essay on taking risk in life

Essay on Taking Risks In Life

Students are often asked to write an essay on Taking Risks In Life in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Taking Risks In Life

What is risk-taking.

Risk-taking is a part of life. It involves doing something that is uncertain or has a chance of leading to a negative outcome. Taking risks can be scary, but it can also lead to great rewards.

Why Take Risks?

There are many reasons why people take risks. Sometimes, we take risks to achieve something that we want, such as a new job or a better education. Other times, we take risks to avoid something that we don’t want, such as a bad grade or a broken relationship.

Benefits of Risk-Taking

Taking risks can have many benefits. It can help us to learn new things, grow as people, and achieve our goals. Taking risks can also make life more exciting and adventurous.

Risks of Risk-Taking

Of course, taking risks also has some risks. We might not achieve what we want, or we might even experience negative consequences. However, the potential rewards of risk-taking often outweigh the risks.

How to Take Risks Safely

If you’re thinking about taking a risk, there are a few things you can do to make sure you do it as safely as possible. First, you should learn as much as you can about the risk you’re taking. Second, you should make a plan for how you’re going to deal with any negative outcomes. Finally, you should take small steps and gradually increase the level of risk you’re taking.

250 Words Essay on Taking Risks In Life

Taking risks in life.

Taking risks is a part of life. There are few things worth doing that don’t involve some risk. Also, the bigger the risk, the bigger the potential reward. It’s important to weigh the pros and cons of any risk before you take it. As there are times when it’s better to play it safe.

Calculated Risks vs Uncalculated Risks

Risk can be calculated or uncalculated. Calculated risks are those where you take the time to assess the situation and make an informed decision. Uncalculated risks are those where you jump in without thinking. In general, it is wise to take calculated risks rather than uncalculated risks. Of course, there are some cases where it is necessary to take uncalculated risks, but these should be the exception rather than the rule.

Always Have a Backup Plan

You should always have a backup plan in place before you take a risk. This means having a plan for what you will do if things don’t go as planned. Having a backup plan will help you to feel more confident about taking risks, knowing that you have a safety net to fall back on.

Learn from Your Mistakes

It is important to learn from your mistakes when you take risks. This means taking the time to reflect on what went wrong and how you can avoid making the same mistake in the future. Learning from your mistakes will help you to become a more effective risk-taker.

Don’t Be Afraid to Fail

Taking risks means that you are going to fail sometimes. This is a natural part of the process. Don’t be afraid to fail. Instead, learn from your failures and move on.

Taking risks is an important part of life. It can lead to great rewards, but it also carries the potential for failure. By weighing the pros and cons of any risk before you take it, having a backup plan in place, learning from your mistakes, and not being afraid to fail, you can increase your chances of success.

500 Words Essay on Taking Risks In Life

Why should you take risks in life.

Taking risks is a part of life. It involves stepping outside of your comfort zone and trying something new. While it can be scary, taking calculated risks can lead to big rewards, such as personal growth, new experiences, and increased self-confidence. It can also help you to overcome your fears and develop resilience.

How to Take Calculated Risks

Taking risks doesn’t mean making impulsive decisions or acting recklessly. Instead, it means carefully weighing the potential pros and cons of a situation and making an informed decision about whether or not to take the risk. Here are a few tips for taking calculated risks:

Start small: Don’t try to take a huge risk all at once. Start by taking small, manageable risks that you’re more likely to succeed at. As you gain confidence, you can gradually increase the size of the risks you take.
Be informed: Before you take a risk, make sure you have all the information you need to make a sound decision. This means doing your research and talking to people who have experience in the area you’re considering.
Trust your gut: Sometimes, you just have to trust your gut instinct and go for it. If something feels right, even if it’s a little bit scary, it’s probably worth taking the risk.

Benefits of Taking Risks

Taking risks can have a number of benefits, including:

Personal growth: When you take risks, you learn and grow as a person. You develop new skills, overcome challenges, and build confidence.
New experiences: Taking risks can lead to new and exciting experiences. You might travel to new places, meet new people, or try new things.
Increased self-confidence: When you successfully take a risk, you feel a sense of accomplishment. This can boost your self-confidence and make you more likely to take risks in the future.
Resilience: Taking risks can help you to develop resilience. When you face challenges and setbacks, you learn how to bounce back and keep going.

Taking risks is a part of life. It can be scary, but it’s also essential for personal growth and success. By taking calculated risks, you can open yourself up to new experiences, learn and grow as a person, and build confidence. So don’t be afraid to step outside of your comfort zone and take a risk every now and then.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Essay on Taking Care Of Your Body
Essay on Taking Care Of The Environment
Essay on Taal Volcano

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

Taking Risks In Life: Why You Should + How To Do It Right

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illustration of a person walking a tightrope while holding a balancing poll

Do you ever look back at your life and wish that you had made a different decision or taken another path?

When reflecting on these times, can you remember why you chose one direction over another?

Most people will answer that they were afraid to choose the riskier option because of what could have happened if they did. As such, they chose the easier, safer, or more certain option because they knew it carried less chance of embarrassment or failure.

That said, most people end up deeply regretting the chances they didn’t take, rather than being haunted by the temporary discomfort of embarrassment or rejection. In fact, one of the top deathbed regrets that people have is that they didn’t take more risks in life.

So, what does risk-taking look like? Why is it important? And what is the best approach to taking them?

Speak to an accredited and experienced therapist to help you take more and greater risks in life if this is something you struggle to do. You may want to try speaking to one via BetterHelp.com for quality care at its most convenient.

What does it mean to take risks?

The basic definition of taking a risk is going ahead and doing something even though you know the consequences might be less than awesome. For example, asking someone out on a date is taking a risk because they might turn you down and that would hurt you emotionally.

Similarly, going skydiving is risky because your parachute might not open and you could end up splattered in a field amongst terrified and contemptuous cattle.

Some situations are riskier than others (as mentioned above) and are even labeled as such. There are also lower-risk endeavors that aren’t quite as daunting.

Low-risk financial investments, for example, are considered a sure thing. You might not get as much of a monetary return on your investment, but it’s unlikely that you’ll lose much money, if any at all. In contrast, high-risk investments often offer the possibility of a massive return… but there’s just as much of a chance that you’ll lose the shirt off your back.

Essentially, to take a risk means doing something, anything, in which the outcome is uncertain.

Why is it important to take risks?

It’s said that nothing is certain in life other than death and taxes, which means that every single thing we do requires some measure of risk.

People are very keen to “stay safe” these days, but there is no such thing as real safety. To live an authentic, fulfilled life requires one to throw themselves off proverbial cliffs on the daily and discover whether they’ll sink or soar.

Risk is something we need to do in order to experience the life we’ve been blessed with. Below are just some of the reasons why it’s so important to take risks on a regular basis.

How can you get to know who you are if you don’t try different things?

I recently came across a blog post in which someone was talking about their “safe foods.” This person wasn’t neurodivergent, nor did they suffer from any kind of food allergies. Instead, they stuck to foods they knew and were comfortable with because they were “afraid” of what other foods might taste like.

They thought that things like coffee, Thai food, and samosas smelled amazing, but they were just too damned scared to try them.

Look at some of your favorite foods and ask yourself how sad it would be if you had to go through life without ever having tried them. After all, you obviously weren’t born loving fettuccine carbonara or burritos. You had to risk a potentially unpleasant sensation in your mouth in order to determine whether they were good or not. But how sad would your life be without the amazing foods that you adore?

All of life is like this.

Every single thing you like was new to you once and, therefore, had a risk associated with trying it. You slowly become the person you were destined to be by stepping out of your comfort zone again and again.

You’ll never know unless you try.

I’ve known people who have fallen into deep pits of depression because they haven’t gotten the job they wanted, nor gotten together with a lover they were aching for, simply because they were too afraid of rejection or failure. They’ve literally spent decades lamenting “the one that got away,” except that person or job opportunity didn’t “get away,” they weren’t even attempted.

I once asked a friend of mine why he never bothered going after a girl he was completely in love with, and he told me that he wouldn’t have been able to deal with it if she had rejected him.

There have been so many situations in which people have been into each other, but since neither of them took the initiative to let the other know, those chances for connection were squandered.

Yes, it may hurt for a while if the person you desire doesn’t reciprocate that affection, but it would be so much worse to find out 40 years later that the person you loved actually felt the same but didn’t think you were interested because you didn’t take that leap of faith.

The biggest contributing factor to people not doing things is fear. In particular, it’s fear of the unknown and all the “what if” anxieties associated with it. Most people talk themselves out of doing things because they’re more hung up on the potential negative aspects than the positive ones.

Here’s an example: let’s say you really want to get into martial arts, but you have a lot of fear associated with it. Maybe you have a bit of social anxiety or you’re scared about how much it’s going to hurt when you get hit at the dojo. As a result, you’ll find reasons to talk yourself out of it.

The people there are going to be too aggro. You don’t want to have to deal with other people’s sweat, and so on. In fact, you’re better off without that mess!

In reality, this isn’t the case at all. In fact, at a good dojo, you will undoubtedly get your fair share of bumps, strikes, and the wind knocked out of you… but that’s exactly the kind of physical and emotional conditioning you’d need to fare well in a street fight.

Everything will suck at the beginning, because both your muscles and your mind will be unused to that particular kind of training and exercise. The movements will feel clunky and unfamiliar, and you may get hurt a bit before you learn how to block properly. But that’s okay. That’s what your teacher is for and that’s why you have the opportunity to practice with others.

The teacher will push you hard, but they’ll also take good care of you. The people you spar with aren’t specifically out to hurt you. They’re practicing their technique, as are you! Besides, getting hurt because you didn’t block their strikes is a great way to improve your defensive techniques, right?

You’ll develop invaluable coping mechanisms.

Have you ever wondered why certain friends of yours don’t seem to be plagued with anxiety or self-doubt? Instead, they tend to approach and deal with situations with confidence and self-assurance.

That isn’t because they’re secretly deities walking around in human costumes. Rather, it’s because they’ve exposed themselves to countless difficult situations and learned to cope with the outcomes accordingly.

I’ve seen people refuse to read books that they know they’d love just in case they see a word or phrase that “triggers” them and makes them uncomfortable. Rather than exposing themselves to it enough times that it stops bothering them, they’ll run away and hide from it, thus making themselves even more sensitive to it in the future.

Risks allow us to build up resistances and grow thicker skin. Life is going to throw difficulty at all of us, so it’s a good idea to learn how to cope.

For example, whenever someone travels, there’s a risk that their luggage will be lost. It’s frustrating when that happens, but it’s not the end of the world. You learn to pack essentials into your carry-on and make do until the airport returns the luggage to you. And if that doesn’t happen, you can pick up a few replacement items to get you through.

After you’ve learned once that you can handle such a situation, it will be less likely to cause you anxiety in the future.

You know you can handle it, so why worry?

Being expansive is far more rewarding than being contractive.

When we’re afraid or hesitant, we contract into ourselves. This is where we get the description of someone “shrinking” in fear. In contrast, when we’re courageous, we expand. We literally open our hearts and minds to the potential of greatness.

There is no life without risk.

If you use a car to go shopping for groceries this week, you risk being T-boned in an intersection by a drunk driver. Do you plan on showering sometime soon, despite the risk of slipping and breaking your neck? How about eating? With every bite, you risk choking to death or having a new allergic reaction to something.

Get the idea? Absolutely every single thing you do involves risk of some sort. There’s no avoiding it, and there’s always the possibility of failure or devastation around any corner.

Many people are wracked with anxiety about the possibility of failure, so they hold themselves back from countless things that could bring them joy or success just in case things don’t work out. They don’t want to risk embarrassment, disappointment, or potential failure.

The thing is, the only way you are guaranteed to fail is if you don’t try at all.

Besides, there’s no success without failure. When we misstep at something, we try again until we get it right, and we learn an extraordinary amount in the process. Furthermore, I don’t know about you, but I’d rather risk and fail miserably than spend forever wondering what might have been if I’d actually had the courage to try.

How to take calculated risks.

The best way to deal with risk-taking is to approach it from a methodological standpoint. Sure, we’ve all done risky things at the spur of the moment, but most risks we take in life will be calculated ones we’ve considered carefully over time.

1. Do your research.

Quite simply, understand as much about what you’re about to do as you possibly can before actually doing it. The reason for this is because the light of knowledge generally dispels the shadow of fear. When you have answers and information at your disposal, you’ll feel a lot less anxiety about potential missteps. Uncertainty can never been completely overcome, but it can be minimized.

A great example would be trying rock climbing. Throwing yourself into outdoor rock climbing without any practice would be extremely high risk; however, a lower, calculated risk would be to learn all you can before you do it.

Go to an indoor climbing gym and take lessons from professional climbers. This would include learning how to tie climbing ropes properly, how to use carabiners, what type of clothing and shoes are best to wear, and what to do if x, y, or z goes wrong so you know what to do in case of an accident or unforeseen adversity.

Build up hand, wrist, and leg strength with weights and elastic bands. Practice climbing in the beginner area, and work your way up (literally). This will take time, but give it a few months and you’ll be strong and confident enough to do an outdoor climb with the help of seasoned professionals.

You’ll have an incredible time while gaining confidence in your own abilities. In fact, that confidence will spill out into other areas of your life, so the next time you feel anxiety or trepidation about a situation, you’ll remember how you overcame your worries and managed to climb a literal mountain. If you can do that, imagine what else you can achieve!

