September’s (slightly delayed) Full Moon blog is about taking risks. Why they’re so good for us. And yet why we’re so resistant to them.
In the corporate sector, risk management is big business. In the social care sector, being ‘at risk’ sets alarm bells ringing and multiple agency involvement. In domestic spaces everywhere, teenagers in the eyes of many of the adults around them push the boundaries of what is risky behaviour. It’s a rite of passage, which we all remember. Don’t we?
Where did that teenager with the safety pins and bleached blond hair go? How did that six-year-old responding to her art teacher’s comment that ‘nobody knows what God looks like’ with a nonchalant ‘they will in a minute,’ become so afraid of risk.
She learnt it. We’re taught to fear failure and therefore one of the easiest ways to avoid it is to never take a risk, let alone embrace that fearful beast. Fear of failure is part of our socialisation.
As we move through adulthood we gather around us a host of actions and behaviours we perceive as risky. They are entirely individual. One person’s risk is another’s ease of being. The risk may be physical; skydiving or learning to swim (because we never did as a kid). They may be emotional, telling someone we love them before they tell us. They may be professional, quitting a secure job to establish a social enterprise; or personal, moving to a new town where you know nobody.
Whatever the action, if it’s a risk, it’s the place of uncertainty. It’s the place of vulnerability, of not knowing, yet. A place where you might fail, but what you gain will take you beyond uncertainty.
Risk taking is part of the way I work with clients and part of what I ask of my clients.
In a coaching relationship I have worked with clients where they’ve lost sight of their ability to protect themselves, to manoeuvre around the obstacles thrown in their way. Their resilience is paper thin. In working together, recovering tools and discovering new approaches, a question mark often appears.
What are the boundaries of their comfort zone? What do they find difficult to do, or even think about? What is their ‘risky’?
Ask yourself the same question?
What are the boundaries of my comfort zone? What do I find difficult to do, or even to think about? What is my ‘risky’?
However, you’re not going to rush headlong into ‘risky’. You’re going to break it down into manageable steps. You might have to repeat the same step several times.
First you step onto the road where you are comfortable. When you’re ready you walk to the boundary of your comfort, and once there you look over into uncomfortable, to the full risk. When you’re ready, you step over that boundary. What you’ve just done is take a risk.
What you do next is entirely up to you. The more risks you take the more agile you become at fielding the challenges both at work and at play. You protect yourself without denying the hurt, or growing the hide of a rhinoceros.
So, that’s part of what I ask of my clients. They name their ‘risky’ and work to embrace it. There’s more, I build risk into the fabric of how clients explore new skills and re-engaged with those they already have. How do I do this?
Simple. I ask people to play. To play with images, to play with words, to play with movement and to play with voice. You may say you’re not creative, you haven’t an artistic bone in your body. Rubbish. No small child says, ‘I can’t’ when it comes to play. They take risks every day, and all the time.
When did you stop? And what’s stopping you starting again? We learnt to be risk averse, we can re-learn to be risk takers. And here’s where you can start.
Create your own acrostic poem. In an acrostic poem, the first letter of each line spells a word. The word is the subject of the poem.
R
I
S
K
And once you’re done. Share it with someone you love, someone respect, someone you don’t know, whichever carries the greatest risk for you.
Risk take today. Don’t delay.
The Risk of Kissing Temptation
La Caminate
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