What If Staying Safe Is the Real Risk?

Last week I listened to an episode of The Diary Of A CEO podcast where Steven Bartlett was speaking with Alex Honnold, who recently free solo climbed Taipei 101.

From the outside, most of us would look at that and think that Alex takes reckless, extreme, unnecessary risks.

Alex challenged that idea. He said he does not see himself as taking greater risks than everyone else, he simply takes conscious and intentional risks. They are calculated, prepared and trained for; the exposure is real, yet it is chosen. His point was that everyone takes risks in their lives, the difference is that most people do not even realise they are taking them.

We are all taking risks every single day, we just do not label them that way.

We take risks with our health when we fuel ourselves with food that depletes rather than nourishes. We take risks when we drive tired or after a couple of drinks. We take risks when we stay in patterns that keep us constantly limiting ourselves and our experience, convincing ourselves that this is simply who we are.

Some risks are visible and dramatic, others are quiet and socially acceptable, and it is often the quiet ones that shape the entire direction of a life.

The greatest risk I see is drifting through a life governed by unexamined stories, allowing beliefs formed years ago to dictate what feels possible now, repeating the same emotional and behavioural loops because they feel familiar.

We can spend years living inside sentences such as “that’s just how I am,” “people like me don’t do that,” or “it’s too late.” Those sentences feel safe because they reduce uncertainty, yet they also quietly reduce our world.

A part of you may be worrying about making the wrong decision, about getting it wrong, about being judged, and so the safer option appears to be not trying at all. Yet that, too, is a risk. It is a risk to assume that the fear you feel is a reliable predictor of what will happen. It is a risk to believe every catastrophic story that runs through your mind. It is a risk to let protective parts steer your life without ever getting curious about what they are protecting you from.

Most of what we fear never actually unfolds in the way our mind imagines, but the cost of living as if it will is very real. When fear goes unquestioned, it narrows our choices, shrinks our self-concept and quietly edits down our one wild and precious life.

Mary Oliver asks, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Not in a dramatic, burn-it-all-down way, but in an honest and grounded one. If you continue exactly as you are, with the same beliefs, the same self-imposed ceilings, the same internal narratives about what is realistic, where does that path lead?

Are you willing to take the risk of reaching the end of your life and realising you were busy protecting yourself from it?

A gentle invitation to explore…

Over the next few days, notice a story you regularly tell yourself about what is possible for you.

Instead of asking whether it is true, you might ask, what is the risk of continuing to believe this?

Let that question bring curiosity to the parts of you that are trying to keep you safe.

You only get this one life in this form. It is worth becoming conscious of the risks you are taking with it.