Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. – Benjamin Disraeli
While I was researching for another project this evening, I came across an article on Science Daily.com called No Risk, No Fun? People Who Take Risks More Satisfied With Their Lives. Published in 2005, the article provides the results from a 2005 German study that interviewed over 20,000 people on risk taking. While the study confirmed some long held beliefs on risk taking, such as women are more careful than men, the research also indicated that people who were more willing to take risks were happier.
Professor Armin Falk of the University of Bonn was part of the research team and found the risk to satisfaction relationship a real existential quandary:
“Are people who are satisfied more optimistic because they are satisfied and thus more ready to take risks? Or is someone who is not afraid of risks a person who takes their life into their own hands and shapes it the way they want to?
I don’t think it would surprise anyone to hear my vote is for the latter, seeing as how I’ve built the philosophy of The Life Uncommon with a foundation of moderate risk taking. However, it might surprise some to learn that I myself am not a natural risk taker – in fact, I was quite the opposite, until I taught myself how.
While I agree that people who are willing to take risks are happier/more satisfied with their life, I would contend that risk taking is not simply a personality trait that you either have or don’t have, but an art. And like any other art form, the skill of risk taking can be learned, honed, and perfected. In an incredible experience of synchronicity, not two minutes after I had finished reading the article about the study in Germany did I randomly open my August issue of Vogue to an interview with Google executive Marissa Mayer that featured the following quote: “Do something you’re not ready to do…In the worst case you’ll learn your limitations.” I guess the universe really wanted us to address risk taking here today!
As I said, I was never a natural risk taker. Growing up, I was the kid who wouldn’t jump off the swings or the jungle gyms for fear of hurting myself, I never took my hands off the handlebars when I was riding my bike, and I would roll into a state of abject panic if I even went down a whisper of a hill on my roller blades.
My fear of going too fast or letting go of the handles was indicative of the values I was taught from a very early age by my father – an airline pilot – to be careful, cautious, and secure. This same drive that kept me from going wild on my bike maintained as I grew up, and showed itself in everything from my fear of standing too close to the edge of the subway platform to what types of work I chose and the way I dreamt about my future life: follow the path, play by the rules, and aspire to a safe, secure, and typical upper-middle class existence.
Now I won’t get into it again, but we all know how this story goes from here – sudden, panicked feeling that life is meaningless, loathing of safe, secure job, and loathing of the “path.” Then the fear of taking a risk, then the risk taking…and here I am today – happily self-employed looking back at my old life with a curiosity as to how I dealt with it for so long.
This pattern – denial, awareness, fear of risk, taking risk, result – is common among those naturally cautious people out there, and to be honest that is probably everyone reading this. I have a theory that Uncommoners in general are naturally cautious people, because let’s be honest – if you were a natural risk taker you would just leap off the path without support, or you never would have been on the “path” to start with. So for us as a group, risk taking is somewhat of a challenge.
In The Four-Hour Work Week, Tim Ferriss notes that “Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.” While I disagree with some of his foundational principles, this point I fully endorse. I know because for a long time, even after I identified that I hated my job, I stayed there unhappily because the fear of the unknown was simply too scary.
And risk taking can be scary if you do it incorrectly. If you jump in, feet first impulsively then risk taking is, well…risky. However, if you take a risk after weighing the potential outcomes, educating yourself, and preparing appropriately, then the whole experience shifts to place where the odds are more in your favor.
This is the art of risk taking. It can be applied to everything from trying a new perfume to changing your career. Let’s take a look at the three key factors in more depth.
Potential Outcomes
Visualizing the potential outcomes of your risk is a key first step to see if it is going to be worth it. My father calls this tactic “running the event out in your mind.” It requires you to think about the various consequences – good and bad – of your risk and projecting domino consequences out a series of months or years.
For example, you want to quit your job and start a small business. There are several possible outcomes, the first of which is that your business might not work out. The domino results? You lose your investment on the business, are out of a job, and your ego gets deflated. This is the worst case scenario.
The next possible outcome is that your business will do pretty well. The domino results? A solid return on your investment, you get to be your own boss, and earn a nice income that allows you to maintain your current lifestyle and call yourself a business owner.
Another possible outcome is that your small business takes off, you open more branches, and turn into a mid-sized business owner. More money, more options, greater success, etc. Obviously, this is the best case scenario.
Now I understand that these three descriptions are incredibly simplistic, but they are meant to be an outline for how to run out consequences. Two pieces of advice: keep it real and keep perspective. When imagining the best and worst cases in particular, don’t let your imagination run away with you – in either a negative or positive direction. So that means when thinking about the worst case scenario, don’t turn into a pessimist, and when thinking about the positives, don’t get grandiose.
And also be sure to keep things in perspective – after you go over the worst case scenario, be sure to ask yourself “So what?” Most of the things we consider worse case scenarios aren’t actually as bad as we think!
Educate Yourself
After you’ve run the potential outcomes out in your mind, it is important to educate yourself as much as possible on the particular risk you are taking. For example, if you are investing a start-up company (a potentially risky proposition), it is important for your to make sure you understand the market the company is emerging into, cost-benefit ratios, and the trends of the market at large before you can decide if the investment has a chance of being a good move. If you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, you’ve just increased the potential for failure exponentially.
Prepare Appropriately
Making sure you are prepared for the various outcomes of the risk is the third and final key element to the art of risk taking. This means creating as much as a buffer for yourself as possible should things go to the worst case scenario.
When I had finally committed to take the risk of leaving the security of the corporate world to become self-employed, I began to prepare myself for the transition as best I could. Worst case scenario would be that I wouldn’t make any money freelancing, I wouldn’t be able to pay my bills, would sink into debt and be eventually evicted from my apartment with a wasted credit score and my tail between my legs. To prepare for this sad chain of events I started to save and create a transition fund that covered at least six months expenses. And then I saved some more.
The result? When I walked out of that corporate office for the last time on this big adventure, the risk I was taking – that most people around me thought was so brave and scary – didn’t seem like a risk at all. It seemed like an adventure with endless potential.
Let Go
After you’ve weighed the outcomes, educated yourself, and prepared appropraitely, there is nothing left to do but let go. You’ve done your part, you’ve done as well as you could to make the right choice, and the rest, well the rest is in the hands of the universe.
These three steps really define the art of risk taking by focusing on one thing – minimizing the element of the unknown. Uncertainty, as Tim Ferriss, Benjamin Disraeli, and Marissa Mayer all point out, is what makes risks unappealing and intimidates us to shy away from them. Jumping in without knowing what is going to happen to you is a really scary – and truly stupid – thing.
But informed risks are actions we can take to help get what we want and control our lives. Ironic that letting go is a way to gain control? Maybe. But just like the study says, people who dare to take the risks are happier and more satisfied.
Just like The Hours sang in their song “Icarus”:
If you don’t shoot, then you don’t score, that I know for sure, that I know for sure…
