Everyone romanticizes about taking the big risk. Pack up shop, sell the house and move to Europe and start the life of your dreams! I definitely have found myself falling into that category more and more over the last several years. Don’t like your job? Just quit! When reality sets it, rarely is it that simple and also very easy for others to tell YOU to take the risk, but it’s not their life at stake if the risk doesn’t pay off.

Timing Plays a Key Role in Risk Taking

When taking risks, timing is everything. When you are young, you tend to have less responsibilities than when you are older. It’s easier to take the risk to move to another country when you are fresh out of college, aren’t married, don’t have kids to look after, and haven’t poured half of your life into another career. Someone like myself, in their 40’s may still find this idea super appealing, but there are a lot more kinks to work out to make it pay off.

So is the moral of the story to take bigger risks when you are young and just settle with what you have when you are older? Absolutely not, but a more measured approach to risk, just like when managing a financial portfolio, may be appropriate the older you get.

Circumstances Matter When Taking Risk

Sometimes, circumstances dictate how big of a risk you need to take and it becomes easier to jump. Earlier this year, there was a bigger chance that I would lose my job with the federal government after putting in 16 years. When staring zero income right in the face, it was much easier to start to entertain making a career jump. 

Now that the threat to my job has somewhat subsided, that same risk comes with different circumstances. Now to make a career switch, I have to give up a stable income, benefits and retirement plan, uproot my family and find a new school for my son. Easier to do when the latter is not an option, much harder to do when you need to pick between the two.

The funny thing is, the potential upside to risk did not change at all. Both circumstances could lead to a better life by taking the risk. The problem is the perceived floor seems incredibly low in the second scenario and not worth the potential upside.

Not All Risks Are All or Nothing

While we tend to think the most about the big risk, the fact is that there are smaller risks that we have to consider every day. If you are an introvert, joining a book club maybe something you really want to do but haven’t mustered up the courage to join the one that you could absolutely fit into your schedule once a month but are using that as an excuse not to.

Maybe you are thinking about taking a class to add a skill to your toolbox that could lead you to the next promotion, but the short term cost of it is holding you back. Could it be that you are putting off a conversation you have been meaning to have with a loved one because it’s been a long time and you are afraid of the reaction?

Risks come in all shapes and sizes and not all of them require giving up everything you have to take them on.

RELATED ARTICLE: Getting Off the Fence: How to Actually Start Doing What You Have Wanted for so Long

Take on Small Risks to Pull You Towards Who You Want to Be

I’m going to go back to James Clear here in Atomic Habits, (yes, again!). In the book, he talks about doing small acts in the short term as a way to change your identity in the long run. He calls it “voting for what you want to be,” and each time you do something that pulls you towards the identity you want to have, it’s a vote for yourself. 

If you want to be a writer, each article you post is a vote for being able to call yourself a writer. If you want to be an athlete, every time you practice your sport you are voting for yourself being an athlete.

Taking on these small risks every day carry on much less downside than taking on the bigger risk, but they can also lead you to a position over time that makes taking the bigger risk easier.

My Personal Risk Case Study

Let’s define my long term dream as wanting to live and work in Europe with an emphasis on either the UK or Italy. I choose these because I have spent the most time there, have family connections in Italy and above all, these are places that make me feel happy every time I visit. I am defining the ultimate dream of what I want my life to be.

Packing up and moving there without job prospects, without a school for my son, without anything really in place is pretty unlikely from where I stand today. However, there are things I can do right now to help make that giant risk more manageable.

Breaking Down My Personal Risks In This Situation

First thing I can and am doing is learning the Italian language. So what are some small risks I can take to move forward with that. First I bought language learning software. Great but it can only take you so far. If I am truly going to be fluent in Italian I need to be speaking with native speakers often. 

One smaller risk I could take is to speak more with my family connections. The risk there is maybe they don’t have the time or want to and maybe I may sound like an idiot in front of them. It’s a small risk but it’s holding me back. Maybe I can pay for online lessons with a native speaker on Babel. Also a possibility but the bottom line is if I don’t take a smaller risk now, the bigger risk of actually moving there will never happen.

Next, if I am going to move before retirement, I need job prospects. Randomly applying to jobs doesn’t seem to be working for anyone these days so I need to build a network. Using Linked In, finding people who work in my field in these countries and starting a conversation is a small risk I can take to start to understand what I need to make it happen.

Looking up school situations or what it takes to apply for citizenship or what the financials are are more mini steps that I can do to get there. Then, if an opportunity really does present itself that may work, all that work is already done and the bigger risk is MUCH easier to take. 

Apply this Risk Formula to Your Own Personal Dreams

There is risk involved in everything we do and we never have all of the information. Annie Duke, a former professional poker player, outlines this well in her book, “Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decision When You Don’t Have All The Facts.” The key is to build a system that will help you break down these decisions and evaluate risk to determine the most likely and worst case scenarios to any situation. This in turn allows you to more easily push towards the best case scenario, which is where our dreams reside.

My challenge for you this week is to define smaller risks that you can take in your life right now, this week, to push you towards an identity or a bigger dream that you would like to have moving forward. Take one of these risks right now, put yourself out there and you will likely see that the advantages far outweigh your perceived consequences.

Happy risk taking!

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