Take a Risk + Win! Your Choice.
Choose either the Harry & David Savory Sweets - or the Harry & David Snack Box. Enter monthly!
THE WORKSHOPS: 5-Star Rated
Healthy Risks are risks that pull you out of your self-imposed, habitual comfort zone. Initially, they’re scary. But, healthy risks don’t create danger for you, nor do they put others or property in danger. Healthy risks widen your capability, your influence, your self-perception, your self-imposed limits.
Most of us feel lighter, hopeful and have a new pep in our step when we take a healthy risk, even when the outcome wasn’t what we had hoped for. This is because in the very act of risk-taking the healthy, courageous part of ourselves took the driver’s seat! We took our power back. We didn’t let old, crusty, limiting thoughts take over.
- An example of healthy risk taking is initiating a conversation with someone whom you feel intimidated by due to your own fearful thoughts (and most of us have plenty of those!).
- An example of unhealthy risk taking is going out of your way to interact with someone or something known to be unsafe, or doing something reckless (driving fast). We want you to avoid unhealthy risks and only engage in healthy risk taking.
Here’s more:
Confidence Tip 3 + da funky funk
Your entire life is dictated by your comfort zones. Take that in. It’s as if you walk around inside a clear Plexiglas hamster ball which limits how far you can move. It’s like a Twilight Zone episode, except it’s real – and YOU’RE STARRING! Wierrrrd. Not your best ‘name in lights’ moment.
If you’re like most of us, you limit yourself all the time. