risky business

A few weeks ago I decided to participate in a Risk Challenge. For ten days Live in the Grey would give me a risk to take, and I would bravely take on whatever they threw at me. I had no idea what to expect.

Live in the Grey is a resource dedicated to helping you combine what you do with what you love. Their philosophy is that career and passion should not be separate. They should overlap – that’s the grey part – and the best life is one where your work is your passion and your passion is your work. Fear of risk can hold you back, but it’s taking risks that makes life remarkable. And full disclosure, I think I might be a little older than their target demographic.

But I decided to ignore that little detail, because I couldn’t agree more with their point of view, it seemed like a good way to shake up January which tends to be a long, relentless month, and the Risk Challenge was free which made it somewhat counterintuitively low-risk.

For the past year, I’ve been committed to pushing myself out of my comfort zone not only to try new things but to really approach the world from a place of mindfulness and fearlessness. But I was getting a little too comfortable. It was time to inch myself a little closer to the edge.

Here are a few of the highlights:

Try a New Food: With my assignment in hand, I dragged my kids to the grocery store. But the risk could have easily been Take your kids to the grocery store – a task containing its own amount of risk. As we looked for something I’d never eaten, the kids kept pointing out things like jars of chicken gravy. Yep. Produce was the way to go. We picked out an orange spiky fruit known as a Kiwano or horned melon. We cracked it open and all tried it. It was amazing to look at but kind of a tasteless gelatinous mess. At bedtime my youngest could not stop thinking about the slimy feeling on his tongue. I told him I was proud of the risk he had taken as he writhed around whining soooo slimy…..Super.

Thank Someone: On this day, my only plans to leave the house were to go to a yoga class (I’m a SAHM who writes on the side. I don’t get out much). So I incorporated the challenge into my yoga outing. I decided a thank you (with eye contact) to the instructor was just the ticket. Simple, yes, but I’m usually eyes down, out the door. As the class wrapped up, I tried to make my move but couldn’t find an un-awkward moment to approach him. I stalled so we would cross paths, but it was a botched mess. No thank you was delivered.

Take a New Route to Work: I work at home. But since I was still smarting from my Thank Someone failure, I decided mixing up my morning routine would be my own equivalent. And then it was a snow day. Not going anywhere. I was learning that even when you want to incorporate risk into your life, the logistics can elude you.

Start a Non-Work Conversation with a Colleague: I self-admittedly work in a vacuum. My writing is currently a solitary pursuit so I decided to pass on this challenge but looking back, maybe a better risk for me would be introduce myself to a potential colleague. I am going to take that on.

My Personal Risk Assessment:

I am comfortable with some risk. I’m not afraid to try new things. I tried Kiwano, a cold-fighting-at-home yoga sequence, attending an event with a new friend, and a new recipe for quinoa stew (turns out it’s as bad as it sounds). But I managed to screw up, procrastinate or opt out of the challenges that required reaching out to others.

This is not new information to me and while I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t make more progress, it’s good to know where I need to keep my focus. It’s slow going, but I am sharing more of myself and my experiences with others and that is always a risk too.

I didn’t always get it right. I didn’t nail every challenge. And for me, that is huge. This exercise wasn’t about striving for perfection and getting it right. It was about being more aware of risk and how it plays out in my day-to-day life.

Does risk make life more remarkable?

Yes, I think it does. Because you can’t move forward, make progress, or grow without risk. And I believe an essential part of a remarkable life is growth.

But what this experience reminded me is that risk is also incredibly personal. If Live in the Grey runs another risk challenge, a risk-tree or some sort of tool to help you get at the types of risks more specific to you would be helpful. What’s risky to me might be a piece of cake for someone else and vice versa. And maybe the challenges build on each other so you start with something small, and by the end you are really leaping. And possibly flying. And maybe even crashing. And then getting back up again.

That’s my favorite gut check question – what is the worst thing that can happen?

And even the worst that you can come up with usually isn’t that bad.

I wish I would have remembered that when I chickened out during this challenge. I guess I’ll just have to try again.

PS I won a free career coaching session with Caroline Zwick for participating in the challenge. Can’t wait to tell you how that goes…