You know those situations when something feels important to you but you keep stopping yourself at the last moment?
In particular, stopping yourself because it feels risky and that makes you unsure.
It could be asking someone out on a date, applying to a job you’re underqualified for, or even something like starting a blog.
These are the kind of things we keep putting off because we’re not sure if we want to take the risk.
On the surface this seems reasonable:
By not doing the thing, we avoid the risk. Phew… Disaster avoided! Right?
Well, not exactly… or at least, not always.
Taking a risk is what we do when there is a potential negative outcome we find worth the cost of the potential positive.
For example, if you quit your day job to go all in on building a business without having savings, you are risking many negative financial consequences. That risk is the cost you are willing to pay for the potential positive.
Those negative consequences may or may not happen. And if they do, they may happen temporarily (part of the process), or definitively (they happen and your business didn’t go anywhere). But it’s a risk.
By choosing the business over employment, you take the risk.
However, if you compare this to a situation like “should I show my romantic interest?” there actually is no risk.
Here are the 4 possible outcomes:
A) You show them. They are interested in you, too. You smooch and maybe make some babies. (Or at least get to some stage in the baby-manyfacturing process…depends if you want to take the risks that come with the final stages!)
B) You don’t show them. You keep having whatever relationship you have now, but it’s not real. It’s based on a lie of omission. They live and behave as if they are something else to you, and can’t navigate your interaction based on truth.
C) You show them. The feelings aren’t mutual. Your relationship continues and the way you treat each other honors that information, making it better for both.
D) You show them. The feelings aren’t mutual. One of you can’t handle that fact, so from now on it gets super awkward.
None of these are really risks in observable reality:
Option A and C are positive outcomes.
Option B may sound bad because I used words like “lie” which tend to have negative connotations for most people—especially if you’re into the work I do. But it’s not necessarily bad. It’s just a continuation of what you have.
There are even examples in which B is best: If you are romantically interested in your employee, outcome B is usually optimal, because of the power dynamics potentially pressuring the other person to respond a certain way.
Option D can seem like a risk (losing the relationship) but it’s not. Because it would reveal to you the true nature of the relationship you are already having: That one of you is not okay with how you truly feel about each other.
In other words: absent of dodgy legal, political or power dynamics, there is no real risk in this situation.
There are simply outcomes you like and don’t like.
So speaking of “taking the risk” isn’t accurate here. You’re “taking the chance”. You’re betting on a positive outcome with little to lose.
Taking a risk entails putting real things on the line. Like betting your kid’s college fund in poker and hoping it wins you enough to get your other 5 kids through college (don’t do this btw).
Taking a chance entails making a move and hoping it leads to something good, even if it might not. Like getting a lotery ticket from your grandma for Christmas and saying “You know what? I’ll play. The worst that can happen is not winning.”
(Ok yes, technically this can start the sequence of events that leads you to betting your kid’s college fund away in poker. Should’ve probably ran with a different example here. But anyway, the ink’s hit the paper now! No way to correct it, you’ll have to go with this one.)
The difference is clear: It’s only a risk if bad things could happen as a direct result.
If not? That’s a chance you’re taking.
So why does it feel like a risk?
Why do we say “I’m not going to email that company to apply for the job, I don’t have the qualifications.” when there is zero clear downside?
Because we’re worried about how it will make us feel.
That’s it.
If you can build the resilience to relate to those outcomes without them shaking your sense of dignity, it will become clear that the risk isn’t real.
Next time you find yourself afraid to take action because you care a lot about the outcome of some situation, realize that the fact that you care so much, is a sign that the positive outcome you’re shooting for is something that is genuinely calling you
Can you tune into that?
Can you feel that you are where you are now, and you’re taking a chance of going there?
That unless there’s a real risk, that’s all there is?
That all that’s needed to see the difference between a chance and a risk is learning to care about the positive outcome without clinging to it?