In the fall of 2014, my wife, kids and I held a family discussion on the question of whether we ready to leave California and move to Barcelona, Spain. This was a huge decision we needed to make before I accepted my current role as CEO of Softonic.
Sitting on the warm, sunny beaches of California, the move looked pretty terrifying to some of us. It felt like a huge risk, the largest we had taken as a family. But the eventual vote was unanimous: we decided to take the leap and move to Spain, despite some of the big challenges. For example, none of us even spoke Spanish at the time.
Today it looks like the best decision we ever made. We traded in our big house in the suburbs for a tiny apartment in the center of the city, and we became closer as a family. At the same time, we broadened our individual experiences and networks of friends. My 11-year-old daughter now counts Germans, Spaniards and Brazilians among her circle of best friends. She’s well on her way to fluency in Spanish and has even picked up conversational Portuguese along the way.
For most people, there is a natural human tendency to avoid risk. We want to protect ourselves and our family, and stay safe. But avoiding risk entirely is one of the worst things you can do.
Without change and risk, you become set in your ways. You stop learning and eventually may even close yourself off to any sort of change. You may become one of those people who resist change within your company, perhaps saying “That’s not the way we do things here.”
Carol Dweck, author of the book Mindset, argues that the most successful professionals are those who believe their abilities are flexible, that with enough effort they can acquire new skills and capabilities. In other words, they have a growth mindset.
But growth is risky. It exposes you to failure and criticism. The very process of trying something new puts you in the position—at least temporarily—of being an absolute novice. For example, it’s humbling to be a grown adult and not knowing how to tell a waiter, “Please don’t put sauce on my steak.”
Fortunately, you can get used to taking risks. They don’t become less risky, but you can become addicted in a good way to the exhilarating feeling of trying something new.
Calculated risks keep you fresh, engaged, and competitive. They challenge you to rethink your attitudes and defend—or perhaps alter—your beliefs.
Or, you could look at it this way: the biggest risk of all is to take too little risk. If you want to keep your career in great shape and your personal life interesting, push yourself out of your comfort zone on a regular basis.