How to Get Over Your Fear of Taking a Career Risk

How to Get Over Your Fear of Taking a Career RiskHow to Get Over Your Fear of Taking a Career RiskWhen youre considering taking a big career leap, its easy to be dissuaded by fear. Whether youre thinking of starting your own business, making a major career change, or taking a leap of faith to pursue a passion, its normal to have doubts and hesitations about the uncertainty involved. Your mind immediately jumps to all the potential risks and, imagining the vulnerability youd feel after leaving familiarity behind, that fear gets the better of you. Challenging jobs, exciting new cities, and even unconventional hobbies get passed over because its hard to say, I really dont know how this will turn out, but Ill give it my all anyway.But when was the last time you really thought about how risky the risk youre taking is? While all of your concerns are legitimate, the magnitude of these hesitations is often blown out of proportion. Just for kicks, lets take a moment to reconsider how risky ta king a year to try something bold, daring, and adventurous really is. Try this logicLets assume that the average part in the U.S. lives to be about 80 years old.Then, lets say it would take you about one year to figure out if this big bold idea of yours might have potential. Now put the two together One year out of 80 is 1/80, or 1.25% of your life. That seems surprisingly small, right? In fact, when you think of it like this, nothing seems that risky anymore, even if you might not succeed in the end. We can even take this a step further Lets say you did work night and day on your new startup idea or upped and moved to a foreign country. One of two things would happen either it would be wildly successful and transform your life completely, or it would fail but you would still be rewarded with a life lesson or two. When framed this way, any new venture, idea, or crazy thought youre considering seems much less daunting, and thats something powerful to think about. This isnt all to say that you shouldnt take some precautious when you take a leap. Before you jump into the deep end, consider buffering your risk by setting some boundaries for yourself. One way to do this is to have a timeline. Set aside a certain number of months, and in those months, be relentless. Give it 120%. But if, at the end, theres still no sign of promise, give yourself permission to move on. It also might be helpful to create a budget cutoff to stick to. Just because you have low opportunity cost in terms of time doesnt mean youll have freedom from financial risk. Knowing how much youre capable of spending from the beginning can help keep unforeseeable financial circumstances in check.It takes some serious guts to put yourself out there to embrace the road not yet taken, especially if you have safer options that are close at hand. But by giving yourself practical constraints and looking at the risk spread across a lifetime, you might just give yourself the motivation you need to go for it. Photo of risk courtesy of Shutterstock.