cowardly, so that in spite of the immediate relief, we might, almost simultaneously, experience shame, or a sense of failure. This is what many people suffering from anxiety or depression feel when they avoid key, or even basic activities in their lives because of fear or a lack of motivation - guilt, shame, and failure. This can cause a negative feedback loop that we will talk about in future articles.

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For now, it is safe to say that avoiding risks can actually cause anxiety, as key tasks become unfamiliar, and therefore more anxiety-provoking. Likewise, avoiding risks can lead to low mood, by reducing meaningful activity in our lives, leaving us wonder “what’s the point at all?” Similarly, our self-esteem can deteriorate, as the sense of failure wears us done.

Without taking risks, our lives can and sometimes do become meaningless, empty, or, at the very least boring, and our sense of self can collapse.

Where taking risks can be fatal, so too can avoiding risks, by making our lives a living death.

The Gains of Risk Taking

So, once we discover that avoiding risks altogether can have very many destructive downsides, we might still be hesitant. We might still need to remember the gains of taking risks.

Of course, the most obvious advantage to taking a risk, like gambling, or asking someone we like out on a date is that we might win, we might succeed, they might say “yes”.

Taking risks can result in big rewards. Leaving my job in an attempt to build my own business might result not in financial ruin, but financial success. Even more, taking risks often means choosing to do things we value more, which is why we feel the risk in the first place - because we value the possible outcome, we want it! In taking risks, we not only increase our chances of filling our lives with these valuable rewards, a life that we actually want. By taking risks, we might also look upon ourselves more favourably. We might acknowledge that, even if we fail, we chose to try. We took the risk. That in itself is worthwhile and valuable! Our self-esteem improves as we see ourselves living our lives more fully. More so, by taking the risk to do the things we value, we might find we grow as a person. Taking risks often requires us to do things that feel overwhelming or difficult, because we need to learn new skills in order to successfully achieve them. This is incredibly growthful, and the challenge itself builds character, whether we succeed or not. And who knows, like the graffiti artist risking arrest in order to complete her work, at the end of the day if she takes the risk she gets to leaves her mark on the world.

With risk comes the possibility of success.

How do we negotiate risk?

So, should we simply throw caution to the wind and take all of the risks? Well, no. This isn’t simply positive thinking or extreme optimism. The original pitfalls of taking risks remain. A graffiti artists who goes too far and marks every building on numerous streets will find themselves tracked down and prosecuted. A gambler might find themselves addicted, or broke. Without considering the consequences or doing some basic planning first, spontaneously quitting my job might leave me facing impossible odds, destined to fail. What can help here, with any risk we are thinking of taking or avoiding, is to do a cost-benefit analysis (kind of like the one we’ve done here). Here, we can look at the pros and cons of taking the risk or not.

If you want to know more about how to do a cost-benefit analysis, you might find this article useful, where I describe how to do a cost-benefit analysis in detail.

Basically, we need to realise two things:

It’s impossible, and detrimental to our mental health, to avoid all risk,
It is inadvisable and equally detrimental to endlessly and recklessly seek risk.

Like Icarous who crashed to his death after flying too high, or the cowardly lion in Yellow Brick road, we need to be neither incautious, nor cowardly. Finding a balance in the way we navigate risk might see us, like Frodo Baggins in Lord of the Rings, becoming a hero in our own lives.

Risk: An Essential Mental Health Ingredient