I’ve been working with a world-ranked junior athlete over the last few months and, in exploring why she doesn’t take more chances when she competes, she told me that a big goal of hers recently has been to “risk it for the biscuit.” I had never heard this expression and I laughed hysterically for almost a minute. Though pretty self-evident, it basically means you need to take a risk to get a reward. And this notion is particularly relevant in sports because few sports provide the opportunity to get “the biscuit” by being conservative, tentative, or cautious.
Let me preface this discussion of risk taking by saying that, when I talk about taking risks, I don’t mean taking stupid risks such as texting while driving, jumping off the roof of your house, or taking drugs. I also don’t mean taking sport-related risks for which you are unprepared, you have little chance of success, or where the consequences of failure are dire. That’s not taking risks, that’s being stupid. Instead, risk taking in sports involves weighing the rewards and costs of a particular course of action, evaluating the chances of success and failure, determining your preparedness to take the risk, and deciding on your willingness to accept the consequences of failure. At a practical level, risk taking means getting out of your comfort zone, pushing your limits, and doing things on the field of play that may lead to greater success, but may also lead to greater failure.
“Yes, risk-taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise, it would be called ‘sure-thing-taking.’” —Jim McMahon, Super Bowl-winning quarterback
Now, before we dive in more deeply, I would you to take a little assessment. Please rate yourself on the following 1-10 scale:
Your ability to take appropriate risks to succeed in your sport rather than performing cautiously. (1-always cautious; 10-always willing to take a risk to succeed)
What is Risk?
The dictionary defines risk as a situation in which you expose yourself to danger. Though physical risk is an inevitable part of many sports, the risks I’m talking about are more psychological and emotional in nature. Clearly, risk is essential for success not only in sports, but also in every aspect of life, whether winning an Olympic gold medal, starting a tech company, or telling someone “I love you.” If you don’t take risks, you won’t improve, grow, or achieve your athletic goals. And, importantly, you will never find out what you are truly capable of or how far you can go.
This kind of risk comes when you face a test of your ability, effort, and preparation. You are putting your self-identity, self-esteem, goals, hopes, and dreams on the line. After the competition, you will learn whether you succeed or not at the test. The risk then becomes clear: failure!
Given the risks of taking risks, there are obvious upsides to not taking risks. You stay safe. You never get uncomfortable. And you minimize the risk of failure. Of course, there are far more significant downsides to not taking risks. You will be perpetually stuck where you are. You will never be truly successful. You will feel really frustrated. And you will never be completely satisfied with your efforts.
“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life” —boxing legend Muhammad Ali
To Risk or Not to Risk, That is the Question
Hopefully, I have convinced you of the necessity of risk in your sport. But taking risks in sports is a simple, but not easy, choice. It’s a simple choice because would you rather take risks and give yourself a strong chance of real success or play it safe and guarantee failure? The answer is obvious. At the same time, it’s not an easy choice because no one likes to fail and, when you take risks, failure is a distinct possibility (that’s the nature of risks). Also, there are a variety of powerful psychological and emotional forces that hold you back from taking risks:
- Fear of failure (no way you’ll take a risk if you’re afraid to fail).
- Perfectionism (the bar is set so high anything less than perfection is failure).
- Need for control (taking a risk requires that you give up control).
- Lack of confidence in your abilities or preparation (you’re not going to take a risk if you don’t think you can succeed).
At the heart of risk taking is the willingness to accept that, when you take risks, you might fail and, if you do fail, you may feel bad, but, in the end, you’ll be okay. By their very nature, you are more likely to fail when you take risks. But, paradoxically, when you take risks, your chances of success also increase. If you can truly accept failure, it is no longer a danger and, without that danger of failure, there’s no reason not to take risks because all you see are the upsides.
I’m not saying that you should take risks indiscriminately all the time; that’s a recipe for disaster. Your goal should be to increase your willingness to take appropriate risks when the time and situation is right and the chances of the risk paying are higher than not.
Risk Taking is a Lifestyle Choice
Risk taking is not so much a skill as a lifestyle choice. The chances are that if you’re not a risk taker in your broader life, you’re probably not one in your sport. So, to become a risk taker on the field, course, court, track, hill, or what-have-you, you should embrace risk in all aspects of your life. If you can make taking risks a part of who you are, then risk taking in your sport will simply be what you do.