2. Determine whether the benefits outweigh the potential downsides.

Chances are you weigh the pros and cons of various risks on the regular. For example, you know how delicious that gutbuster 3000 burrito is going to be as it tantalizes your taste buds and makes you purr in gustatory delight, but how are you going to feel in a few hours? Will that abdominal trainwreck be worth the momentary deliciousness?

Do this same pro/con weighing for every risk you’re thinking of taking. Write down all the good points that you think will be associated with this endeavor, as well as all the potential downsides that may occur.

Then, if you find that the good points outweigh the bad, consider proceeding. If, however, the “this is going to end really badly” list is several times longer than the benefits package, you may want to reconsider it.

Or, if you’re like me, you might try it anyway just to see what happens and deal with the consequences as they unfold.

3. Consider all the potential outcomes.

Whenever you’re planning something—be it a home renovation project or a trip—it’s important to try to anticipate all potential difficulties. By doing so, you can determine how to deal with these eventualities and create contingency plans for all of them.

As you can imagine, a great approach when considering doing potentially stupid things is to anticipate anything and everything that could go wrong, and then envision how you’d deal with them.

I recently watched some videos of professional snowboarders who travel the world, bravely boarding down the Rockies and lower Andes in Patagonia. These guys throw themselves down slopes that could kill them if an unexpected avalanche happened, and each one of them has suffered fractures, dislocations, and concussions. They all know that each trip could potentially be their last, but you know what? They do it all over and over again anyway.

They would rather risk getting severely hurt than give up the closest sensation to flying that they’ll ever have.

4. Do the small stuff first.

This expands upon what we said about practicing bit by bit before taking on something big. It’s swimming in the shallow end of a pool while wearing water wings instead of diving off a boat into the ocean.

Just like climbing the beginner wall at the gym, you can start with low-risk/high-return ventures that can help to build up your self-confidence.

Start lifting 10lbs and doing repeated reps at the gym instead of throwing your back out lifting 100lbs. Cook a simple breakfast dish and expand your culinary repertoire one ingredient at a time, instead of risking defeat (and a potential nervous breakdown) trying to cook an entire holiday dinner for the first time.

As you grow more confident in your abilities, you’ll naturally be able to handle larger and more demanding potentialities. Additionally—and this is massive—your self-confidence will be bolstered enough that a small setback will simply be an obstacle to overcome, rather than a crushing defeat.

5. Psych yourself up.

In addition to learning all you can about the thing that you’re getting ready to risk doing, be sure to psych yourself up for it in the most positive way possible. Create a music playlist that gets you going or maybe have a uniform of some type (like a lucky Iron Maiden T-shirt) that you can wear to put yourself in the right mindset.

Focus on bringing as much positive energy to this as possible, even if you’re trembling deep down.

Some people even find that a dose of liquid courage (like a shot of whiskey) can help to boost their confidence and courage just enough to get past their fearful hesitation.

6. Feel the fear and do it anyway.

Courage isn’t the absence of fear: it’s getting on with things even though you’re shaking in your boots. You may feel scared or anxious as you’re about to do the risky thing, but you’ll feel immensely relieved after you’ve done it.

Even if it doesn’t go the way you’ve planned, you can feel a huge amount of pride and satisfaction in the fact that you didn’t let your own worries or potential failure stop you from pursuing something (or someone) you wanted.

So, it’s not a case of learning how to be fearless , but rather forging a healthier relationship with fear.

7. If it doesn’t work out, regroup and try again.

If you don’t get the job that you really wanted, it’s okay to feel disappointed. The key is not to allow yourself to fall into a pit of despair. Instead, ask the hiring team if they could give you some insights as to why you didn’t get the position.

If they tell you about shortcomings they found (e.g., problems with your resume, certain behaviors during the interview process), then you can take steps to improve them. This way, you’ll be better prepared for the next job that you apply for.

Alternatively, if they tell you that you did everything right, but the other person was just a tiny bit more qualified, then you know there isn’t a problem with you at all; you just need a bit more experience.

Similarly, if you take a risk and ask someone out, and they tell you that they’re not interested, try not to be completely crushed by it. We all have our perceptions of what people are like, but that doesn’t mean that’s who they really are. Furthermore, we don’t know what’s going on in their heads. If someone says they’re not interested, it’s unlikely that there’s anything wrong with you personally, it’s just not a great match.

See this as a blessing rather than a defeat. You two might have gotten together and had a seriously unpleasant time, only to end things on a sour note. Instead, you’ve had practice approaching someone, and you survived them turning you down!

So now you can approach a person who’s likely better suited to you and know that if they decline as well, you’ll survive that too. Best of all, when you connect with a person who’s right for you, it’ll be that much sweeter.

See this as learning to fail with grace. Kindness, courage, composure, faith, and unrelenting will can get you through the most trying of situations. You’ll learn from each and every one of them and become a better, brighter version of yourself as a result.

How to find the courage to take your chances in life:

Taking risks can be intimidating, but it’s also immensely fulfilling. Additionally, it’s likely that you already have more courage than you give yourself credit for—it’s merely been hiding behind shields of social expectations and ingrained self-doubt.

Here are a few things you can do to help you find the courage to take your chances.

Let go of fear.

As we talked about earlier, the main thing that holds people back from living their best life is fear. It’s all in your mind, and has no real power over you unless you grant it some. When you feel fear rising up, ask yourself if you know what you’re feeling is real and true. If it isn’t, then why are you afraid of it?

Seek things out for yourself, rather than taking another person’s word for it.

How often have you heard people say that they’re afraid of doing something because someone they know had a bad experience? Quite often, things that intimidate us are terrifying until we learn the truth of them. Then, the weight of the situation dissipates like mist.

Whatever it is, look into it and get practical know-how and experience. For example, many teens are terrified by the idea of driving, but it quickly becomes second nature once they’ve been behind the wheel a few times.

Try to avoid overanalyzing .

Many people hold themselves back from doing things they really want to do because they “what if?” themselves into paralysis. Think about all the things you’ve ever experienced, and ask yourself whether any of them have ever unfolded exactly the way you dreamed of.

We can never see all ends, so it’s a good idea to flow with things rather than trying to analyze and anticipate every possibility.

Immerse yourself in media that inspires you.

Listen to music that uplifts you and makes you want to look to the sky and roar. Ignore or avoid media that fills you with anxiety or lowers your self-esteem. Furthermore, don’t waste your time getting into battles with trolls online. Refocus that energy into endeavors that inspire and energize you.

Choose inspiring heroes.

This expands upon the media exposure mentioned above. If the heroes in a film or TV series you’re watching spend the entire time awkwardly flailing, stumbling, and apologizing, then find other, better heroes!

Watch or read things where the characters are brave, resourceful, and skilled rather than bumbling, hesitant, and crippled by anxiety. More Aragorn or Katniss Everdeen, less Sheldon Cooper or Willow Rosenberg.

Be true to yourself.

We now live in an era where being strong, brave, and assertive is looked down upon, while those who are timid and apologetic are lauded as role models. You can be courteous, gentle, and kind and still be very brave and fierce.

Love and courage are expansive forces, and they are also rather contagious. When people see others standing up and fighting for what’s right and true, that inspires them to get over their own fears and do the same.

Ask yourself what kind of life you want to live.

A person who risks nothing may avoid temporary discomfort or disappointment, but they’ll be guaranteed to experience an exceptional amount of regret. They’ll simply plod safely through life without any thrills, elation, or amazing stories to tell about the time they nearly broke themselves in half doing that incredible thing that was the highlight of the decade.

What kind of a life would that be? If we don’t seize opportunities that are offered to us, we deny ourselves the chance to live fully. To do this one must take risks, upset the boat, and be prepared to argue and fight if need be in order to live authentically and to defend that which is ours.

Many people tamp down their true natures so as to fit in better with those around them, but that takes its toll. If you’ve been holding back from doing the things you really love, or being yourself around others because they find you “too intense” or “too much,” then consider changing your social circle. Having to be less than what you are to make others more comfortable wears down one’s spirit over time.

That isn’t a recommendation to immediately cast aside all your friends and family members and go cliff diving without any practice, of course. The middle road is often the best option here.

Weigh your pros and cons as mentioned, take those calculated risks, and don’t be put off if things don’t go the way you want them to. Honestly, 99 times out of 100, things unfold as they should rather than how we might want or expect them to go. Furthermore, they usually end up being far better than we expected.

I’ll tell you this right now: I’ve taken a lot (and I mean A LOT ) of risks in my life, and I wouldn’t be who or where I am now without them. Some had disastrous results, and I’d be lying if I said that I haven’t experienced more than my fair share of physical injuries as well as heartbreak. But each experience—even the awful ones—was a learning experience that I would never have had anywhere else.

Each of these experiences taught me incredible lessons, for which I couldn’t be more grateful. I have great memories and stories to tell, and I treasure the people I have in my life, all of whom I would never have known had I not thrown myself off the proverbial cliff. It all goes to show that taking risks can lead to joy and fulfilment that you never thought possible. You just have to have the courage to try.

“What if I fail?” “Oh darling, but what if you fly?”

Still not sure how to go about taking risks because some part of you is holding you back? Talking to someone can really help you to handle whatever life throws at you. It’s a great way to get your thoughts and your worries out of your head so you can work through them.

Speak to a therapist about it. Why? Because they are trained to help people in situations like yours. They can help you to identify and understand the things that hold you back so that you can become more comfortable taking a risk now and then.

BetterHelp.com is a website where you can connect with a therapist via phone, video, or instant message.

While you may try to work through this yourself, it may be a bigger issue than self-help can address. And if it is affecting your mental well-being, relationships, or life in general, it is a significant thing that needs to be resolved.

Too many people who are afraid of risk try to muddle through and do their best to overcome it, but they often never really get to grips with. If it’s at all possible in your circumstances, therapy is 100% the best way forward.

Here’s that link again if you’d like to learn more about the service BetterHelp.com provide and the process of getting started.

About The Author

Finn Robinson has spent the past few decades travelling the globe and honing his skills in bodywork, holistic health, and environmental stewardship. In his role as a personal trainer and fitness coach, he’s acted as an informal counselor to clients and friends alike, drawing upon his own life experience as well as his studies in both Eastern and Western philosophies. For him, every day is an opportunity to be of service to others in the hope of sowing seeds for a better world.

IELTS Cambridge 17 Essay: Taking risks in professional and personal lives

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By ieltsnotes

Table of Contents

IELTS Essay Question

Plan your answer.

Sample Answer

Taking risks is a normal part of life and it presents us with both opportunities and challenges . This essay will detail the reasons why the benefits of taking risks far outweigh the drawbacks.

In the business world, taking risks can open up the opportunity for unexpected growth. The website called makingsenseofcents.com is a great example. The owner of the website made a risky decision to quit her job and turn her blogging side hustle into a full-time career several years ago. This decision to step out of her comfort zone into the unknown has helped turned her blog into a multi-million-dollar business, which was something that she never expected when she started blogging. Taking risks also helps people conquer their fears in their everyday lives. For example, if someone afraid of public speaking took the opportunity to give a presentation in front of a crowd, it could help them to confront their fear and turn it into faith that they are capable of doing anything as long as they put in enough effort.

However, doing something risky might lead to failure if the risks involved are not properly calculated. Many people spend several years trying to turn their part-time blogging job into a successful business but fail and have to return to the nine-to-five rat race . Those years could have been better spent honing their skills at work, which might have helped them to climb the corporate ladder or be offered a pay rise. In addition, the courage to speak in front of a crowd in the above example might turn into a disaster if the speaker does not take the time to carefully prepare for the presentation. In some cases, this might be an opportunity for others to make fun of them and make them lose the courage to try public speaking again. However, these risks can be minimized if people carefully calculate the risks involved.

In conclusion, the benefits of taking risks, including exponential business growth and overcoming fear, outweigh any drawbacks because the chance of failure is reduced if people take calculated risks.

Useful vocabulary

present somebody with something = to cause something such as a problem, threat, or opportunity
side hustle = a part-time job that a person does as well as their regular job
comfort zone = a situation in which you feel comfortable and in which your ability and determination are not being tested
the unknown = a place, situation, or thing that is not known about or understood
conquer something = to succeed in dealing with or controlling something
be afraid of … = feeling fear; frightened because you think that you might be hurt or suffer
be capable of … = having the ability or qualities necessary for doing something
the rat race = a way of life in modern society, in which people compete with each other for power and money
the corporate ladder = the proverbial climb up a company’s employment hierarchy, where career advancement is likened to climbing rungs on a ladder
make fun of somebody/something = to make a joke about someone or something in a way that is not kind

IELTS Writing Task 1 Essay: Consumption of energy in the USA since 1980

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Taking a Risk in Life: 5 Steps for Determining Worthwhile Risks

April 8, 2024

Taking a risk in life can catapult you toward success and drastically increase your chances of achieving your goals .

But underneath every risk resides the fear of uncertainty and failure.

Taking a risk involves straying out of your comfort zone and stepping into the unknown.

It involves confronting your fear and taking a leap of faith that everything will work out for the better.

This doesn’t mean that every risk is a blind gamble. Understanding the complexities of the risk involved can help you take managed, calculated risks that make sense in relation to your goals.

This article will explore why we take chances, outline a proven strategy for identifying worthwhile risks, and show you how to take action and propel your life forward.

