How adventurous are you? Very? Not so much? We tend to think of people as fitting squarely into one category or another: Those who like to take risks, and those who don’t. But, according to Stanford professor and neuroscientist Tina Seelig, the distinction is actually much more subtle. Or as she puts it: “Risk-taking is not binary.”
Here’s what Seelig had to say about risk-taking in an interview for our new 99U book:
You’re likely comfortable taking some types of risks while finding other types uncomfortable. You might not even see the risks that are comfortable for you to take, discounting their riskiness, while you are likely to amplify the risk of things that make you anxious.
For example, you might love flying down a ski slope at lightning speed or jumping out of airplanes, and not even view these activities as risky. Or you might love giving public lectures or taking on daunting intellectual challenges. The first group is drawn to physical risks, the second to social risks, and the third to intellectual risks.
There are five primary types of risks: physical, social, emotional, financial, and intellectual. I often ask people to map their own risk profile. With only a little bit of reflection, each person knows which types of risks he or she is willing to take. They realize pretty quickly that risk-taking isn’t uniform.
You can dig into our full conversation on failure and risk-taking in Maximize Your Potential , the latest 99U book, featuring essays from Tina Seelig, Joshua Foer, Cal Newport, and many more.
via 99U http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/The99Percent/~3/CYsKTDX1VBA/all-risks-are-not-created-equal-mapping-your-risk-profile
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