The importance of risking cannot be overstated. By risking you test your strengths, discover your areas of weakness, and learn all kinds of important information whether by success or failure. Risking is how we grow. Without risk you cannot express your emotions, talents, creativity or spirituality. Neither can you form new relationships or change existing ones.
Inborn timidity, overprotective parents, and hypercritical parents are but some of challenges adults face when they consider taking a risk. Social anxiety and perfectionism are manifestations of a common risk-avoidant mindset. Many of my clients fear mistakes and failures due to fear of what they call “looking bad.” For them looking bad means being exposed as less – whether it’s less intelligent, less strong, less talented, less able, less resourceful, etc. Such worries never enter the heads of toddlers trying to stand and walk on their own. They fall an average of 17 times per day until they do it, and once they can do it, they still trip or stumble and lose their balance while consolidating the skill of walking.
Although risk-avoidant people cannot become toddlers again, they can take stock of and reassess their personal costs of avoiding risk. Although risk-avoidance has the apparent benefit of avoiding anxiety along with the pain and shame of looking bad if one tries and fails, the costs far outweigh those benefits. If you are a risk-avoider, take a piece of paper and a pen and write down all the costs. Then consider whether risk-avoidance actually prevents fear, anxiety, pain, and shame. People who employ the strategy of risk avoidance typically disparage themselves both for avoiding risk and for living lower quality lives than risk-takers.