Why Do We Take Chances?

Why taking risks is important, what happens when you take a risk.

Step 1: Identify something you want or intend to achieve
Step 2: Assess the potential risks
Step 3: Think about the impact of each potential risk
Step 4: Assign each risk a value
Step 5: Make a plan

Originally published on April 27, 2022, this article was republished on April 08, 2024.

This journey called ‘life’ that we are all on requires us to take risks.

Especially if you want to live a life centered on thriving, not just surviving, and achieve your long-term goals.

When we step out of our comfort zone, we are better able to appreciate the beauty of the unknown, even though it might feel scary.

Risk reaps rewards

Without taking any chances, the probability of achieving anything great is precisely zero.

By doing something risky, you allow for the possibility of achieving great things, overcoming fear, and leaping towards success. On the other side of the coin, taking risks in life could expose you to potential mistakes, setbacks, and defeats.

This is the main reason why people avoid taking chances in life – fear of failure.

Everyone fears failure to some degree.

The psychology of safety teaches us that as individuals, we naturally analyze tasks as they relate to our physical, emotional, and mental well-being. If we think that carrying out a certain action will put us at risk of danger or failure, we tend to avoid this to protect ourselves.

Sure, fear of failure may protect us from doing something dangerous, like walking too close to the edge of a cliff.

But this state of mind can also limit our true potential and erect a barrier to creating the life that we want to live.

Something magical happens when you challenge yourself and take chances.

Science backs this up and posits that risky thinking allows you to put yourself in challenging situations and learn with every risky decision you make, inching you closer to success.

Taking chances requires seeing the difference between the life you have now and the life you want, and understanding the work involved to make it happen.

We must muster the bravery to commit to a goal, learn how to motivate ourselves , and navigate the murky waters of the unknown until we reach the other side of success.

Taking risks and experimenting with novel experiences expands our possibilities. If you insist on complete certainty and safety, you will never have the chance to turn your dreams into reality.

It’s a hard truth, but achieving anything meaningful requires taking action and stepping into the realm of the unknown.

If we decide not to take risks, we miss:

Opportunities for growth and learning
Personal and professional development
Chances to increase creativity and innovation
Discovering new passions or interests
Increasing adaptability to change

But that doesn’t mean we should dive headlong into risk without having given it some thought.

The first step of taking a risk is having a plan. It requires listening to your heart and your gut, looking within, and asking yourself, “What do I really want?”

Taking a risk all starts with a plan. It requires listening to your heart and your gut, looking within, and asking yourself, “What do I really want?”

Once you have a clear idea of precisely what you want, you can create an actionable plan to get there, and fully commit to making it a reality.

Taking healthy, calculated risks can be a game-changer when it comes to success and goal setting .

But big dreams take time to achieve. They involve a lot of grit, hard work, and overcoming obstacles. Keep in mind that absolutely everyone makes mistakes and falls along the way – the test comes in getting up and growing from those challenges.

Success is not a straight line

The road to success takes lots of twists and turns. You may need to back up, pivot, or go in a completely new direction.

If we stubbornly stick to the plan, we curb our ability to progress. However, if we are willing to discover, experiment, and try new things, we teach ourselves how to chart paths in unknown territory and overcome our fears.

Imagine yourself achieving your most sought-after goals.

Sit with this sensation – how does it feel? Visualize how it will benefit your life if you take the necessary risks to get you here.

This feeling alone can catapult you towards going after your dreams.

Harder, better, faster, stronger

Taking risks can change you fundamentally. They make you braver, stronger, and more confident.

They can have profound effects on your current position in life as well as the direction your life is heading, including:

Advancing your career far past where you thought it could go.
Giving you unique life experiences that would evade you if you stayed in your comfort zone.
A deep sense of personal satisfaction knowing that you’ve done something risky and that it paid off.
Learning and mastering skills that could be beneficial across many different areas of your life.
Strengthen your ability to cope with future uncertainties and setbacks.

They show that you have what it takes to make a decision, commit, and create the life you want .

You build faith in yourself knowing you have done it before and can do it again.

When faced with a risk or challenge, we all need to put on our game faces to some degree.

For some, this means fighting on the frontlines or treating the injured in the ICU. For others, taking risks means asking for that promotion or finally changing careers .

Embody your most courageous self. Sure, you might fall. But imagine who you’ll become when you rise to the challenge!

Understanding Risks: A 5-Step Process for Risk Assessment

Taking risks in life needs bravery—not bravado. Someone with bravado might just blindly jump off a cliff and hope for the best. Someone with bravery knows how to take calculated risks, with careful self-assessment and strategy.

Follow this five-step process to face your fears when taking smart and measured risks.

Step 1: Identify Something You Want or Intend to Achieve

What are your deepest desires and greatest dreams? Take some time to think of the life you want to pursue.

In a practical sense, this means really thinking about what you want to achieve – your goals – and writing them down.

This might not be easy for everyone.

Overcome resistance

Researchers found that by identifying your goals and saying them out loud, you’re more likely to overcome your resistance and actually go about achieving them.

Another option is to meditate on your core values and beliefs . These can help create goals in alignment with your true self.

Once you’ve identified some meaningful goals that you would like to achieve at some point in your life, write them down so that they are tangible and measurable.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

I want to purchase my forever home by 2023.
I want to launch my new business venture by the end of the year.

Step 2: Assess the Potential Risks

Once you’ve identified your goals, determine the risks that you might face if you venture forward toward these goals. What do these risks look like?

Understanding the form any potential risks could take allows you to more adequately prepare for them, and decide whether or not they’re worth taking.

Think about any potential risks in relation to your goals and then write them down next to the goals you identified in step one.

If we look at the previous example, these risks could look something like this:

I want to purchase my forever home by 2023, but… I’m scared it may come with hidden and expensive renovation issues. My financial situation may change and I won’t be able to pay the mortgage. The house may decrease in value if the housing market crashes.
I want to launch my new business venture by the end of the year , but… What if people lose interest in what I have to offer? What if my competition excels and overtakes us? What if there’s a decline in the economy and we enter a recession? What if I put all my energy into business growth and begin slacking in other areas of my life?

Step 3: Think about the Impact of Each Potential Risk

When working with clients, I often have them do a risk analysis activity to figure out where exactly they are putting their energy.

This activity involves writing down their goals and attaching a risk assessment to each of them. The purpose of this activity is to demonstrate what is worth giving our energy to and what is best to avoid.

Review each of your goals

FEEL the impact that each risk creates as if it has already occurred. Sit with these feelings and ask yourself: how would you feel if you were to experience this outcome in the present moment?

If we use the previous example, this might look something like:

Picturing yourself the moment that you realize after investing months of blood, sweat, and tears into starting a business, your partner gets laid off and you are forced to ask for your old job back to support your family.

How does this make you feel? Would you be devastated? Would you be happy to have tried? Would you have learned a lot of things that will help you when the time is right to try again?

Whatever arises here will help you decide whether or not this risk is worth taking.

Step 4: Assign Each Risk a Value

What’s the likelihood of each risk resulting in a negative consequence?

To answer this, take some time to consider each risk attached to your goals and try to be realistic about the outcomes.

Move through your list of goals and associated risks and give each of them a rating that indicates the severity of each risk. Use a scale from 1 to 5, with 5 having the highest impact and 1 having the lowest impact.

Let’s look at an example:

I intend to grow my company by 25% over the next year, but… what if there’s a decline in the economy and we enter a recession?

Consider the current economic climate. We are experiencing low levels of unemployment and high inflation (both strong predictors of future recessions). This indicates that the chances of entering a recession over the following years could be high.

For this reason, we could rate this risk as a high impact 5.

Work through each of your goals and attach a number to each to get a more realistic picture of the likelihood of the risks involved.

Step 5: Make a Plan

Based on the numbers you assigned to each risk, determine which risks are worth taking and which risks you can ignore.

Calculated risk

When we take calculated risks and invest in ourselves, it leads to a happier, more fulfilled life. Devote your time and energy to the calculated risks that matter and let go of reckless risk-taking.

By implementing a risk assessment, we can eliminate unnecessary risks, and have a much clearer understanding of which chances are worth taking.

Use this information to craft a plan that will help you plot a course from where you are now, to where you want to be in the future.

If you need some encouragement to get started, check out my Online Course: Believing in Yourself . You’ll learn more proven strategies to overcome self-doubt and achieve your goals.

About Lyn Christian

Hi there, I'm Lyn . My purpose is to support you to earn a living and live your life by doing what inspires you. To accomplish this, I work as a coach, consultant, TEDx speaker, author and founder of SoulSalt Inc.

Taking Risks Conception Essay

It is a well-known fact that taking risks can result in two things: success of failure. Some people say that taking risks brings to new very important findings, for example, in sports or science; others argue that taking risks can cause failure or even death, for example in finance or everyday life.

Some say that taking risks is inherent in people, and other people claim it contradicts instinct of self-preservation. To my mind, taking risks is a bit of all mentioned above, but there is no doubt that for each person taking risks is not the same.

I think that taking risks is an important and inevitable part of our lives; we all take risks, major or minor. I agree that if people want to succeed and achieve more they have to risk, at least, from time to time, or as Schwalbe puts it – to try something new (Schwalbe). I assume that all the athletes take risks to establish their records; they are likely to “40-30-30 Rule”, where 30 is the degree of the risk (Schwalbe).

This risk rule really works in sport and science, since all the experiments are a kind of risk; scientists take risks and get their results. To my mind, Schwalbe is right pointing out that the most of people regret on what they haven’t done rather on that they did. So in terms of getting rid of one’s regret a person needs to follow own instincts.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to admit that sometimes taking risk may cause very negative results; therefore it is necessary to be reasonable. I am impressed with the example provided by Ropeik about the woman who was afraid to fly because of terrorist (Dreifus). This woman decided to drive several states, and she died in a car crash.

In this case the woman should have think about the degree and possibility of risk in cars and planes. Regarding the fact that planes are the safest means of travelling, and the fact that possibility of terroristic act repeating wasn’t big, this woman should have gone by plane. This proves that there are some cases where thoughtful reasoning is needed.

Here I should stress that thoughtfulness is necessary in medicine where people’s lives are concerned. Doctors should carefully consider all the consequences and then make decisions. Doctors are not the only people who should be concerned about health; people should mind their health themselves. Every risk here should be thought over thousands of times to make no harm to oneself or somebody else.

At this point I would like to return to my statement that each person has his/her notion of risk. Someone may think that it is very risky to ride a bicycle, someone may be afraid to take a risk and visit another country or even unfamiliar place. I am sure that a person who goes in for extreme sports, may be very conservative in food and will never “take a risk” to taste some exotic dainty (here I don’t some religious or health restrictions, of course).

To my mind these humble risks can be taken, and there is something that can inspire people to take such kind a risk, this is an example of other person. For instance, in case with food, a person can see that other people taste that, so he/she can also try it; this person tries and, of course, starts trying to find those stupid reasons preventing from such pleasant experience. After this, I am sure, the person will continue taking such kind of risks.

As for me, I can’t say that I risk all the time. I can’t even provide any example of my big risk; I suppose my risks are still in future. I know that I am not afraid to take risk; at least I haven’t met some difficult situation when I was to risk.

Here I’d like to mention my friend, who is afraid of speaking. I can’t say she doesn’t talk at all, but she is not a public speaker, and she will never speak on something she is not sure about, and if she is asked something she doesn’t know thoroughly she just keeps mum. My friend is afraid of making mistake.

To my mind this is not right, for everyone knows if we don’t make mistakes will never learn. In this connection I would like to cite Carrol admitting that “failure is a good thing” (Carroll). Though, I wouldn’t agree that “success is boring” (Carroll). I’d rather admit that people should try to improve even successful things. A good example of this is Carrol’s daughter who seeks for the further development (Carroll).

To my mind, taking risks is essential for the whole humanity. It is impossible to imagine where we could be now if our ancestors didn’t risk to tame fire. All these great and little risks lead people to new discoveries, new opportunities. I think people should take risks and start something new; they can’t just sit and talk about achievement of others, they should take a chance and risk, leaving one’s fear behind, without being afraid of failure, because failure will only show the right way to go and succeed.

Works Cited

Carroll, J. “Failure Is A Good Thing.” NPR. 2006.

Dreifus, C. “A Conversation With/David Ropeik; The Fear Factor Meets Its Match.” The New York Times . 2002.

Schwalbe, M. The 40-30-30 Rule: Why Risk Is Worth It . The 99 percent Web.

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IvyPanda. (2018, July 9). Taking Risks Conception. https://ivypanda.com/essays/taking-risks/

"Taking Risks Conception." IvyPanda , 9 July 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/taking-risks/.

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IvyPanda . 2018. "Taking Risks Conception." July 9, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/taking-risks/.

1. IvyPanda . "Taking Risks Conception." July 9, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/taking-risks/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Taking Risks Conception." July 9, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/taking-risks/.

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Why Do People Take Risks?

Nick Sednew was working as a trumpet player aboard a cruise ship two years ago when it steered into a powerful storm between Antarctica and the southern tip of South America. The ship's captain told everyone to stay inside, and warning signs blocked the doors to the decks.

Sednew did not heed the warnings.

"I really like storms, and when else are you going to be in Antarctica? I wanted to witness it, so I went out past the signs," Sednew, 26, recently recounted.

