life
FEELING GREAT
involve the possibility of losing or
ending a relationship.”
Why take chances?
Women are less likely than men to
engage in risky behavior. For example,
we’re less likely to drive too fast—and
as a result we have lower insurance
rates. Playing it safe can be a good
thing sometimes, for sure. But taking
some risks—particularly those scary
emotional ones—can be a critical factor in living a happy, fulfilled life. Go out
on a limb, and you could get that
degree you’ve always wanted, learn to
speak in public without fear or make a
new friend in your neighborhood. And
the benefits of taking risks can go
beyond such specifics.
“People who take more risks tend to
learn more and experience more personal growth,” says Juli Ann Reynolds,
president and CEO of the Tom Peters
Company, who recently directed a
national study on women and leadership. She found that risk-taking helps
people think big and that women who
push their comfort zone are more likely
to end up as leaders in the workplace.
“Fear is a double-edged sword,”
says Barbara Stoker, author of Positive
Risk: How Smart Women Use Passion
to Break Through Their Fears. “On the
one side it keeps you safe, but it
usually holds you back from doing
those things that really matter.”
And as for the occasional but inevitable failure that accompanies risk?
That’s a good thing, too. You discover
that you can survive it, learn something
from it and often go on to succeed,
Stoker says. “Self-confidence and
resilience, that’s the invisible reward.”
Don’t let your fears
hold you back
Getting over your fears
What if you’re the slow-wader type—
the girl at the beach who puts her toes
in first then very slowly ventures in up to
her knees but goes no further? If you’ve
spent your whole life bowing to fear and
avoiding risk, can you break the habit?
Absolutely. The first step is to
change your perspective and realize
that playing it safe is also a risk. “If you
are bored with your job and you find
out about a new position and you don’t
do anything, you’ll lose out on that
opportunity,” says Stoker. Not taking
any chances is as much a decision as
taking that first step toward change.
Once you redefine risk in this way—
as a positive life philosophy—you
can begin to embrace it as a chance
to move forward, to grow and learn, to
achieve a goal or ambition.
That doesn’t mean you have to leap
blindly. Intelligent risk-taking starts
with research. First on your agenda?
Learn as much as possible about
whatever it is you’re afraid of.
“Knowledge always trumps fear,”
says Melinda Blanchard, author, with
her husband, Bob, of Changing Your
Course: The 5-Step Guide to Getting
the Life You Want. Blanchard has
taken many risks herself. She and her
husband started a business right out of
college with $8,000 and no experience, and then, years later, she
chucked her relatively stable life in
Vermont and opened a restaurant on
the Caribbean island of Anguilla.
“People use all kinds of excuses for
not making change, and most people
say that fear and lack of money are their
biggest obstacles,” Blanchard says.
“But it is lack of information that usually
LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL
MAY 09
