PIO

INTRODUCTION

Do you sometimes wish that your life was more exciting and challenging? Yet when such opportunities arise you decide not to grab them because the risk of your decision backfiring is, in your mind, too horrible to contemplate. Therefore, your watchword is ‘better safe than sorry’ but your yearnings do not disappear: a continual tension exists between being cautious and wishing to take chances. A risk-averse outlook keeps you disgruntled as you accumulate a lifetime of ‘if only…’ regrets (e.g. ‘If only I had asked her out when I had the chance but I lost my nerve’; ‘If only I had gone on that training course, I could have been higher up the company ladder by now. I didn’t want to take the risk of failing the course’). In an echo of Socrates‘ famous remark that an unexamined life is not worth living, Hauck states that ‘the life that has no risk in it is not worth living’ (1982b: 57).

We view risk-taking as a sign of psychological health because you want to pursue ambitious goals, are not afraid of setbacks and failures, and want to make your life less self-restricting and more adventurous. However, it is important to stress that we are not advocating that risk-taking per se is always good for you, but that each risk you take is carefully considered, not recklessly engaged in (e.g. you drive your car very fast to impress your partner with your ‘coolness at the wheel’; she is terrified, says she could have been killed and immediately dumps you). In this chapter, we will examine why you might see risk-taking as something to be avoided or minimized and decision-making as difficult (even though you take risks and make decisions [e.g. motorway driving] every day of your life and these do not present obvious problems for you).

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‘I CAN’T TAKE THE RISK’

Risk refers to the chance or possibility of an undesirable outcome occurring. The probability of such an outcome ‘ranges from practically zero to practically 100 percent’ (Wessler and Wessler, 1980:136). The more feared the outcome, the more probable it is in your mind that it will occur. When you say you cannot take the risk, what you usually mean is: ‘I can take the risk but I choose not to’ and you ‘choose not to’ because you believe you will not be able to cope with the consequences of, for example, being rejected or failing. Failure and rejection are probably the two main reasons why people avoid taking risks. Simon would not take the risk of asking Mandy out because she might say ‘no’ and he believed he would be devastated by her decision. Maxine wanted to leave the NHS and set up in private practice as a therapist but could not accept the risk of ‘leaving the nest’ and crashing to earth as a failure.

Both Simon and Maxine made the mistake of seeing risk as one-sided (i.e. that the feared calamity would occur) rather than also allowing for the possibility that their desires might be fulfilled; in other words, they assumed their negative predictions were accurate. Also, they saw risk as an outcome fixed in aspic (e.g. forever crushed by rejection; a lifelong failure) rather than as a continuous process of change, adaptation and learning. As Dryden and Gordon observe:

Life is neither Utopia nor misery because life isn’t static. We cannot halt the flow of change. Change is the only continuity you will ever experience so long as you are alive. But the great plus point is that change brings with it the continuing opportunity to modify and shape change. And through accepting that we are both the products and agents of change in an uncertain world, we are offered the possibility of achieving real personal growth. (1993a: 40–41)

Achieving real personal growth can start with you learning to take the ‘horror’ (emotional disturbance) out of risk-taking: if you think, for example, that rejection or making a mistake is the ultimate horror, how would you evaluate becoming paralysed from the waist down or being horribly disfigured in a fire? If you saw rejection as no more than an inconvenience, you could keep asking

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women out, accepting rejection and persisting until you got a ‘yes’. Of course, you may fear a positive outcome (e.g.

receiving a ‘yes’ means putting in a lot of effort to sustain the relationship; getting the promotion means having to prove to the company that you are worthy of their choice) because you are usually looking beyond the positive outcome to see subsequent failure (e.g. being demoted).