The forces of nature were stronger than he expected. As the wind pushed against him, Sednew started running to get back inside, but the deck was slick with rain. He fell. "I broke my nose and cut my lip and there was blood everywhere," he said. Clinging to the railings to prevent being blown overboard, he clambered back to the door.

Many people feel the same urge Sednew felt: the desire to venture past the limits of safety in pursuit of a rewarding experience. Sednew was lucky to make it back alive: Sometimes risky desires can be deadly, as exemplified by the frequency of fatal sky-diving and mountain-climbing accidents. Indeed, excessive risk-taking significantly lowers one's life expectancy . So why has the urge evolved? And what explains the differences in what each of us is willing to wager?

As with most aspects of our behavior, the answer is buried deep in our evolutionary past.

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There are exceptions, of course, but generally speaking, men tend to take more risks than women do. "Especially with recreational risks and financial risks, you'll find this," said Andreas Wilke, an evolutionary psychologist at Clarkson University and an expert on risk-taking and decision-making. He says the gender divide points to the underlying reason for risk-taking.

"Besides societal and cultural reasons, there is also a biological underpinning that in part drives the sex difference," Wilke said. Men have more intra-sexual competition than women do for sex, and so they must advertise their sexual fitness through daring exploits more overtly. "Women are choosier in this context and so are predicted to be more risk-averse," he said.

While women tend to behave responsibly and make staid decisions, the burden is on men to impress them through acts of boldness and strength. "If you compare the behavior of a single adolescent male with his behavior when women are watching, you can see how the risk increases. In a competitive situation with his buddies, his risk increases substantially," Wilke said.

Of course, women take risks, too. Research shows they take more social risks than men; for example, they're more likely to change careers late in life or express unpopular opinions in business meetings. But they also take recreational risks . After all, women, just like men, must strive to impress.

Though people do become less risk-seeking as they age and as they enter into stable relationships, Wilke said men's testosterone level can shoot up again upon getting a divorce, and they again become more risk-prone. "Relationship status makes a surprisingly powerful predictor," he said.

But why do people (men and women) make certain risks but not others? Why is someone who doesn't think twice about bungee jumping unwilling to bet big in blackjack? Though people's risk behavior is complicated, psychologists actually have a simple theory to explain it.

Domains of daring

According to Wilke, risk-taking can lead to extraordinary success or extraordinary failure, and is thus an important aspect of the human condition, but for a long time, scientists struggled to define the behavior. "Risk is very widely different in terms of what kinds of risks people are willing to take and the subjective reasons for why they take risks," he told Life's Little Mysteries.

Rather than being generally risk-seeking or risk-avoiding, people are a complicated blend, he explained. "A person might be risk-seeking in a recreational risk way. But that person may be risk-averse in financial situations. They would do bungee jumping but wouldn't invest in the stock market ." Likewise, a financially reckless person who is willing to wager everything in a game of blackjack might never attempt a controversial joke in a conversation with strangers.

A Columbia University psychologist, Elke Weber, was the first to account for this subjectivity, with a model called "domain-specific risk propensity." It holds that everyone has a unique risk propensity in each of five categories: financial, health/safety, recreational, ethical and social.

At a given time in a person's life (depending on relationship status), his or her risk propensity in each category is inherent and unshakable. "People have inherent risk thresholds. When air bags were put in cars, for example, deaths did decrease, but not as much as they were predicted to. That's because people started to drive a little faster " thus keeping their overall safety risk level the same, Wilke said.

Weber and others have found that a person's risk propensity in one category says little about his or her propensity in another. But people still follow a predictable pattern. It turns out that, within a certain domain, a person's tendency to take risks correlates with how much he or she expects to benefit from the outcome. For example, in the safety risk category, Sednew likely placed a very high value on experiencing an Antarctic storm. Other people couldn't care less about having such an experience.

Consequently, studies show that Sednew was likely to perceive the risk of going outside during the storm as being much lower than other people would. According to Wilke, when people are optimistic about the outcome of their behavior, "they actually perceive it as not being risky. They might think, 'Well, I'm young these barriers apply to other people.'" [ Is Optimism Good for You? ]

And indeed, that's what was going through Sednew's mind: "I kind of felt like, 'Yeah, I get why this rule is here, but it doesn't apply to me because I'm special or smarter than someone who would go out and hurt themselves,'" he said. "The rule is there, but you don't think it applies to you because you're in control."

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Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @ nattyover . Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @ llmysteries , then join us on Facebook .

Natalie Wolchover was a staff writer for Live Science from 2010 to 2012 and is currently a senior physics writer and editor for Quanta Magazine. She holds a bachelor's degree in physics from Tufts University and has studied physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Along with the staff of Quanta, Wolchover won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory writing for her work on the building of the James Webb Space Telescope. Her work has also appeared in the The Best American Science and Nature Writing and The Best Writing on Mathematics, Nature, The New Yorker and Popular Science. She was the 2016 winner of the Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award, an annual prize for young science journalists, as well as the winner of the 2017 Science Communication Award for the American Institute of Physics.

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The impact of life experiences on risk taking

Peter ayton.

a City, University of London, Dept. of Psychology, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB, United Kingdom

Gennaro Bernile

b University of Miami, Herbert Business School, 5250 University Dr, Coral Gables, FL 33146, USA

Alessandro Bucciol

c University of Verona, Dept. of Economics, Via Cantarane 24, 37129 Verona, Italy

1. Introduction

Risk taking is a ubiquitous but, at the same time, controversial phenomenon in human life. In the popular mind – as The Economist noted some years ago 1 – it is associated with gamblers, skydivers, and bankers. At the same time, it is hardly deniable that risk-taking behavior plays a key role, e.g., in generating business success or failure, the amount and nature of innovation, and economic growth. The willingness to take risks affects important economic and non-economic decisions, including migration, occupational sorting, health-related behaviors, and educational choices ( Hetschko & Preuss, 2020 ), as well as being associated with the probability of being self-employed and of investing in stocks and even whole countries’ total factor productivity ( Dohmen et al., 2011 , Falk et al., 2018 , Schildberg-Horisch, 2018 ).

Research on the theme has convincingly shown that risk-taking behavior differs greatly across individuals, across countries, across domains, and over time ( Dohmen et al., 2011 , Falk et al., 2018 , Fisher and Yao, 2017 , Mata et al., 2016 ), so that understanding its determinants is one of the key challenges for current research in Economic Psychology. Age, gender, and cognitive ability turn out to be significantly associated with risk preferences in various studies, including the recent paper by Falk et al. (2018) providing global evidence on economic preferences. While we know from twin studies that a sizeable part of variation in risk taking is genetically determined ( Cesarini, Johannesson, Lichtenstein, Sandewall, & Wallace, 2010 ), an extensive and burgeoning body of research reveals that factors associated with the social environment play an extremely important role. Recent work interestingly documents that even gender differences in risk taking are malleable as they have a strong environmental component ( Liu & Zuo, 2019 ).

Whereas traditional life-cycle models in economics assume that risk preferences are time invariant, a growing body of empirical research challenges this view by showing that risk taking by the same individuals varies substantially over their life-cycle ( Defoe et al., 2015 , Mata et al., 2011 , Mata et al., 2016 ) as well as in response to major shocks ( Banks et al., 2020 , Guiso et al., 2018 , Schildberg-Horisch, 2018 ).

In the last years, a recent but fast-growing stream of research has been focusing on the effects of life experiences on risk-taking behavior, by using a variety of empirical methods. Natural disasters, wars, bereavements, recessions, and other events that become part of individual histories of those who experience them, have been shown to be associated with variation in risk taking across individuals, even several decades after their occurrence ( Bernile et al., 2017 , Bucciol and Zarri, 2015 , Guiso et al., 2018 , Malmendier and Nagel, 2011 ). This special issue includes six contributions that help to shed light on the underlying economic and psychological channels explaining the connection between life experiences and risk taking. The next section summarizes these contributions; the introduction concludes presenting avenues for future research.

2. Contributions

Two of the six contributions in this special issue ( Abatayo and Lynham, 2020 , Dalton et al., 2020 ) involved workers living in developing countries. Dalton et al. (2020) conducted a lab-in-the-field experiment with owners of small retail businesses in Vietnam and, by means of the priming methodology, estimate the causal impact of exposure to scenarios that trigger financial worries on risk taking. While, as the authors note, prior work has shown that material deprivation can affect various aspects of the decision-making process, the specific psychological channels through which major negative income shocks impact risk taking remain unclear. Their lab-in-the-field experiment run with entrepreneurs in a developing country provides evidence that is consistent with previous results from lab experiments, shedding light on the role of financial worries in mediating the effect of material deprivation on risk taking. In particular, their findings indicate that, in line with recent lab-based work on risk taking under stress, small-scale entrepreneurs exogenously exposed to financial worries report higher levels of stress and are less risk averse than those assigned to a placebo treatment. The documented effect is stronger for smaller shops and for entrepreneurs who are less exposed to large income shocks in their everyday business. Abatayo and Lynham (2020) conducted an artefactual field experiment with fishers on a remote island in the Philippines and examine the impact of Typhoon Bopha on individual preferences. The typhoon destroyed coral reefs and reduced populations of fish, weakening food security. Comparing individuals from communities that were directly hit by the typhoon with those that were not, they show that those affected by the typhoon are less risk averse . Next, they provide clear evidence that females affected by the typhoon are more risk-loving than females unaffected by the typhoon.

The other four papers exploit longitudinal household survey data from European countries. Two studies rely on the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), representative of the German population, which provides a behaviorally validated self-assessed measure of risk attitude ( Görlitz and Tamm, 2020 , Hetschko and Preuss, 2020 ). The paper by Hetschko and Preuss (2020) shows that risk aversion increases after passing through a relevant personal experience such as losing work. Relying on data that, unlike prior studies, include exogenously triggered job losses due to plant closure, the authors investigate the causal link between job loss and willingness to take risks and shed light on the mechanisms driving this relationship. Their results suggest that while neither immediate income loss nor other non-monetary mechanisms (such as changes of emotional states or parallel life events) seem to mediate the detected effect, risk aversion turns out to be sensitive to lower future income expectations (also on the eve of job loss) and higher uncertainty about future incomes. Next, the paper documents that individuals gradually return to their initial level of risk aversion, as they regain employment stability. In their work, Görlitz and Tamm (2020) examine how risk attitudes change when individuals experience the major life event of becoming a parent. They find that risk aversion significantly increases for both mothers and fathers around the time of first childbirth. This increase already starts manifesting itself as early as two years before they become parents, it is largest shortly after childbirth and disappears after several years. The study also documents that risky labor market behavior remains unaffected by parenthood, suggesting that the detected changes in risk attitudes do not spill over to less risky behavior of parents.

The remaining two papers ( Banks et al., 2020 , Bellucci et al., 2020 ) use data from the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement (SHARE), which is representative of the population aged 50 and over in several European countries. In both cases, the focus is on financial risk attitude. The study by Banks et al. (2020) shows that considering major life events is important with regard to an independently relevant research question such as the relationship between risk attitude and ageing. Prior research detected a clear pattern over the life cycle, showing that older individuals are less willing to take risks in different domains ( Dohmen et al., 2011 , Falk et al., 2018 , Mata et al., 2016 ). The authors offer evidence that in all countries older individuals report lower willingness to take financial risks and that health changes and other life events (such as retirement, widowhood and marital change) play a key role in accounting for the relationship between risk attitude and age in the financial domain. Therefore, as the authors note in their conclusions, their findings regarding the interplays between ageing, risk taking and health shocks have relevant policy implications: since the increase in life expectancy we observe in developed countries occurs together with a greater incidence of health problems, policy makers should pay attention to the fact that average risk aversion is likely to increase among influential segments of the population and that, in turn, this will likely increase pressure towards policies aimed at providing new and stronger forms of social protection. Based on the same data merged with data on conflict events, the study by Bellucci et al. (2020) offers evidence that exposure to World War 2 during childhood is negatively associated with financial risk taking, measured as the holding of risky financial assets, and positively linked to the probability of having life insurance in later life. The authors show that high and low intensity of war exposure have comparable long-term effects. The paper also indicates that living through the experience of war in childhood increases sensitivity to financial uncertainty. Enhanced uncertainty appears to be the most likely mechanism underlying the association between war exposure and financial risk taking.

3. Concluding remarks

The six papers included in this special issue consider a variety of risk taking domains (general or financial), types of life event (exposure to natural disasters or world war, financial hardship, health shocks or changes in family size) and target population (individuals from representative samples in developed countries or specific types of workers in developing ones). From a technical point of view, the six papers show a variety of data types (from experiments or surveys) and elicitation mechanisms of risk taking (incentive-based, self-assessed, or revealed from observed behavior). The heterogeneity in the methodology we observe in this issue originates from the relative novelty of the research field connecting risk taking and life events, as well as the well-known evidence that risk taking changes by domain, country, and other characteristics (e.g., Dohmen et al., 2011 , Falk et al., 2018 ). In line with prior related work, although there is general evidence of relevant connections between risk taking and life events, the direction of this relationship changes depending on the specific analysis. In particular, the papers included in this special issue indicate that, in the developing countries under study, risk taking increases with negative income shocks ( Dalton et al., 2020 ) and natural disasters with severe economic consequences ( Abatayo & Lynham, 2020 ), whereas, in the developed countries considered by the remaining four studies, it falls with unemployment spells ( Hetschko & Preuss, 2020 ), exposure to war ( Bellucci et al., 2020 ), parenthood ( Görlitz & Tamm, 2020 ), and health shocks ( Banks et al., 2020 ). The works examining the long-term effect of life events ( Görlitz and Tamm, 2020 , Hetschko and Preuss, 2020 ) suggest that changes in risk taking are not permanent, and they disappear as uncertainty vanishes or individuals adapt themselves to the new scenario. However, life events occurred during childhood may still have consequences throughout the lifespan ( Bellucci et al., 2020 ).

