The Safety in Risk-Taking

Do you take risks? If you do, which ones are you most likely to take? Which come easiest, which are most difficult? Do you take risks willingly, anxiously or a little of both?

Are there risks you routinely ignore or refuse to take despite their promise of a positive outcome or more, a big payoff? What would you consider to be the greatest risk(s) you take and why? But perhaps more importantly, which risks do you consider worth taking including those that warrant courageously entering the "lion's den?" Or from a different angle, which goals, rewards or achievements motivate or drive you to take risks?

I Risk Therefore I Am

A careful, under-the-microscope, self-examination of our day-to-day habits and routines can reveal the exact nature and extent of the risks we normally take or don’t take and the consequential aftereffects of either decision. Ideally, this probing self-assessment ought to be keenly focused upon the risks we fail to take but perhaps should take because of what they promise us.

Rather than merely glimpsing, we ought to instead thoroughly inspect ourselves for our willingness to take a range of risks—our risk tolerance. And for a good reason, the aftereffects of risk-taking or risk avoidance can be hugely consequential to who we are. Therefore, when taken, they ought to be well-calculated and only then gambled upon as part of becoming more completely who we are, regardless of the situation or the anticipated outcome.

Calculated Risk-Taking, the Lifeblood of Close Relating

Take a look at three examples of well-calculated, well-gambled risks:

1. Jason bursts into his wife’s office with a dozen red roses on Valentine’s Day and loudly proclaims in front of everyone, “I love you, Rosa!"
2. Despite her partner’s recent job loss, Brittany very nervously announces, “I’m pregnant."
3. Heartbroken by her husband’s affair, Laura searches her soul, struggles and then proposes, “I’m devasted but I’m willing to work it out if you’ll join me in marriage counseling."

These are examples of well-managed risks. In each case, the risk-taker willingly exposes their deepest, most vulnerable needs and feelings and does so in the face of an uncertain outcome while still hoping to achieve a personally valuable payoff or goal.

Of course, the "warning signs" or fears intrinsic to taking any self-exposing risk are the real possibilities for embarrassment, rejection, scorn or simple indifference. Fear of one or more of these negative possibilities can erect a formidably thick, even seemingly impenetrable, wall of psychological resistance that can sputter, stall or completely put the brakes on our risk-taking efforts.

Characterological Barbells

However, overcoming these fear-based resistances confers the bigger part of the personal growth value of our risk-taking just as lifting a heavy barbell tones our muscles. Specifically, wise risk-takers merit the enriching fulfillments of increased self and other respect whether or not their risks bring about the results they hope to get. In this sense, the potential payoffs of well-calculated risks make them more worth taking than not.

Therefore, when risk-taking is cognitively framed in a fail-safe, can't-lose manner, then even under circumstances where the risk-taker's efforts fail to produce their desired outcome, the mere act of taking the risk can bring a positive maturational upsurge. There's a quick but significant boost in self-esteem for having vanquished the fears of stepping out of character or exiting one's comfort zone.

An Indispensable Tool for Close Relationships

As illustrated in the examples, I find, as do most, that very often taking the risks inherent within the rigorous context of the intimate relationship can be the most complicated, difficult and challenging. Certainly, the same thorny complications apply to the majority of the conflicted, frustrated, and hurt, but brave souls who present to couple’s therapy.

I'm confident that calculated risk-taking is an indispensable tool for achieving the highest quality of intimate connection with our partners, despite the fact it comes tightly wrapped in fear and apprehension. Without it, intimacy is a pale, diluted version of what it ideally could be. To be clear, by calculated risk-taking, I’m referring to the risks we take when we effectively represent our most personal needs—and more challengingly still—the deepest feelings that encompass them.

Sensation-Seeking Essential Reads

Adults Can Be Cyberbullies, Too, and Here’s Why

Cocaine Increases Risky Behaviors, Depending on Your Age

Intimacy First With Our Self, Second With Our Partner

This learnable willingness to purposely ferret out and express our deepest needs and feelings achieves a precursory first step, an “intimacy" within ourselves that often welcomes a door-opening, second step by which our partners are gently encouraged to do the same. Now, they too can feel safely nudged to search out and express commensurately deep needs and feelings of their own.

Thus, we can extend to our partners, even without being explicit about it, an open invitation, one that strongly hints at a warmly permitting and safe conversational atmosphere in which we enjoy a meaningful emotional connection that nourishes our partnership.

Short of this initial risky, vulnerable feeling connection within ourselves, the highest quality of connection with our partners may not always be achievable. In effect, the intimacy we attain within ourselves, coupled with the will to express it, can be a powerful inducement whereby our partners act similarly. Once achieved, these highly prized moments almost guarantee a spike in intimacy.

The Safety of Being True to Ourselves

In Hamlet, one of Shakespeare's lead characters, Polonius, stated, "To thine own self be true." According to scholars, the word "self," as used here, refers to one's own unique identity which to be fully made known would arguably require some amount of risk-taking. In simple, practical terms, being "true" to ourselves could easily be defined as identifying, legitimizing and actively representing our personal needs and feelings especially under threatening circumstances.

To the degree we retreat from tackling the risks of effectively representing the full range of our unique personal needs and feelings, we forfeit our identity to our fears and thus risk suffering the very unsafe loss of the self. Conversely, calculated risk-taking opens a self-disclosing panorama of who we are, it thoroughly defines us in our uniqueness and vulnerability. Further, it makes us more knowable, trustable and loveable. And herein lies our greatest safety.