Taking Risks

In her article "Giving Ourselves Permission to Take Risks," which is included in the new Exchange Essential: Promoting Creativity in Adults, Elizabeth Jones explains why it is "safer to take risks than to run away from them":

"Courage, as we’ve learned from the Cowardly Lion, is a virtue that is hard to sustain.  New experiences are often scary; we don’t know what will happen next or what we should do.  Yet all new learning involves risk.  The challenge is to think — to pay attention, to calculate, to invent new ideas, to discuss (and often argue) our ideas with our friends and our mentors, to act, to reflect on what happened — and to try again.  We learn by doing — and by thinking about the past and the future.

"It is safer to practice risk-taking than to run away.  With children, adults are there to set outer limits, but not to stop their investigation of the world.  Skilled adults scaffold for children, ‘spotting’ their action as a coach does.  Fearful adults forbid action, risking any of these less than desirable consequences: ­Permanent fear, self-doubt, and cowering obedience; or rebellion, plotting ways to do it on the sly.  (All of us break those rules we believe to be unfair and unreasonable; with practice, we can become skillful at not getting caught, and enjoy the rush that accompanies sneaking.)   

"Risk is inevitable; it’s a requirement for survival.  The challenge is to name it, practice it, enjoy the rush of mastery, and bear the pain when pain is the outcome.

"A child who climbs may fall.  But a child who never climbs is at much greater risk.  Fall surfaces under climbers aren't there to prevent falls, only to make them less hard. And hugging doesn’t make the pain go away, but it does make it more bearable.  Reading this, what have you been thinking?  Are these good ideas?  Dreadful ideas? [Or shocking ideas?]  Try one of them on a colleague.  Do you agree with each other?  Disagreeing is how we keep learning."

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