We believe that this special issue of the Journal of Economic Psychology provides us with novel and relevant insights on the impact of life experiences on risk taking, that stimulate new relevant research questions. In future research on the theme, it will be key to accurately identify the mechanisms that drive changes in risk taking resulting from life experiences. In line with recent work, the papers published in this issue show that the effects of negative shocks can change risk taking in different directions, but presently our ability to predict which effects should be anticipated under particular circumstances is limited. Even when experience shifts risk taking in one direction, a number of candidate mechanisms can be identified. For example, some increases in risky behavior as a result of negative shocks may reflect people trying to recover losses (as suggested by Abatayo & Lynham, 2020 ) – just as gamblers vary their risk taking in the immediate wake of wins and losses (e.g. Xu & Harvey, 2014 ). However, information about others’ experienced losses can also increase risk taking in the absence of any personal losses ( Newell, Rakow, Yechiam, & Sambur, 2016 ). Some mechanisms may explain what are otherwise counterintuitive effects – for example work on reactions to the effects of positive shocks in lottery winners has shown that those who win more on the lottery smoke more and engage in more social drinking ( Apouey & Clark, 2015 ), but this increase in indubitably risky behaviors is plausibly due to relaxed liquidity constraints rather than a change in risk attitudes per se.

One promising avenue of psychological research is work on decisions from experience . While many psychological studies of human decisions have relied on the convenient method of describing risky situations, studies on decisions from experience indicate that learning about risks through direct experience of choice outcomes in particular environments prompts quite different decisions to those arising from learning about the same findings from description ( Barron & Erev, 2003 ). Kahneman and Tversky (1979) noted that, when making description-based decisions, people behave ‘as if’ they over weight small probabilities; however, with decisions based on experience, rare events tend to have less impact than their objective likelihood of occurrence would warrant ( Hertwig, Barron, Weber, & Erev, 2004 ). A number of psychological mechanisms have been identified to account for this ( Hertwig & Erev, 2009 ) which a recent meta-analytic review has summarized evidence for – the largest of which was reliance on small samples of experience and the associated sampling error ( Wulff, Mergenthaler-Canseco, & Hertwig, 2018 ). For improbable events, the chances are that most people mostly experience their non-occurrence, thereby generating less concern than these risks deserve ( Newell et al., 2016 ). Nonetheless the difference between decisions from description and experience persists when sampling error is basically eliminated (e.g. Barron and Ursino, 2013 , Camilleri and Newell, 2011 ) indicating other determinants. Di Guida, Erev, and Marchiori (2015) have shown that, although decisions from experience result in underweighting of rare events across cultures, the impact of limiting feedback to outcomes resulting from chosen (and not foregone) options has predictable culturally specific influence on risk aversion: with this experience east Asians exhibit less risk aversion than people from western culture. At the time of writing decisions from experience research, implying that innocuous experience during the COVID-19 pandemic will lower risk perceptions thereby increasing risky behaviours to the detriment of all, has entered public discourse. 2 There is also widespread concern and speculation about the psychological and economic impacts of the “lockdown” adopted in many countries in response to the pandemic.

Experiences vary in an enormous number of ways – not just in terms of their valence and intensity – but qualitatively in ways that may alter how people think and feel about their future. For example, the choice to purchase a convertible or a four-wheel-drive is apparently highly dependent on the weather at the time of purchase in a way that is inconsistent with classical utility theory ( Busse, Pope, Pope, & Silva-Risso, 2015 ). Psychological ideas about human cognition and emotion – including such things as the characteristic constraints of the human imagination – as well as an appreciation of the sometimes subtle and often complex influence of economic factors, will both be needed to fully analyze the impact of life experiences on risk taking.

1 “Risk Off. Why Some People Are More Cautious with their Finances than Others”, The Economist, Jan 25th, 2014.

2 “Complacency, Not Panic, Is The Real Danger”, The New York Times, Mar 19th, 2020.

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Home / Essay Samples / Life / Risk Taking / Take The Risk Or Lose The Chance: The Road To A Bright Life

Take The Risk Or Lose The Chance: The Road To A Bright Life

Category: Business , Life
Topic: Risk , Risk Taking

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How Taking Risks Can Lead You to a Better Life

Taking risks doesn’t mean succeeding every time, and that’s ok taking risks can lead to failure which in turn can help you grow as a person..

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Many of life’s greatest achievements require going outside of your comfort zone. Whether it means overcoming shyness to perform onstage, investing money to help your business grow, or putting yourself out there for the chance to find love, some of life’s most rewarding experiences come as a result of taking risks. However, many of us have a difficult time dealing with the uncertainty that goes along with taking risks. A feeling of unease grows out of not knowing the outcome and the fear of potential failure. What if I embarrass myself in front of everyone? What if I lose all the money that I invested? What if I open my heart and get rejected? What if I’m not good enough? Answer that with another “what if”: what if the point of taking risks isn’t the outcome, but the process in and of itself. Through taking risks, we must confront our own fears, and sometimes that leads to failure… But what if that wasn’t such a bad thing after all?

The Key to Succeed? Learn to Fail

“The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.” — Stephen McCranie Many may have a negative view of failure, but actually, it can provide an essential tool for building character. Failure makes us stronger and more resilient. People who fail repeatedly develop persistence in the face of difficulties. Look at the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, who lost eight elections, failed twice in business, and suffered a nervous breakdown all before becoming one of the greatest American presidents. Through failure, he developed the persistence necessary to later lead his country through one of its hardest periods in history. Perhaps he never could have done so without experiencing so many failures himself. What does that tell us? Taking risks doesn’t mean succeeding every time, and that’s ok! The process of taking risks may lead to failure, but even that can make us a better person by increasing the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.

(kenary820 / Shutterstock.com)

The One Thing Risk-Takers Have in Common? Overconfidence

Failure might turn us into better people, but that doesn’t make it any less difficult to take risks. It turns out that building confidence can help in overcoming the fear of risk-taking. Entrepreneurs must go up against tremendous odds to build a successful business. That means taking big risks without knowing the outcome. What makes them do this? Confidence, and a lot of it. In a study , Ohio State University management professor Jay Barney, Ph.D., and Lowell Busenitz, Ph.D., of the University of Houston, asked 124 successful entrepreneurs and 95 top managers to answer a round of questions and rate how sure they felt about their responses. While both groups demonstrated confidence, the results proved that the entrepreneurs had an exceptionally high level of confidence.

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Learn to Overcome Your Fears

Luckily, confidence is a learnable skill. Erika Casriel describes in her book , Living Fully with Shyness and Social Anxiety, "The reality is that most socially confident people deliberately learn specific skills." That means, through practice, we can develop better confidence, equipping us with the right skills to take risks. Even someone as seemingly outgoing as comedian Will Ferrell once considered himself painfully shy and claims he had to work very hard to overcome his lack of confidence. To do so, he would do idiotic things in public so that people would laugh at him. He told People Magazine,” In college, I would push an overhead projector across campus with my pants just low enough to show my butt. Then my friend would incite the crowd to be like, 'Look at that idiot!' That's how I got over being shy." What does this tell us about taking risks? When we feel shy or afraid of something, we can take action to build more confidence. Instead of accepting himself as a shy person, Ferrell had the courage to overcome his fears by facing them. In doing so, he felt more confident outside of his comfort zone.

(PPstock / Shutterstock.com)

The Cycle of Success

The takeaway? Taking a risk to achieve a goal requires courage to face the fear of uncertainty. No matter the outcome, either way, we grow through the process and become more resilient and confident. Better yet, building those skills helps in taking more risks and improves the chances of achieving future goals.

(fizkes / Shutterstock.com)

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It is Important for People to Take Risks, Both in Professional and Personal Lives - Task 2 Band 9

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

It is important for people to take risks, both in their professional lives and their personal lives.

Do you think the advantages of taking risks outweigh the disadvantages?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge and experiences.

You should write at least 250 words.

Task 2 Band 9 Essay Sample (Take Risks both in Professional and Personal Lives)

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Model Essay 1

Navigating through life's myriad challenges requires a balance of prudence and daring. The crux of this discourse lies in whether the benefits of taking risks overshadow the potential drawbacks. This essay posits that the rewards of risk-taking, particularly in fostering innovation and personal growth, significantly outweigh the inherent disadvantages.

In the professional realm, embracing risk is fundamentally synonymous with the relentless pursuit of innovation and leadership. Consider the origin stories of numerous tech giants; their early days are replete with instances where calculated risks catalyzed groundbreaking innovations, propelling them to dominance in their respective industries. Google's early investment in a revolutionary algorithm to rank web pages transformed the dynamics of how information is accessed and shared, exemplifying how risk-taking is absolutely indispensable in pioneering significant change. Moreover, the willingness to venture into uncharted territories equips individuals with unparalleled resilience and adaptability, skills paramount in navigating today's rapidly evolving job market.

On the personal front, taking risks is undeniably pivotal in cultivating a deeply fulfilling life. It encourages individuals to boldly step out of their comfort zones, thereby facilitating significant personal growth and self-discovery. For instance, the decision to relocate to a new country for work or education, though daunting, opens up invaluable avenues for cultural exchange and broadening one's perspectives. Such enriching experiences significantly enhance one's character, fostering a profound sense of independence and self-efficacy. Furthermore, confronting fears and embracing the inherent uncertainty of life can lead to a more adventurous and vibrant existence, filled with compelling stories worth sharing and celebrating.

In conclusion, while risk-taking is inherently fraught with the potential for failure, the advantages it brings, both professionally and personally, are invaluable. It is the catalyst for innovation, personal growth, and resilience. Thus, despite the possible setbacks, the act of taking risks is a fundamental driver of progress and personal fulfillment, underscoring its predominant benefits over the disadvantages.

Sample Essay 2

In the tapestry of life, the threads of risk-taking are interwoven, playing a pivotal role in shaping both our professional and personal landscapes. This essay contends that the merits of embracing risks far surpass the potential drawbacks, particularly in the realms of career advancement and personal fulfillment.

Professionally, risk-taking is synonymous with innovation and progress. Consider the realm of entrepreneurship, where individuals like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos embarked on ventures fraught with uncertainty. Musk’s investment in SpaceX, despite initial failures, revolutionized space travel, exemplifying how risk-taking can lead to epoch-making breakthroughs. Similarly, in the corporate sphere, employees who embrace risks by spearheading novel projects or adopting untested strategies often find themselves climbing the career ladder more swiftly. These instances demonstrate that while risk can entail the possibility of failure, its absence might result in stagnation, a far more insidious threat to professional growth.

In the personal domain, risk-taking often manifests in the pursuit of meaningful relationships and life experiences. Venturing into new social circles or initiating significant life changes, like relocating for a dream job or pursuing a passion, can lead to profound personal growth and happiness. For example, the decision to study or work abroad, though daunting, often results in expanded worldviews and lifelong connections. Thus, the risks we take in our personal lives, while potentially exposing us to vulnerabilities, are instrumental in crafting a rich, fulfilling life narrative. However, it is essential to acknowledge that risk-taking, devoid of prudence, can lead to adverse outcomes. The key, therefore, lies in calculated risks – those informed by careful consideration and sound judgment.

In conclusion, the act of taking risks, when approached with foresight and balance, predominantly tilts the scales towards positive outcomes. The amalgamation of professional courage and personal audacity not only paves the way for groundbreaking achievements and enriching life experiences but also ignites the spark of innovation and personal growth, making it an indispensable element in the odyssey of human success and satisfaction.

Sample Essay 3

The act of taking risks is often seen as an essential stepping stone towards success in both one's personal and professional life. While such actions can lead to uncertain outcomes and potential setbacks, the rewards that can be reaped when risks are taken judiciously often far surpass the potential downsides. This essay will argue that the advantages of risk-taking, when approached wisely, generally outweigh the disadvantages, providing a catalyst for personal growth, fostering resilience, and encouraging innovation.

Risk-taking, though potentially leading to adverse outcomes, can also be the catalyst for substantial rewards and advancements. The potential ramifications are hard to deny: an individual choosing to abandon a secure salaried job for an entrepreneurial venture, for instance, may find themselves in a precarious situation of financial instability, affecting their mental well-being and family life. High-risk activities such as skydiving or mountaineering could also lead to severe physical injuries due to the inherent risks involved. Simultaneously, however, an excess of caution and predictability can inhibit personal and professional growth. A complacent employee, despite dissatisfaction in their current role, may see their motivation for self-improvement dwindle and miss opportunities for career progression.

In the realm of personal relationships, those limiting themselves to a narrow social circle might stunt their emotional growth. Conversely, those willing to broaden their social horizons often cultivate empathy, resilience, and a more expansive perspective on life, which is particularly beneficial in societies where social interactions are somewhat constricted. It's crucial to note that risk-taking does not imply recklessness; it often involves careful assessment, robust decision-making, and resilience - invaluable life skills. An iconic example is Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX. Known for his calculated risk-taking, Musk ventured into the risky domain of private space travel, investing personal capital, overcoming significant challenges, and ultimately revolutionizing the aerospace industry.

