We all have different risk quotients. For example, I can jump out of a plane with gay abandon, parachute-free, enjoy the ride down and face the dire, most likely lethal, consequences when my adventure comes to its inevitable abrupt end. Or, I can acquiesce to my fear of heights and steadfastly refuse to even get on the plane. Or, I can take sky-diving lessons from a reputable source, learn how to safely negotiate my return to earth once I’ve jumped into thin air, and joyfully let gravity take over.

The first choice is based on an acute lack of anxiety, fear and self-preservation. I could get extremely lucky and land on something that lets me walk away alive and mostly intact, but the odds are undeniably against me next time I pull this incredibly stupid stunt.

The second choice could be based on real or imagined fear or experience, but whatever the underlying reason, there’s a good chance my automatic reaction keeps me frozen, unable to do much of anything that requires a height-related activity, whether it’s viewing sunrise from a mountain top or using a gift certificate at the spa on the 15th floor of a skyscraper.

The third choice is what I call an intelligent, calculated risk. I’ve gathered information, assessed the potential liability and benefits, gotten needed training and partnered with a reputable, experienced organization to undertake this possibly life-threatening but definitely thrilling adventure. Sure, there’s a risk that I might land awkwardly and break a leg or my chute won’t open at all, but I’ve calculated the risk and decided it was relatively safe and a risk level I was comfortable with.

So do you know your personal risk quotient? Managing anxiety and fear is a big piece of your risk profile. Last week I blogged on the underlying biological, cognitive and learned aspects of these twin emotions. Addressing how to deal with the biological basis is not in the purview of this blog, nor within the realm of my expertise. Sound medical advice from an experienced professional is needed to address a possible chemical imbalance. By the same token, contact a health professional if you are dealing with a dehabilitating phobia, fear or anxiety that stems from past life experience. This blog assumes that you are willing and able to deal with your anxiety, fear and risk quotient.

Here are some basic tips on upping your risk quotient:

1. Make the decision to be less risk-adverse. Sounds like a simple step, but it really does start with your personal buy-in to make a change. “I’m going to fulfill my long-held dream of skydiving even though I’m afraid of heights.”
2. Make the decision to be risk-smart. Just deciding to be risk-adverse could result in your becoming risk-prone, not necessarily a good thing. Being risk-smart means you’ve done a risk anaylysis — gathered the facts, weighed the facts, assessed the upside and downside potential (applied Dr. Ben Carsen’s Best/Worst Analysis) — and then created an objective action plan. “I’ve taken lessons from a reputable skydiving school.”
3. Make a decision to face your control quotient. You can’t control all things at all times just like you can’t foretell future outcomes with absolute certainty. Yet fear of loss of control freezes too many from moving forward even after a positive risk analysis. So recognizing and understanding your control quotient is crucial to upping your risk quotient. It helps to look at how you deal with unpredictability; what has worked for you in the past and why; what hasn’t and why. And sometimes, at the end of the day, you just have to let go. “I’m going to jump out of the plane and trust that my properly prepared parachute will open, give me an exhilarating ride and then return me safely to the ground.”
4. Make a decision to face your fear. Focus on exactly what is bothering you so you can develop an action plan to deal with it. Journal if necessary to let your emotions play out and access whether they are rational or irrational. If you are feeling a general sense of anxiety, try to label it as a specific fear of something so you can then deal with it “I get an overall sense of uneasiness when I’m at an airport. Hmm, I’m afraid of heights, airplanes fly high, hence, I’m uncomfortable at airports.”

In my September newsletter, published Monday, September 1st, I will continue the theme of risk-taking. Topics to be covered will be productive risk-taking in the business world and further tools to up your personal risk quotient. Make sure you’re are signed up to received my newsletters and access the newsletter archives.

In my mid-September newsletter, published September 15th, I will cover a Christian perspective to risk-taking.

As for my next blog, meet with me on Monday, September 1st for Coaching Creativity.

