How to Know You're Playing It Too Safe (and What You Might Do If You Don't)

There's fear...and then there's "danger." We all know to avoid the kinds of danger that involve seat belts, construction sites, moving vehicles of any kind. But I'm not talking about that danger. I'm talking about the things you've been talked into being afraid of, encultured to fear; i.e., coming off as rude, offending someone, saying the wrong thing.

The real question for you is: How is your perception of what's "dangerous" keeping you from the very things that would change your life in a really, really good way?

Note: this is not an ad for Danger Coffee. Though I do like it. 

It's really good coffee, make no mistake. But I'm not vibing with the name right now. Because the world feels like a very dangerous place. I don't need my coffee to be dangerous.

The tagline: "Who knows what you might do."

I choose to read that as...optimistic. Like, who knows what you or I might do this year! Things could be amazing. We might try something or achieve something we never dreamed. Possibly, yes.

But also, please, can my coffee not be dangerous? Thank you.

I'm afraid of most things. Things that a lot of people really, truly enjoy. Like: Bungee jumping. Surfing. Rollercoasters. Riding on the back of a motorcycle. Sleeping in the woods at night. 

But I don't mind being a little scared, which is why I often watch horror movies and listen to murder podcasts.

So while I hardly eat fear for breakfast, I do drink something called Danger coffee, which I'm about to tell you about.

I even drink something Dave Asprey made called Danger Coffee.

The world feels dangerous enough. People in power are using fear to destabilize us. The forces at play would like to burn democracy to the ground and start over.

Who knows what you might do?

Aside from the obvious world-on-fire stuff, what else are you afraid of right now? Afraid of...failure? Messing up? Looking stupid?

The upside of all this chaos is that the more pedestrian fears we might have day to day start to look less fearsome. I mean, if the world is ending, who cares if someone doesn't respond to my email!

In this book Tribes, Seth Godin writes,

"What people are afraid of isn't failure. It's blame. Criticism. We choose not to be remarkable because we're worried about criticism...because we're worried, deep down, that someone will hate it and call us on it."

The slightest edge in someone's tone, roll of the eyes, or sigh can be enough to slice right through you, to make you step back, stand down.

What's worse, you don't even have to experience actual, real-life criticism to have it take an effect, he says:

"Fear of criticism is a powerful deterrent because the criticism doesn't actually have to occur for the fear to set in. Watch a few people get criticized for being innovative, and it's pretty easy to convince yourself that the very same thing will happen to you."

I'd never say I'm fearless, or that what people say doesn't affect me. Of course it does!

The difference is, I've learned to pick my battles, and I choose my critics.

The worst thing ever is not that someone will criticize you, in my mind. It's that no one notices you at all. That you don't even merit criticism. And the best way to have that happen? Is to not take a shot. Not try it. Not risk it.

The irony is that if you're a woman, you've been warned away from danger forever, threatened within an inch of your life to stay where you are, don't go too close to this or stray too far from that. And to be clear, the world is not safe for women, period. But still. 

The idea is that if you trespass, transgress, take a risk, you could hurt yourself, OR SOMEONE ELSE. 

Most of us were not encouraged to court danger. And honestly you're not going to find me out there courting danger. Maybe you're much more of a rebel than me, and I'm guessing you probably are. I need to microdose Dramamine for days before I set foot on a bus. 

But here's my real fear: 

That we risk more by losing touch with what's dangerous in side of us. The part that, frankly, other people are afraid of. 

I'm reading this classic text, Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD. It's basically my bible now. It's full of stories, allegories, heroines, villains, creatures, magic—just like the other bible. 

But what she's teaching us to do is not to move fast and break things, but slow down and overturn things, to challenge what we know and have been told in order to reconnect with what we've been cut off from.  Namely, our intuition, our bodies, our senses. 

Don't think you were cut off? If you've ever bitten your tongue, watched your language, hesitated to say a thing for fear it might not offend; if you've ever talked yourself out of a gut decision in the name of being nice or fair, you've been cut off. If you've ever told yourself that to tend to your own needs is silly or selfish or immoral, you've been cut off. 

Estes writes, 

"When we lose touch with the instinctive psyche, we live in a semi-destroyed state...When a woman is cut away from her basic source, she is sanitized, and her instincts and natural life cycles are lost, subsumed by the culture, or b the intellect or the ego." 

The Wild Woman archetype, she says, "is the health of all women." This archetype transcends age, culture, time. The way she appears may change, but she does not change, she says. "She is what she is and she is whole."

Here's an abbreviated list of symptoms she provides, which are indicative of being severed from that source, which to varying degrees includes all of us: 

"Feeling extranordinarily dry, fatigued, frail, depressed, confused, gagged, muzzled, unaroused...without inspiration, without animation, without soulfulness, without meaning...volatile, stuck, uncreative , compressed, crazed."

What might happen if we stopped mending, fixing, and tending to, and instead, went ham on our wild selves? What if we trusted our nature, our intuition, ourselves for a change, instead of talking ourselves out of them? 

Well, that could be...dangerous. 

Because who knows what you might do?

You might... 

Start that project. 

Share that idea. 

Quit that thing you hate. 

Try the thing you've always been keen on. 

Take a risk. 

Say the thing. 

Turn down a perfectly good offer that you actually don't care about

Leave early. 

Be honest AF.

As a result of that risk, that tuning in to the wild woman in you, you might...

Meet someone you wouldn't have otherwise met. 

Surprise yourself. 

Discover a thing you didn't know about. 

Find new business. 

Keep some time to yourself. 

Worry less. 

Have just a really good time. 

Get real clear about a decision. 

Stop making the same mistake over and over again. 

The point that we need to reframe danger. 

Because yes there's danger out there. But the greater danger is remaining in a cell of your own making because you didn't think you were "allowed" to do what you wanted, when you absolutely 100% are. 

It's at least worth asking, what if. 

And not: What's the worst that could happen, but what's the best possible thing that might happen?