In conclusion, while risk-taking can indeed pose certain threats, its advantages, when approached thoughtfully, significantly outweigh the potential hazards. The willingness to step out of one's comfort zone, coupled with strategic planning, offers broad benefits, from career advancements to enriched personal relationships.

Sample Essay 4

Some contend that taking a risk has more advantages than disadvantages for both individuals and professions. Although it sacrifices security and predictability, I am certain that choosing hazardous alternatives has benefits that outweigh the drawbacks since it opens up new chances.

Risk-taking may have a negative impact on your finances as well as your physical health, whether it be through unforeseen injuries, car accidents, or spending money on exciting travel destinations. Even if you want to take risks in business, there are times when doing too many risky things might end up costing you too much money to keep going. If your carelessness results in an accident that injures you or another else, you may be held liable for any damages. This will not only deplete your current budget but also increase the cost of your car insurance in the future. Unjustified risk-taking may have additional negative effects on your money. Some people take a risk by deciding not to budget or live within their means. Impulsive spending and extravagant purchases could at first seem adventurous and daring, but they will gradually undermine one's riches and self-respect over time.

But going with the tried-and-true method is the most boring option. When you travel, staying with the herd will enable you to see the traditional, well-travelled locations. If you adopt other people's business or dating approaches, you'll develop a regular clientele. However, taking risks forces you to step outside of your comfort zone and use your imagination. When you take a chance, you have to come up with novel ideas and capture novel opportunities. By putting yourself in uncommon situations, taking chances enables you to develop unanticipated relationships. For instance, you typically are ignorant of how good two unrelated things may be unless you can combine them.

In conclusion, I still think that grabbing chances is far more productive and profitable in the long run, even though adopting a risk-taking attitude could have detrimental impacts on one's health and wealth.

Sample Essay 5

The choices that individuals make in their lives have far-reaching consequences. Taking risks can have a significant impact their career and personal relationships. In this essay, I will discuss as to why risk-taking is more beneficial than harmful in our lives.

There are multiple advantages in taking risks, both in our professional as well as personal lives. With respect to our work, this leads to better innovation, unexpected discoveries and technological disruptions. For example, venture capitalists invest in fledgling start-ups with the expectation of giving rise to next big thing like Facebook, Amazon. Without the inherent risk involved in making these decisions, we would not have today’s great technological giants. In our personal lives too, taking a leap of faith can be fruitful in finding a suitable life companion and making new friends. The current array of dating and social networking apps certainly embody an element of risk. Although meeting strangers via these can be disconcerting to many, it increases our chances of creating more meaningful relationships. Therefore, these positive aspects surely merits people to take risks in their lives.

However, the downsides to risk-tasking also do exist. In the professional setting, risk can play the role of a double-edged sword in many instances. Investing by taking on additional risk in unproven companies can possibly result in sizeable monetary losses. Indulging in risk-taking behaviour can also negatively impact our personal lives. It can lead to bodily injuries, self-harm, substance abuse and addictions. This is most evident in our youth who are driven by peer pressure to experiment with risky activities such as gambling, speeding while driving and consumption of harmful drugs.

In conclusion, even though there are certain disadvantages to taking risks, I think the advantages outweigh them. It plays an important role in people’s personal and professional lives enriching their careers and relationships. The lost opportunities without risk-tasking are unimaginable.

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The art of taking risks: breaking out of our comfort zone

29 December 2019
Creativity / Wellbeing

The comfort zone is a phase where we find ourselves in a comfortable environment, and we know precisely the situation we’re getting into. Adventuring out of this frame of mind might seem scary, but science has discovered that it could have benefits on our mental health. Read along on the advantages of breaking out of your comfort zone and follow our quick guide to start immediately.

It’s easy to find routines comfortable. Knowing what we have to do and when we have to do it, gives us a certain level of confidence that things will result in the way we want them to. But doesn’t that make life boring?

Given the amount of opportunities that we can make for ourselves, it should be easy to break out of a routine, but the fear within new adventures makes us slow down and play it safe.

And let’s be clear, taking a risk doesn’t necessarily mean scheduling a bungee jump tomorrow. It could be a small task that takes us out of our everyday routines, such as trying out new food, a new fashion style, or a different movie genre for once.

The point is picking something new and maybe a little bit scary that startles the brain out of a monotonous day. Do you know where your comfort zone lies?

What is the comfort zone?

The comfort zone is a behavioral space where activities and actions fit a routine and pattern that reduces stress and risk. When discussing the subject Brené Brown, psychology author, speaker, and research professor at the University of Houston says: “Where our uncertainty, scarcity, and vulnerability are minimized—where we believe we’ll have access to enough love, food, talent, time, admiration, where we feel we have some control.” As it is a state that provides us with a certain amount of mental confidence, we can imply that it is the natural state that most people lean-to.

And let me make something clear, the comfort zone isn’t a good or bad thing, nor it is holding us back in life. The word ‘comfort’ is there for a reason, and it exists as a state of mind where our stress and anxiety levels are the least while performing a particular activity.

The perks of staying inside this state are rather obvious ones: regular happiness, low anxiety, and reduced stress. Of course, every level depends on the person, as both our anxiety and stress are different from everyone else’s.

Back in 1908, psychologists M. Yerkes and D. Dodson explained that a state of relative comfort created a steady level of performance, hence the “comfort zone.” They experimented using mice and found that stimulation improved performance up to a certain level. When we pass that level and experience too much stress, performance deteriorates. This is what they called a state of “optimal anxiety.”

In search of Optimal Anxiety

Optimal anxiety is a headspace where the stress levels are slightly higher than normal or that feeling that we’re just outside of our comfort zone.

When stepping out of our comfort zone, we may start to feel anxious and uneasy with the situation. Now, we must face two options about how to respond to this anxiety: suppress it or embrace it.

Sure, we can go ahead and think that we will not do well in that new taekwondo class; or that our precious story draft will be uninspiring and bland. But why not use this energy to improve rather than diminish our work? We can always shift attitudes and use this drive as fuel to perform better!

According to the “Yerkes-Dodson Law,” performance increases with physiological and mental stress, anxiety, or arousal feelings. Additionally, research states that it’s easier to focus on these unknown tasks because of the challenge. Thus, we can use the extra motivation of doing something new and exciting even if it’s nervous energy!

The main objective is to get to a level that forces an improvement in skills. We will eventually become comfortable with that recently acquired level of anxiety. This is what Alina Tugend defines as an “expanded comfort zone.” The new routine to follow is a “productive discomfort,” which helps to gradually decrease the scary sensation of trying different things until it eventually disappears.

Always keep this in mind: new and challenging tasks will keep us engaged easier. Just be sure not to go way overboard with the stress & anxiety of these new tasks, as it may diminish, instead of improving performance. Remember the rule of thumb: nothing in excess.

Escaping the comfort zone

woman-wearing-grey-long-sleeved-top-photography-1122868

Reaching that peak of mental productivity and performance brings certain benefits along, such as making us more productive; helping us to deal better with new and unexpected changes; making it easier to push our boundaries, and finding it effortless to exploit our creativity.

Of course, the personal benefits go further, taking into account that the new activities and skills we get into will upgrade our self-improvement. As you can see, there are way more benefits to breaking that comfort zone than staying in it, so let’s get into it and start broadening our horizons!

In case you need some guidance in how to push our boundaries, here are some suggestions for you:

Take baby steps: Little by little is the way to go. Having a plan in place takes us to have crucial action. If your goal is to run a marathon, start with an achievable goal of a daily walking routine, and gradually step it up until you’re ready for those 42 K!

Be curious: Start researching new hobbies to get into or experiences to go for. Begin taking a baking course or start painting! Being curious to learn further opens lots of doors.

Give up control: Letting someone else take the lead is a great way to apply Optimal Anxiety. Not being in control of crucial decisions or agreeing to something we wouldn’t normally consider will take us out of the comfort zone.

Have a plan: Keep a list of growth goals, write down a step-by-step guide where you go from the easiest to the more complicated stuff, and be sure to keep it close by. When we get in the habit of reading our goals, we become more accountable to them.

Keep yourself accountable: This is a critical step because the idea of telling what we have achieved to people around us keeps us motivated. Also, when somebody else knows about our plans, they might help with that ‘push’ we need and make it hard to quit.

Taking creative risks

Taking a creative risk is a practice that can help us find the real magic of creativity. ⁠ Of course, one of the main characteristics of creative people is that they are risk-takers in the way that they like to challenge their thinking. They are not afraid to change their practices or being taken out of what is usual and known to them; hence they live way far out a comfort zone.

To take creative risks means not minding what others think and having excitement to put out innovative ideas of their authorship into the world.

So, because creativity is about something where we can’t anticipate or guarantee a specific outcome, being creative turns out to be all about taking risks. Talk about a risky and adventurous activity!

Just thinking about creativity immediately transports us out of a “safe zone.” And that is great for challenging our boundaries, for taking risks, and for being free! Don’t think too far. These creative risks can be as simple as attending a ballet performance, dancing, taking a creative writing course, joining a book club, learning to play a new instrument, or joining a watercolor workshop!

Remember that creativity means different things to different people, and the needs and results vary a lot. Just be sure to understand YOUR needs and the situations that will help you take the creative risks you look for.

In conclusion, pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone makes us challenge ourselves while helping us grow and taking new risks. Being somewhat uncomfortable for a moment can force us to achieve goals we never thought we would.

Finding something new that’s not easy for us can be challenging, but the rewards will surely be worth it! Once we start stepping out and achieving new goals, we will realize that the comfort zone isn’t so comfortable after all.

Nevertheless, always remind yourself that while it’s great to break out of our safe zone, it’s also good to be able to go back whenever one needs to.

And now I ask you, when was the last time that you tried doing anything out of your comfort zone? ⁠

Do you think people in your workplace could get more out of their comfort zone by trying something new, such as a watercolor workshop that could help them relax and help them unleashing their creativity? Click here to request (more info on) a company watercolor workshop!

Why Creativity is important for your mind

Why Creativity is important for your mind – part 3

Why Creativity is important for your mind – part 2

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The Importance of Taking Risks in Life

Favorite Quote: "Work until you no longer have to introduce yourself."

Is risk-taking an important part of life? I would say that it is. The way I see it, we need risks in our life to grow stronger, as well as to grow as a person. Risk-taking is a way we teach ourselves how to overcome the many obstacles that we encounter throughout the lives we all live. Taking risks is rather inevitable.

We take risks from the time we begin to walk all the way up until we are spending our last few moments on our death beds. It is actually impossible to live life without taking a handful of risks. Think about it…

The day we take our first few steps as a toddler, we risk either falling on our butts or accomplishing our first walk. As we grow as children we risk going to school, where we could get bullied or make life-long friendships. Every morning, it is a risk waking up. We never know how our morning could go. We could wake up to a good day, a bad day, good news, great news or bad news, reaching accomplishment in our day or falling to our disastrous fate.

Asking a high school crush to make it official, applying to an interesting college, starting a new job, moving from home and starting a new family are some of the smaller risks that we take throughout the lives we live. Some people choose not to take these risks, and in the end, they don’t know what was being passed up.

The most important thing to remember about risk-taking is that without taking that risk, you’ll never know what could happen. Even though it is like gambling with life, every risk has an effect that it will leave on your life, whether it be negative or positive, it is important to test it. You’ll never know what the outcome could be, without trying it.

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Latest Post

Taking risks.

Every once in a while in one’s life come challenges. These challenges can be so daunting and demanding that it places the person in not just a weird external state but also a peculiar state of mind. There are hardly any people in the world who make it a point in their life to take steps that are too farfetched or have stakes that are too high. Almost every individual finds it easier and more convenient to take steps that are safe and secure them for the present and for the future.

Anyone who has spent even a year in the practical world would agree that this is not how life can be lived. The entire essence of life demands people to challenge themselves and push themselves off the edge just to see if they can fly – that is the true meaning of life. When one dives into a situation where the end point or the result is unknown and cannot even be anticipated based on the current circumstances, it means they are taking a risk. These are not hard core decisions but mere choices that individuals have to take because they pose a better likelihood in the future. It cannot be claimed that if one has a safe job, they will always remain employed and have complete job security. An unstable and an unconventional job might become a constant source of income for several people. The entire questions falls on one question; “Are you willing to take the risk?”

Some people might also claim that taking a risk and having it result in a positive outcome has a lot to do with fate and luck. Though this might be true for various people, but in some cases, where the decision lies in another human and not on fate, taking a bold risk exemplifies your confidence in yourself and that is a valuable but rare quality in humans.

Hence, if you have a risk to take and are torn between a safe and a risky option, tell yourself this:

The risk you are willing to take might give you a once in a lifetime chance to explore not just your abilities and potentials but also to live your dream.
Taking a risk and actually have it work out for you might make you feel more confident about your own abilities and make you feel good about the things you can achieve in life.
Taking a risk makes it easier for you to come up with ideas and innovations that you were too scared to try and test before.
Taking a risk opens up an entire new world of possibilities for you. It makes you feel like there is no end to your passion.
Above all, taking a risk is the best way to overcome your own weaknesses and confusions.