Last Monday’s blog included a series of inspirational quotes on risk-taking that elicited either excitement or terror depending upon the reader’s personal risk-taking profile. Today, I’ll address two emotions that often hinder our willingness or ability to take a risk — anxiety and fear. Most of us are no strangers to this pair of emotions, but it’s helpful to work from a basic understanding of these feelings before addressing the role they play in your own risk-taking profile.

The English language is full of idioms to describe anxiety, fear and nervousness such as break out in a cold sweat, have butterflies in your stomach and nerves of steel. Anxiety is defined by the dictionary as a state of uneasiness or distress about future uncertainties, apprehension, worry; intense fear or dread lacking a specific threat. Fear is defined as a feeling of alarm or disquiet caused by the expectation of danger, pain, disaster or the like.

While they sound similar, there is a distinction between anxiety and fear. Anxiety is “a vague, unpleasant emotional state with qualities of apprehension, dread, distress and uneasiness.” It is not pegged to a specific object. Fear, while similar in feeling is different in that it is object-specific. In other words, anxiety may be felt over not knowing how to handle a difficult situation, while fear might be felt when someone puts a spider in the palm of your hand.

Anxiety and fear can be further understood from biological, cognitive and learning perspectives. In the simplest terms, the biological basis for these two emotions rests in the relationship between Gamma-Amino Butyric acid (GABA) and benzadeapines. In a nutshell, behzadeapines regulate the amount of GABA needed for sufficient neural transmission. When the biological components are imbalanced, unhealthy anxiety and fear-related disorders may develop, and professional medical advice may be needed in dealing with them.

The cognitive basis for eliciting fear or anxiety are primarily threefold: loss of control, inadequate coping responses, and personality traits. (1) Real or perceived loss of control. Feelings of helplessness and inadequacy often arise in the midst of unpredictable or uncontrollable events. (2) Inadequate coping responses. A real or perceived inability to adapt to a threatening or unsettling event. (3) An individual’s personality traits. Anxiety can be transitory tension and apprehension in response to a specific event, or it can be an “enduring, consistent behavioral characteristic” that defines someone’s response to a stressful situation.

From a learning perspective, anxiety is an acquired or conditioned drive that creates an avoidance response, a response which is reinforced by a subsequent reduction in anxiety (Mowrer, 1939) Fear is an avoidance response to pain. In repeated laboratory studies, rats learn to avoid pain by steering clear of a specific activity that cause the pain, or by participating in a specific activity that prevent pain.

“High levels of anxiety and fear can lead to impaired psychological functioning, intellectual errors, and disturb concentration and memory.” Moderate anxiety “can be used as a motivation to change oneself or adapt to the situation.” Low anxiety could place one in jeopardy due to an inadequate understanding of the situation at hand and possible outcomes.

To bring this discussion back to risk taking, your personal risk profile will be affected by a combination of your biological, cognitive and learned responses to anxiety and fear. So thrill seekers either have a very low level of anxiety and fear, or they have developed coping mechanisms that allow them to forge ahead in the face of these twin emotions. Risk adverse types have a high level of anxiety and fear, or are unable to develop coping mechanisms, and will shun feelings of anxiety and fear at all costs. Most of us will fall somewhere in the middle and our healthy approach to anxiety and fear allow us to take a leap into the unknown.

For a more in-depth discussion on the biological, cognitive and learning perspectives of anxiety and fear, go to the California State University, Northridge website from which the quotes in this blog were taken www.csun.edu/~vcpsy00h/students/fear.html.

To learn more on English idioms relating to anxiety, fear and nervousness go to www.learn-english-today.com/idioms/idioms-categories/anxiety-fear.html

Next Monday I’ll blog on upping your risk quotient.

Famous and not-so-famous people have been quoted on the value of taking a risk. For them it boils down not to choosing risk, but to choosing life.

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that made all the difference.” — Robert Frost

“The dangers of life are infinite, and among them is safety.” — Goethe

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do …men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” —Helen Keller

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” — Robert F Kennedy

“Let’s make a dent in the universe.” — Steve Jobs

“Progress always involves risk; you can’t steal second base and keep your foot on first.” — Frederick Wilcox

“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.” — T.S. Elliot

“Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one’s ideas, to take a calculated risk — and to act.” —Andre Malraux

“The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live.” – Leo Buscaglia

“Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most people don’t. They sit in front of the telly and treat life as if it goes on forever.” — Philip Andrew Adams

Next Monday I will blog on the two emotions that affect our personal risk quotient.

