Transcriber: Yi-Wen Chen Reviewer: Helen Chang
Imagine this, your high school prom is around the corner,
and you have that special person in mind that you want to be your date.
But the thought of asking them makes you nervous.
What if they reject you?
What if they say yes, but the date is awkward with them?
What if? What if? What if?
All of these what ifs overwhelm you? So you hesitate?
And by the time you overcome your fears,
someone else has already asked that person to prom.
You miss your chance because you hesitated.
Now the truth is, all of us have to face making risky decisions
and facing our fears in our daily lives.
But why are we as humans so intrinsically against taking risks?
It seems like everybody’s taking a risk, right?
Some people would take the risk of accepting a new job opportunity
in a completely new and foreign city.
Some startups risk launching too early before the product is fully tested.
You get the point. We all face taking risks.
But there are scientific reasons as to why we, as humans,
are intrinsically against taking risks.
According to Kate Segal, a graduate from Carnegie Mellon
and the author of The Art of Taking Risks,
the decision making area of the brain is made up of 80 percent excitatory cells
and 20 percent inhibitory cells.
She elaborates further that in younger individuals,
these inhibitory cells tend to be more underdeveloped,
and just like the name suggests,
inhibitory cells are designed to inhibit us from taking risk.
These inhibitory cells
are the reason why younger individuals tend to be more risky.
Have you ever told a teenager not to speed while driving,
but they end up doing it anyway?
Well, you can thank those inhibitory cells.
These cells only fully develop in later college years,
which is subsequently when the brain can more efficiently process information.
However, these developed adult brains tend to inhibit us from taking risk
because risk is psychologically tied with danger.
So after knowing all this, you may be begging the question
Why is taking risk so important?
Well, I’ll be sharing 3 reasons why taking risks is important.
And then I’ll share a 5 step process
you can go through to become a better risk taker.
So the first reason taking risk is important is
because it can increase our self-confidence.
Risky activities that are emotionally taxing,
like public speaking or asking someone to prom, can lead to positive outcomes,
which can lead to improved self-confidence.
The second reason taking risk is important
is because it can open new life changing opportunities.
Taking risks can open new doors for us,
while being conservative will only lead to missing numerous opportunities.
The third reason why taking risk is important
is because it can improve our risk taking ability.
Only through experience can we improve upon a skill,
and taking risk is most definitely a skill.
Now that you know why taking risk is important,
here is the five step process you can go through to be a better risk taker.
The first step is to assess the level of risk.
Each time you come across a decision,
analyze the pros and cons and physically write them out.
By analyzing what you have to gain versus what you have to lose,
you can help clarify if the risk is worth taking.
For example, if you desire to ask someone to prom,
what you have to gain is a lot more than what you have to lose.
You have the potential to gain a new friendship or relationship,
and you very little to lose.
The worst that can happen is you get rejected.
In which case, you’re in same position you’re at before.
Step number two is to get past your fear of failure.
The stigma is that failure is final and negative.
We’re taught that failure follows us forever.
When we go to school and we fail a test, we’re punished with a negative grade.
The truth is, however, in most cases, failure has little repercussions.
The most prominent repercussion of failure is wasted time,
which if you really think about it,
no time is ever truly wasted because that’s how we gain experiences.
Furthermore, when we fear failure, we obsess over the worst case scenario,
we suffer more in imagination than reality.
Instead, if we flip the script and focus on the best case scenario,
it can drive us to be more confident while taking the risk.
The third step is to break up this big decision into smaller, bite sized pieces.
Like, if you want to ask someone to prom,
you could first focus on starting a conversation with that person
and building rapport with them.
If that goes well, you can then proceed to asking them to prom.
Breaking this big, scary, risky decision into smaller, bite sized pieces
can help you mitigate risk
while getting your brain on board with the mission.
The fourth step is to seek advice from other individuals
who have done what you desire to do.
This doesn’t work in all instances like, you know,
asking someone to prom, but it can work in other cases.
Like, if you’re trying to start a business,
it may be worthwhile for you to seek advice or mentorship
from other business owners.
They could give you insights that you may not have received
unless you got your own experience with it.
The last step is to focus on intrinsic growth over external gain.
I’d say that one more time.
Focus on intrinsic growth over external gain.
Too often, when we make a risky decision,
we're focused on what we can gain
or what we can obtain through that decision.
But what if we flip the script?
What if we focus on growing
and becoming better people through each uncertain decision we make?
When we face our fears, it forces us to level up.
We gain strength, courage and confidence in every experience
in which we stop to look fear head on.
Each time we do the thing we think we cannot
or we ask the question we think we cannot,
we’re taking one step closer to becoming the person we strive to be.
So the next time you have that special person in mind
that you want to ask to prom,
remember, you can either take the risk or lose the chance.
(Applause)