Hence, risk taking is a core element of human life and human existence.

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My MEC Story: Embracing risk-taking in the face of judgment

May 17, 2024 by Nicholas Masuda

Editor’s note: My MEC Story is an occasional series featuring students and alumni at Medgar Evers College with unique stories — and a willingness to tell them.

By Sheray Goday | [email protected]

People see me around campus and witness a smile — you might even hear me ask if people are OK all the time. In reality, I’m a social worker who needs a social worker.

Hello, my name is Sheray Goday and I am a 27-year-old Brooklyn-born-and-raised student at Medgar Evers College.

It may sound cliche and funny to some, but if you ask any future social worker if they practice what they preach, nine times out of 10, they don’t.

Though I look like I have it all together — and though I currently am working toward it — I’m struggling just as much as you are.

And I’m not just talking financially, I’m talking about mentally.

I still struggle with postpartum depression after having my second child.

I also struggle financially.

I also am going through a breakup.

I also stress over school.

All of this while I’m trying to be the best mom; going through housing issues; feeling like I’m not doing enough; feeling like I’m doing too much; trying to remain humble and focused; trying to be selfish with myself; and trying to heal myself of all things internally.

ALL while being judged.

Though I am getting it all together, I am still going through hard times — just like you.

Life changes quickly

“The 2014-2015 school year is going to be fun and exciting,” I thought during the summer of 2014.

I was officially going to be a high school senior, preparing to possibly go away to Syracuse University and become an actual “adult.” Nothing was going to stop me from going away to college and accomplishing all my dreams and aspirations, I thought.

I was always an exceptional student, usually being looked at funny for saying that I liked school. But I never cared because I knew I wanted to be somebody and go somewhere — and school was needed for me to do that.

Fast forward to October, just two months before Christmas break, my whole life changed — I was pregnant, and not only was I just pregnant (and did not know), but I was just a few months shy of giving birth. I went from my only worry being living away from my mom for the first time and hoping to get into my No. 1 college choice, to now planning for my first child, who I gave birth to in April 2015.

Good thing I was that exceptional student I stated earlier, because I was able to finish school literally a week before giving birth — not having to return until senior prom. (I was crowned prom queen!)

So now here I was, a mom at 18 years old, and changing my plans from an upstate college to a close commuter college at Medgar Evers — which ultimately did not work out because I was in the hospital at the same time I was supposed to be taking the assessment test.

After that disappointing call, I made a decision that I felt was best for me and my daughter — finding a job and focusing on making money for us. Having my daughter made me realize that time waits for no one and I needed to decide what my plan B was ASAP. Savannah made me grow up in a way I never saw coming. She helped me become the woman I am today. So then I had to think,

“What is important right now?”

Providing for my daughter, that’s what! I decided to make a pact with my inner self that when she began school, I would apply for college again. Four years later in 2019, I applied for and was accepted into Medgar Evers College (again!).

All I thought was “I’m going to be older than everybody!” since I would be a non-traditional student not coming into college right after high school.

I was nervous, believe it or not.

But then I had to realize, “ what are you scared about? Just do it!”

And so I did.

Making this decision would start my journey, and my goals and childhood dreams would ultimately start to come back around full circle.

Back to chasing my dream

My college journey may have begun in 2019, but this was definitely always a childhood dream to go to college. My mother, being a single mom, instilled in me the importance of chasing my dreams, never giving up, and keeping a level of responsibility with anything that I did.

There was no quitting.

So, I learned to always think things through before putting the action behind it. Without my mother’s support, even up until this very moment when writing my story, I honestly don’t know what road I would be taking in my journey thus far.

Before beginning my journey at MEC, I was struggling with my career choice and if I was picking the right one. For a long time, I thought Psychology was my only option when it came to helping people reach their highest potential and advocating for them. Anytime I would ask people’s opinions about social work, I would hear the typical,

“So you want to take people’s kids?”

“Don’t do social work, they don’t make ANY money”

“You’re going to be at a desk your whole career!”

So, should I listen to those people and go along with Psychology because it seemed easier?

Or doing my own research, asking the right people, and believing in myself?

Of course, I chose the most important thing: I decided not to listen to those people.

Why? They were not in my shoes, so how would they know how to really give me accurate advice? How could anyone who hasn’t even done what I want to do ever tell me how to make decisions regarding my future?

I felt empowered and motivated in myself, especially when explaining to people all about the information I learned.

Doing all my research and talking to social workers around me made me realize that I might have just been a social worker from birth. I leaped into action and came into MEC knowing how I wanted to spend my four (now five) years: in the social work community.

In the beginning, I will say that I did not involve myself in campus life. My routine was the same every day. Go to classes in the morning, leave right after my last class in the afternoon, go to work until nighttime, pick up my daughter from my mother’s house, go home to my house, and repeat.

I did not have any time for anything else.

But now thinking back, I didn’t think I could do it. My job took away most of my free time and I had my daughter to think about.

I knew this was something I had to change, but what I did not know was how the COVID-19 pandemic would ultimately change my life in different ways.

Hitting the pause button

Around the time I became pregnant with my son in 2021, just shy of the world “opening back up” due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I kind of felt the difference versus the pregnancy I had with my daughter, which led me to know for a fact that I was going to have a son this time around. I was excited!

Because I am a very intuitive person… I just felt it.

But the pregnancy was HARD. I was sick, and because money wasn’t too much of an issue at that time, I decided to finally resign from my job of being a direct care professional for differently abled children of six years (amongst other reasons). Shortly after I resigned, I began to struggle financially — I was just stressed all across the board. I made sure to keep a level of sanity with myself, especially for my unborn child, scared that I would be the one to harm him with my emotional stress. Because I was going through a tough pregnancy and NOW I was struggling financially, I then decided to take a year off from college.

I realized that I was making big and risky decisions that could affect my life and my family, but I needed to think about my mental, physical, and emotional health FIRST. All I knew was work!

“You’ve been working since you were 14 years old, why would you just quit!”

There were moments when I was ashamed of myself during that time… I thought I made the wrong decision because I had a tendency of focusing on what other people would think about me or my decisions.

I did not realize that these factors were jeopardizing my mental health, because I always saw myself as a strong independent woman — I figured I could handle it.

But it turned out that I was struggling mentally more than I thought I was, being diagnosed with postpartum depression right after my son was born. I realized that I needed to change… my son gave me the motivation I needed (I even began my candle business around this time!) and wouldn’t even realize it.

It was time for me to change for myself. It was time.

Once I took my year off of college, it was time to go back.

But this time, I had more time to spare, just focusing on school.

I decided to find different ways to mark my place at MEC, so my first mission was to join the Social Work Club (ABSW). Since that semester was slowly coming to an end, it was time for elections to join the E-Board. Not really knowing anyone in the club, I still went to meetings and events, thus being inspired by the president at the time, to run for a position.

At first, I almost said no.

Then I had to think about the outcomes of my decisions and how saying no because I was scared, would affect my future. So I just jumped out and said “I’ll run for vice president!” I got the position shortly after, marking a place in the social work community at MEC, crossing off an internal goal I set within myself.

Now today, I am looking forward to all the success and overcoming all challenges in my senior year as president of the Social Work Club.

Back and better than ever . . .

“What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?”

I was once asked this question during a marketing mastery webinar and for a long time, I could not come up with a response. It was too deep for me because I knew the answer, I just had to face the music and be truthful with myself.

If I knew I could not fail, I would have taken more risks.

Because of not taking risks, I missed out on so many exciting opportunities, even in my younger years.

Taking risks can offer new and amazing opportunities, which opened doors for me in my newly founded beginnings in entrepreneurship.

The SEEK program, which has been an extraordinarily supportive team (who also helped me with gaining entrepreneurial experience by going to the National Association of Black Accountants convention of summer 2023), engulfed me with so much praise and motivation when I talked about having a candle business that I wanted to expand on.

During a college tabling event I volunteered for, I unexpectedly met and networked with who I now know was the lead instructor of the “ Summer 2023 BankUnited/MEC Entrepreneurship Train-the-Trainer Program.”

I was then accepted into the program a while after, which allowed me to learn new skills, learn new ways to enhance my business and network–something I’ve always wanted to do, but did not take the risk in the past.

I wanted (and needed) extra income for myself and my family. I had a list of possible business ventures that I may have wanted to pursue, but candle-making had me excited, so I chose to work on that. Because of those opportunities, I have met amazing friends with like-minded goals and aspirations, I have networked with and met big-profile professionals, and I have expanded my place in the business world including being a part of the first-ever club on campus: The Entrepreneurship & Technology Association.

I also joined the Brooklyn Recovery Corps in the Spring of 2024, adding a professional internship paid for by MEC — something I would have never done as a freshman. Now I’ve got professional connections that will continue into the summer and the 2024-25 school year that I’ll be able to leverage as I enter my final year of undergrad.

Had anyone sat me down and told me this would be my life, I would have looked at you crazy. Because, not chill and shy, Sheray! Speaking at panels? Being a mentor? Opening businesses? Professional internships? Like, huh?

But honestly, I always knew I would do something extraordinary with my life because I was destined to be here. I am a rainbow baby after all: something beautiful after a dark time.

One of my biggest aspirations in life is to make sure the people I love around me are always okay.

All I want to do is inspire people, for them to know that it doesn’t matter where your journey starts or how long it takes to start — it only matters how you handle those hard times to make your future better.

My MEC Story

A look at previous installments in this series, written by students and alumni:

My MEC Story: Advocacy wasn’t an option — until I made it one.

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Is There a Constitutional Right to Talk About Abortion?

A woman peering over a barrier with an empty speech bubble coming out of her mouth.

By Linda Greenhouse

Ms. Greenhouse, the recipient of a 1998 Pulitzer Prize, reported on the Supreme Court for The Times from 1978 to 2008 and was a contributing Opinion writer from 2009 to 2021.

There has hardly ever been as fierce a defender of free speech as the current Supreme Court.

Since John Roberts became chief justice almost 19 years ago, the court has expanded the protective net of the First Amendment to cover such activities as selling videos depicting animal torture, spending unlimited amounts of money in support of political candidates and refusing to pay dues (or a dues-like fee) to a public employee union.

This last decision, Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 31, overturned a 41-year-old precedent and led a dissenting justice, Elena Kagan, to accuse the majority of “weaponizing the First Amendment.” In the 303 Creative case last year, the court gave a Christian web designer the First Amendment right not to do business with would-be customers whose same-sex wedding websites would violate her views about marriage.

The court’s version of free speech has become a powerful tool against government regulation. Six years ago, effectively striking down a California law, the court gave so-called crisis pregnancy centers — offices that try to imitate abortion clinics but strive to persuade women to continue their pregnancies — a First Amendment right not to provide information on where a woman could actually get an abortion. The state said the notice was needed to help women who came to such centers under the false impression that they provided abortions. In his majority opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas said the “unduly burdensome” requirement amounted to unconstitutionally compelled speech.

Now the question is whether the court’s solicitude toward those who would rather not talk about abortion extends in the other direction. What about state laws that prohibit rather than require offering information about where to get an abortion?

While there is not yet such a case on the Supreme Court’s docket, lower courts have been tightening a First Amendment noose around efforts by anti-abortion states to curb the flow of information about how to obtain legal abortion care across state lines. Federal District Courts in Indiana and Alabama both ruled this month that while states in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s demise can ban abortion, they cannot make it illegal to give abortion-related advice, including advice to minors seeking abortions without parental consent.

A federal magistrate judge issued a similar ruling last November on Idaho’s abortion law, one of the most extreme in the country, which makes it a crime to assist a minor in obtaining an abortion in any state without a parent’s consent. Idaho could criminalize abortion, the judge, Debora Grasham, wrote. “What the state cannot do,” she went on, “is craft a statute muzzling the speech and expressive activities of a particular viewpoint with which the state disagrees under the guise of parental rights.” The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard Idaho’s appeal on May 7.

With the Supreme Court extremely unlikely to revisit its decision 23 months ago in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that eradicated the constitutional right to abortion, the question of how far states can go to prevent their citizens from finding alternative ways to terminate a pregnancy will become increasingly urgent. In his concurring opinion in the Dobbs case, Justice Brett Kavanaugh raised the question of whether a state could now “bar a resident of that state from traveling to another state to obtain an abortion.” The answer was “no,” he continued, “based on the constitutional right to interstate travel.” It is worth noting that Justice Kavanaugh wrote only for himself; none of the other conservatives who made up the Dobbs majority joined him. “Other abortion-related legal questions may emerge in the future,” Justice Kavanaugh offered noncommittally.

The future arrived quickly enough in the form of the two abortion-related cases awaiting decision before the court’s current term, which concludes at the end of June or in early July. Both are anomalous in that they involve questions of federal rather than state authority.

One, Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine , concerns the government’s approval of the expanded use of the medication that first received F.D.A. approval 24 years ago. Medication abortion now accounts for more than half of abortions in the United States. The case contains an off-ramp for the court that, based on the argument in March, the justices appear likely to take: Because the anti-abortion doctors, dentists and medical groups who challenged the F.D.A. suffered no harm from the availability of the medication, and are unlikely to suffer harm in the future, they never had standing to bring the case in the first place.

The other, Moyle v. United States, results from a clash between the federal government and Idaho over whether federal law requires the state to provide emergency abortion care in its hospitals. The outcome largely depends on whether the court accepts the Biden administration’s view that there is no abortion exception to the law at issue, which prohibits hospitals from turning away people who need emergency care.

In the abortion cases in Indiana, Idaho and Alabama that may yet find their way to the Supreme Court, the justices would face the acute dilemma of reconciling their fealty to the First Amendment with the profound anti-abortion sentiment the Dobbs majority opinion displayed.

In defending their laws, the states argue that what they are prohibiting is not actually speech but conduct, namely inducing criminal activity. Rejecting this argument in the Indiana case, Judge Sarah Evans Barker of Federal District Court wrote that the Planned Parenthood affiliate that challenged the law simply “seeks to provide truthful information to clients regarding out-of-state options and medical referrals to out-of-state providers for abortion services that are legal in those states.” A prohibition on providing such information, the judge said, “does not further any interest Indiana may have in investigating criminal conduct within its borders.” In the Alabama case, another Federal District Court judge, Myron Thompson, observed that “unable to proscribe out-of-state abortions, the attorney general interprets state law as punishing the speech necessary to obtain them.”

From the cases they are in the process of deciding this term, the justices are well aware that their effort to wash their hands of the nettlesome business of abortion has failed. One or more of the First Amendment cases is likely to reach the court during its next term. I wonder if the justices have a clue about how much pain lies ahead when they have to decide whether the right to speak inevitably encompasses the right to choose.

Linda Greenhouse, the recipient of a 1998 Pulitzer Prize, reported on the Supreme Court for The Times from 1978 to 2008 and was a contributing Opinion writer from 2009 to 2021.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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UK Law Firms’ Salary War Risks Their Ability to Expand, Compete

By Meghan Tribe and Mahira Dayal

Major UK law firms battling one another over salaries are taking a risk that higher costs hamper expansion plans and impede their ability to compete with US rivals.

Linklaters last week boosted salaries 20% for newly-qualified lawyers after a similar move by Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer earlier this month. Those attorneys will now earn £150,000 ($188,000), up from £125,000 ($157,000).

“For a UK law firm to do this in a market, where it’s just harder to make money, that’s a hell of a statement,” said Scott Gibson, director of London-based legal consultancy Edwards Gibson. “It’s going to cost them.”

Bumping up salaries of newly-qualified attorneys—the London equivalent of a first-year associate—adds to stresses of top UK firms that are already spending on their expansion aspirations during a slow period for the transaction work that typically fuels their bottom lines.

The firms have already been grappling with increased competition from US rivals , who flooded the London market and took business over the past decade. UK firms have also had to wrestle with issues such as Brexit and a lower value of the pound versus the dollar.

As a result the five Magic Circle firms—Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Freshfields, Linklaters, and Slaughter and May—have lost their place at the top of the London legal market they held a decade ago.

The Freshfields and Linklaters increases help them close the gap with the US law firm payscale, which starts at $225,000 for first-year associates. The increases mean the London firms pay about 12% to 15% less than US operations, an improvement from a previous gap of 35% to 40%, said Ria Karnik, a London-based legal recruiter for Major, Lindsey & Africa.

As is the case among US firms, the first-year pay rate is often used as a proxy for quality of the law firm, Gibson said. Right now, there isn’t a marketplace for such lawyers, so firms are subsidizing that rate, he said.

“They don’t really need to do this,” Gibson said. “It can only really be for prestige.”

UK Pressure

US firms Sidley Austin, Paul Hastings, and Ropes & Gray in January announced pay raises for their newly-qualified lawyers to bring them in line with the Cravath scale, which elite law firms adhere to for compensating associates.

US litigation powerhouse Quinn Emanuel earlier this month added to the pressure on UK firms by saying it would boost its starting salaries from £152,000 to £180,000 in London.

The Freshfields and Linklaters increases are “a bold move, and I think it really exemplifies the impact of the US firms in London,” Karnik said. “It’s reasonable to expect the other Magic Circle firms to follow suit.”

For US firms, salary increases can be offset by scale and rate increases. “It’s just easier to make money in the American marketplace because clients will bear higher rates,” Gibson said.

For UK firms, the salary increases “probably makes for some difficult conversations around the partnership compensation table,” said David von Dadelszen, director at Jameson Legal. “This must leak into partner profits and eat into—or increase—client fees.”

The increases also will likely pressure the UK firms to raise salaries of more senior attorneys. Associate lockstep is less defined than it used to be, and once lawyers are in the law firms, their compensation doesn’t really go up very much, Gibson said.

“You can’t have a newly qualified lawyer being paid £150,000 and have a fourth-year make £160,000—it just doesn’t work,” said Chris Clark, director of London-based Definitum Search. Firms could raise bonuses for more senior lawyers rather than boost salaries, though that would be “a headache” because established bonus structures would have to be changed, he said.

While top Magic Circle firms are expected to match the Freshfields and Linklaters increases, the boosts “will continue to polarize the market,” Karnik said. It is unlikely that rivals in the top 20 firms will match the rates, she said.

“Firms that do not want to engage in the salary wars need to be clear about their value proposition and what makes them different from the firms paying at the top of the scale,” Karnik said.

It has been a transformational time for the Magic Circle.

London’s Allen & Overy as of this month adopted the new name of A&O Shearman, thanks to its completed merger with New York’s Shearman & Sterling. The merger creates the world’s fourth-largest law firm , with $3.5 billion in annual revenue and 4,000 lawyers, and it gives A&O direct access to the US market. Freshfields has been on hiring spree in the US over the last couple of years in a bid to grow that overseas market. Last month the firm hired Denny Kwon from Covington & Burling for its corporate and mergers and acquisitions practice in Silicon Valley. In March, it added two partners to its New York operation.

“Freshfields is trying to break away from being a Magic Circle law firm, and it’s trying to be a global elite firm,” Gibson said, referring to the pay increases.

But not all firms are positioned equally. Linklaters has lost 12 partners to competitor law firms in London over the last year. It was also reported earlier this year that the firm was considering changing its compensation structure to enable it to withhold distributions for partners that leave for rival firms.

These salary hikes are going to go straight into fixed costs for the firm, and they comes at a time when Linklaters is looking to hire in the US, Gibson said. “That’s going to make it pretty tough for them, and there is a risk they’ll lose more people, potentially,” he said.

But even as UK firms increase their salaries, their US counterparts might try and keep their edge.

“I don’t think it’ll be long before the US firms come out and just raise” their salaries again,” Clark said. “They like to normally have about 30% to 40% difference in the entry points and now, that’s getting slimmer.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Meghan Tribe in New York at [email protected] ; Mahira Dayal in New York at [email protected]

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chris Opfer at [email protected] ; John Hughes at [email protected]

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Four dead after severe storms lash Texas; tornadoes, floods loom in Southeast U.S.

Winds reported at 80-100 mph in southeast texas with rain rates of more than two inches..

Powerful storms blasted Texas on Thursday evening with winds as high as 80 mph and heavy rain, killing four, causing power outages to more than a million customers, toppling trees and dumping even more heavy rain on a region already waterlogged from recent storms.

A tornado watch shifted eastward with the storms, sliding from Texas to southern Louisiana as the strong storms moved through the region. Flood warnings or watches for intense rainfall were in effect through Mississippi and Alabama and as far east as the Florida Panhandle, and the National Weather Service warned of a "high risk" of excessive rainfall at the Texas-Louisiana state line north of Beaumont through Friday morning.

In a briefing, Houston Mayor John Whitmire said four people were killed in the storms and warned people to stay off the roads.

"We had a storm with 100 mph winds, the equivalent of Hurricane Ike, with considerable damage downtown," Whitmire said. Areas in the northwest, downtown and the east side of town were "hit hard" and "most of the traffic lights" in the city were down.

"Stay at home tonight, don't go to work tomorrow unless you're an essential worker," the mayor said. "Stay at home, I can't emphasize that enough."

"We're still in a recovery mode," Whitmire said, adding the state was sending workers from the Texas Department of Public Safety to help secure downtown Houston.

Weather service meteorologists in Houston warned that the winds were so high across such a broad area it would be difficult to determine whether a tornado had touched down without direct photo evidence or a field survey.

Large tall office buildings in the central business district have lost a lot of their windows and glass, Whitmire said.

Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña offered explanations for three of the deaths, saying falling trees caused two of the fatalities and a third appeared to have been caused by an accident when strong winds blew a crane over.

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez posted on X that an adult female died in a house fire. It wasn't immediately clear if that death was among the four mentioned by Whitmire and Peña.

Emergency management officials shared photos with the weather service of a set of towers holding high-voltage transmission lines lying on the ground and sitting askew in the Houston area.

"We had firefighters taking live wires off 290 this afternoon that were blocking the thoroughfares," Whitmire said, and most of the traffic lights downtown were out of service.

CenterPoint Energy, the second biggest electrical provider in Texas, posted on X that a "fast moving but severe weather system has caused widespread power outages across the service area" and warned that restoration times might be delayed or unavailable.

Whitmire said it would take at least 48 hours to repair some of the electrical outages.

As of 11 p.m. Thursday, power outages in Texas hovered around 1 million homes and businesses, according to a USA TODAY outage tracker and poweroutage.us. In Louisiana, more than 70,000 customers were without electricity.

Storms hit Louisiana

Later Thursday evening, the weather service in Lake Charles warned of the potential for 90 mph in part of its region.

After warning of high winds in excess of 80 mph, the weather service in New Orleans reported an 82 mph gust at the New Orleans Lakefront Airport and an 84 mph gust in Kenner, Louisiana.

Street flooding and flash flooding was reported through the evening as heavy rain fell and nearly 200,000 power outages across the state.

Earlier in the day, the weather service had warned of possible life-threatening flash floods, hail and tornadoes across the southern Plains and Gulf Coast – the latest wave in a series of dangerous storms that have lashed the region in recent weeks.

More than 15 million people were under weather advisories , with the most severe watches and warnings issued for east-central Texas and Louisiana, where the weather service warned of a "high" risk – at least a 70% chance – of "life-threatening flash flooding ."

Over 350 flights were delayed and nearly 100 were canceled at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport as thunderstorms picked up in intensity. Departing flights were delayed on average by more than two and a half hours, according to the Federal Aviation Administration . The FAA added that a ground stop at the major airport was "possible."

Crews with the Texas Department of Transportation in Lufkin, a city about 170 miles southeast of Dallas, planned to work "through the night," monitoring roadways for flooding and other possible emergencies, the agency said in a statement.

Rainfall rates of 1-2 inches per hour will be common while some areas may get hit with upwards of 3 inches per hour, the weather service said . Over the past two weeks, eastern Texas and parts of Louisiana have "seen over 600% of their normal rainfall," only increasing the chances of flooding as the new storms sweep through the Gulf Coast.

"Soils are not expected to retain any of the rainfall expected today," the weather service warned, adding that the rain will "re-raise levels in smaller creeks and streams, while the major rivers already in flood stage will also see rises."

At least 4 dead after storms in Texas, Louisiana this month

Since late April, Texas and Louisiana have faced recent rounds of severe and deadly weather. This month, hundreds of people had to be evacuated from eastern Texas in a deluge that took the life of a 4-year-old boy and led to historic river flooding. In Louisiana, three people, including an unborn baby, were killed when potent storms kicked up tornadoes and ravaged communities across the state on Monday.

More: Maps: 2024 tornado season is ramping up to set records

On Wednesday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott requested a presidential disaster declaration for assistance programs for 26 counties that were impacted by storms since April 26. More than $58 million in public infrastructure damages has been requested by local jurisdictions throughout the state.

"The extensive damage caused by these severe storms, historic river flooding, and tornadoes requires comprehensive, robust action by all levels of government to help Texans build and recover," Abbott said in a statement.

System to drench the Gulf Coast into the weekend

The Gulf Coast has not been able to catch a break from severe weather in recent weeks, and the latest storm system won't be an exception.

The storms are expected to develop from moisture from the Gulf of Mexico through Thursday afternoon and evening as they continue heading east. After nightfall, meteorologists expect them to weaken a bit as they move over eastern Louisiana and into Mississippi, though the tail end of the system could bring fierce conditions.

On Friday, severe thunderstorms are possible from far southeast Texas into much of Louisiana, Mississippi and western Alabama, the weather service's Storm Prediction Center said .

By Saturday, intermittent showers and thunderstorms could crop up from southern Louisiana, through northern Florida and up the Atlantic coast to the Carolinas. The chance of dangerous or damaging conditions will, however, be much slimmer than on Thursday and Friday.

This year's tornado season is among the most active

This year's tornado season, which generally runs from March to June, is on track to be one of the busiest in recorded history.

According to the Storm Prediction Center , there have been 781 preliminary tornado reports nationwide as of last Wednesday, far more than the historical average of 549 through May 8.

Tornado activity is still extremely active this month. At least 237 tornadoes have been reported nationwide in May, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration . The majority of them have been concentrated in and around Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Missouri. But there have also been reports of twisters as far south as the Florida Panhandle.

During the monthslong stretch, twisters are most common in "Tornado Alley," a vast swath of the central U.S. including states such as Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. So far, Texas has been struck by the most tornadoes this year, with a preliminary report total of 69 as of Tuesday. Other states were not far behind: Ohio had 65; Iowa reported 64; Missouri, 61; and Kansas had 58 twisters.

National weather radar

Texas weather advisories.

Contributing: Janet Loehrke, USA TODAY

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