• September 9, 2025

How to Take More Risks

What Separates You From the Life You Want?

What separates you from the life you are living and the life you want to live?

One million answers may come to mind, but the most common one I hear is: fear of taking risks.

Understanding the Nature of Risk

Inherently, it is terrifying. A jump, or a leap, even a step. Moving towards the action that scares us—it is nerve-racking. Taking a risk looks different for everyone, and changes for every situation. At one point, a risk could be sky-diving. Another time, it could be public speaking. A risk could even be sharing your feelings in a hard conversation.

In the moment that we have the option, that we can take the risk, fear hits. Without knowing why, we may freeze. The option of failure, something going wrong, or even the change the risk offers can stop us in our tracks. Sometimes, when we miss that moment, we can feel overwhelmed by regret.

Practicing Risk in Therapy

In therapy, we work with people to practice taking those risks.

Beginning taking risks means accepting the anxiety that emerges. Risks are scary, there is always an unknown. But, using mindfulness to accept the anxiety can help us not to feel frozen.

Mindfully, we can identify the feeling, contextualize it, and contain it. Feeling anxious does not indicate the outcome of a risk. It is simply an intense emotion coming from an unknown.

What Taking Risks Really Means

Taking risks means accepting that feeling, accepting the possible outcomes, and pursuing the risk anyway.

Where to Begin

So where do we start? With clients, we like to use a tool from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) as a guide. With this, we can start by identifying goals that align with your values.

We can answer the question: what is a small action that feels worth the risk?

Growth Over Fear

By taking meaningful risks, we can expand ourselves and our capabilities. The fear begins to feel more temporary. The potential growth is permanent and priceless.