If you do not take risks, then you will have little chance of overcoming your fears or the dull routine of daily life. Risk-taking means that you will have some chance of success on some occasions while avoiding risk means hardly any chance at all of success unless it falls into your lap. In our coaching sessions we encourage people to carry out risk-taking exercises (Neenan and Dryden, 2000; Wessler and Wessler, 1980). These exercises involve people facing their fears and re-evaluating the outcome (e.g. bearable rather than unbearable; unpleasant but not catastrophic). As Walen et al. point out:

People learn by experience: if they have never experienced failure, they will be unlikely to change their IB’s [irrational beliefs] about it and their avoidance of it. Thus, it is difficult to work on the fear of an aversive event unless the client actually experiences it. (1992:265)

Frank described himself as a perfectionist. He dreaded making mistakes in those areas of his life where he believed his credibility was at stake such as public speaking (‘If I don’t perform perfectly, then people will see me as a phoney’). I (MN) asked him what would happen if he said ‘I don’t know’ to a question he actually knew the answer to:

FRANK: Why would I do something stupid like that?

MICHAEL: To test out your catastrophic prediction that you would be seen as a phoney.

FRANK: Yes, I can see that but I do feel so strongly that it would be the case.

MICHAEL: Your feelings are not facts: you feel it would be the case therefore you assume it’s true. What you need to do, if you agree, is to gather accurate information about the outcome and that can only be achieved by taking the risk.

What benefits might you gain from this exercise?

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FRANK: (sighs) I know logically that not being able to answer a question or two is not going to make me a phoney—I don’t know anyone who knows their subject one hundred per cent—and I suppose I need to prove this to myself, don’t I? The pressure I put myself under is often intolerable.

MICHAEL: In what way?

FRANK: Well, I really drive myself incredibly hard to prepare for these presentations, not to mention how irritable I become with everyone; after the presentation, I’m completely drained and I take several days to recover. So easing the pressure would be another benefit.

MICHAEL: But at the moment these benefits are theoretical because …?

FRANK: …because I haven’t done it yet. (long pause, then sighs) I’ll reluctantly give it a go then.

When Frank made the momentous confession ‘I don’t know’, there were no shock waves from the audience; instead the question was answered for him by someone in the audience (‘He actually made a good point which I would have overlooked’). Evaluations of his presentation were hardly different from previous ones. Frank eventually learnt to be relaxed, but not complacent, about making mistakes while maintaining high (but no longer unrealistically high) standards and that to be revealed as a phoney would have to mean something much more serious than the failure to answer a question (‘If someone in the audience had thought I was a phoney because I couldn’t answer a question, then he or she has probably got the same attitudes I used to have,’ he said at our last session).

Frank was an example of the stress pattern of perfectionism: people ‘who desperately demand success but who put so much pressure on themselves for ideal performances that they worry themselves sick as they prepare to act and then experience extreme anxiety while performing’ (Bernard, 1986:206). A second pattern associated with perfectionism is

‘giving up’, i.e. if you cannot do something perfectly, then you avoid doing it; in this way, by not risking failure, you protect your self-esteem (Bernard, 1986). Instead of aiming high to achieve your cherished goals, you aim low and settle for second best and safety. You may rationalize to your friends and colleagues why you are wasting your talents (e.g. ‘I’ve seen so many people achieve great success and then burn out. I’m not going to put myself through that’).

However, the relief

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from not taking risks and incurring possible failure is usually out-weighed in the longer term by the painful and enduring disappointment of unfulfilled promise.

‘I’M NOT CONFIDENT ENOUGH TO TRY IT’

Does confidence come before or after carrying out a difficult activity? You might reply that the logical answer is ‘after’.

Yet when you are faced with a difficult or uncomfortable task, you may illogically believe that you should feel confident before undertaking it and as the feeling remains elusive, you avoid doing the task (were you confident about taking your first driving lesson; if the answer is probably ‘no’, why did you persist with it?) Avoidance does not develop confidence.

In order to feel confident eventually, you need to start off feeling unconfident as you attempt the activity (e.g. learning to dance), acknowledge and analyse your mistakes (e.g. mis-steps), put your new learning into practice, further analysis and practice…and so on until you develop performance confidence. In other words, do not put the cart before the horse.