Two great places that I have been challenging athletes I work with to take risks is socially and academically. For example, if you can ask someone you like out on a date (but haven’t been willing to take the risk of rejection), you’ll find it’s a lot less scary to take a risk in your sport. And if you can speak up in class when your teacher or professor asks a question, taking a risk on the field of play will seem like a piece of cake.
Regardless of the setting, every time you consider taking a risk you are, without realizing it, doing a risk/reward analysis in which you weigh the benefits and costs of taking a risk, whether, for example, going for an ace in tennis, hitting over a water hazard in golf, or throwing long in football. You, of course, don’t want to take risks every time; there is a place for risk and a place to perform more judiciously. You have to decide your chances of succeeding when you take a risk and whether the risk will be rewarded.
Additionally, risk taking isn’t just something that you do; rather, it is something that must be planned for and worked on. Like making a technical or tactical change without careful thought and planning, a spontaneous approach to risk taking will most likely result in failure for most athletes. Sure, the world’s best athletes can sometimes get away with “throw caution to the wind” risk taking because they are talented, experienced, and confident. But for everyone else, it’s not an approach to risk taking that I would recommend.
No Time Like the Present to Take Risks
It never feels like the right time to take risks because, well, there are risks to taking risks. First, when you start taking risks as you learn to push your limits, those risks won’t be rewarded right away. In other words, you’ll likely make mistakes and experience failure more than usual because you’re performing at a level that you are not accustomed to.
Risk taking is, in a sense, a skill that take time, commitment, and persistence to develop. Just like any skill, however, when you first start taking risks in your sport, your mind and body aren’t going to be used to it, so your performances may take a step or two backwards in your practices and competitions. Because you haven’t ingrained the skills fully, it won’t immediately translate into improved performance.
This initial inconsistency happened to a world-class athlete I worked with who had a history of performing conservatively. In the first competitions of the season, he had some periods of great performance, but also made mistakes that cost him. But after about a half dozen events, his risk taking stared to click and he had a series of outstanding performance in big competitions that results in a big leap in his world ranking.
Second, because you will struggle at first, your confidence may also suffer and you may question whether risk taking is the right path to be on. You might say to yourself, “Gosh, my past, safer approach worked pretty well, certainly much better than the way this is going now, so maybe I should just stick with what has worked.”
But what may have worked in the past and gotten you to where you currently are won’t work in the future or get you where you want to go. As an old Texas saying goes, “If all you ever do is all you’ve ever done, then all you’ll ever get is all you’ve ever got.” Your efforts shouldn’t be devoted to where you are now, but where you want to be next month, next year, or in five years in your sport. You need to prepare yourself for performing at the next level. And performing safe just won’t cut it.
In an ideal world, the off-season is the best time to start taking risks because you have no concern about results and you have the time to practice the skill of risk taking. But I would argue that there is no time like the present to start taking risks, regardless of the time of year. If you’re going to make a real commitment to risk taking to get your performances to the next level, you might as well start now because the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll reap the benefits.
“You’ll always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” —hockey legend Wayne Gretzky
Threat vs. Challenge with Risk
As I’ve discussed, the real risk of taking risks is that you might fail. And if you are overly focused on the costs of risk taking, usually driven by fear of failure or feeling pressure to get results, the chances are that you will shift into a threat attitude in which you’re driven to protect yourself from that threat. As a result, you become risk averse (because risk that leads to failure is a threat to your self-identity, self-esteem, and goals) and you’re not likely to take the risks necessary to perform your best. Moreover, even if you do get yourself to take a risk, it will probably not pay off because, in threat mode, as I talked about in the section above on challenge and threat, changes in your physiology and psychology will probably cause the risk to go unrewarded.
You want to see risk taking as a challenge to pursue, not a threat to avoid. With this challenge attitude, physiology and psychology will shift in a way that will increase the chances of the risk being rewarded. You will feel energized, committed, confident, and focused, all of which will help you make those risks pay off in great competitive performances.
Finally, you may think that taking risks is, well, risky for your sport. But the reality is that not taking risks is far more risky to your athletic goals because performing safe will not get you where you want to go. If you take risks, you will certainly have some setbacks in the short run. But, in the long run, you give yourself a lot better chance of performing your best and achieving your sports goals when you take risks. So, when you look at it that way, taking risks in your sport isn’t risky at all!
This article is excepted from my latest mental training book, Train Your Mind for Athletic Success: Mental Preparation to Achieve Your Sports Goals.