Last week I blogged that life is one big risk-taking adventure. You can engage in the adventure or wrap yourself up in a cocoon to emerge just in time to wrap yourself in a coffin. When stated that way, I’m a big candidate for the adventure. The question is how to manage risk as best I can. I say “as best I can” because no one has a crystal ball predicting the future. We all jump off the proverbial cliff when we take a risk. The questions we need to ask are how high is that cliff; what’s at the bottom; do I need a parachute; what’s the pay-off versus risk of jumping or not even jumping at all? The worst thing we could do is jump off blindfolded and hope for the best.

Risk seemed easier to absorb when I was younger. I didn’t have so much too lose. Or I didn’t have enough life experience to know better. Or the adrenaline rush from jumping off the risk cliff was greater than the pain felt when I hit the bottom. I don’t even think I would have classified a lot of the choices I made as risk-taking. I assumed the cars would stop at the red light and I could go safely on green. It was as simple as that. I was in love and wanted to get married; he loved me, what else was there to consider? Move 3,000 miles across country to a town where we knew no one to start a new career; why the heck not? Dye my hair red — well maybe that one was a risk.

I look at risk a little differently now. I’m not afraid to take risks but I am more likely to weigh the options before plunging off a high cliff, or even a moderate one. Let’s just say I’ve gotten a bit wiser, learned from my mistakes. Dr. Ben Carson, a world-famous brain surgeon, approaches risk with what he calls his Best/Worst Analysis or B/WA. Below are the four questions he asks himself when analysing the risk factor of a decision he’s trying to make.

1. What is the best thing that can happen if I do this?
2. What is the worst thing that can happen if I do this?
3. What is the best thing that can happen if I don’t do this?
4. What is the worst thing that can happen if I don’t do this?

He notches up his analysis a bit by taking himself out of the middle of the situation:

1. Look at things from other people’s perspectives.
2. Drop the entitlement card and don’t feel that all the rights belong to me.
3. Remove my ego from the equation.
4. Don’t let emotions get stirred up and my actions controlled by reactions to other people, my environment, etc (fear, anger, loneliness and such).

You can read more about Dr. Carson’s approach to risk by reading his book, Take the Risk, 2008, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI). Next Monday I will post inspirational quotes on risk-taking.

Risk is defined by the dictionary as the possibility of suffering harm or loss; danger; a factor, element or course involving uncertain hazard. Whoa, doesn’t sound like something I want to tangle with. Seriously, why would I want to take on something that had the potential to inflict harm, loss, danger or hazard to or in my life?

The reality is we take on risk as an every day occurrence. Have you ever sped up to make a yellow light, let alone run a red light? Have you ever bought a house with a hefty mortgage banking on the fact that you are a rising young star at your company with lots of supposed income potential ahead of you? Have you ever taken a beneficial medication that has an entire page of warnings as to the possible ill-effects of its use? Have you ever gone out on a date with a special someone not knowing if your heart will be broken down the road? Have you ever conceived a child even though you know there is a genetic disorder in your family history?

Risk has become a four-letter word in our culture, yet we are exposed to and even engage in risky adventures and relationships on a regular basis. But we don’t think of it that way. We are risk-adverse and security-obsessed. Insurance policies, warranties, Consumer Reports safety tests, back-ups to our back-ups are the order of the day. But, to quote Ben Carson in his book, Take the Risk, (2008, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI): “Anyone who refuses to test his limits, anyone unwilling to move out of her comfort zone, is destined to live life inside the envelope. (p8) Carson is an internationally acclaimed brain surgeon who gained his reputation for being willing to take on what others would call extremely risky surgeries.

The true question becomes, then, not whether we take a risk but whether it’s an appropriate risk to take. Next Monday, I will blog on Carson’s tool for analyzing risk.