Feeling fright is both essential and unhelpful, depending on the situation.  The fight or flight innate reflex implanted into humankind has certainly saved each of us from harm many times.  Fright caused you to jump back from an approaching car or to decide to avoid that deserted street at night.  However, has too much fright robbed you of much happiness and adventure?

 The epidemiologist Hans Rosling noted:

“Frightening” and “dangerous” are two different things. Something frightening poses a perceived risk. Something dangerous poses a real risk. Paying too much attention to what is frightening rather than what is dangerous— that is, paying too much attention to fear— creates a tragic drainage of energy in the wrong directions. ……. I would like my fear to be focused on the mega dangers of today, and not the dangers from our evolutionary past.” *

 Fear often occurs because we confuse frightening with dangerous.  Fright or fear is an emotional response to a perceived threat which is often highly unlikely.  Take terrorism as an example.  The likelihood of being killed in a terrorist event in the West is 20 times less than being killed in a natural disaster, 14 times less than being murdered but 50 times more than being killed in a plane crash.  More people are killed by bees or horses than terrorists.  But what do we hear about?  Bees, horses or terrorists!!

 Danger is risk that is really out there, based on actual threats. Hans notes:

“The world seems scarier than it is because what you hear about it has been selected— by your own attention filter or by the media— precisely because it is scary.”

We don’t hear about safe outcomes, uneventful but wonderful adventures (unless they are a travel documentary) or happy endings, because they are deemed uninteresting and boring”

In finance the way risk taking is posed is by answering this real life trade-off question:  Do you want to eat well (take more risk) or sleep well (take less risk?) Regardless, the more risk you take the more you will earn.  That’s life.  

There is no right answer to the risk taking/caution dilemma, but that doesn’t mean you should be indifferent or unaware of the trade-offs. 

Regardless of your mindful choice, you unconsciously make the choice to be cautious or take a risk many times a day.  Please temper your conclusion with the occasional reality check: your well-being might appreciate it.

 Reflection Source: www.Smallercup.org

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*: "Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About The World - And Why Things Are Better Than You Think" by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund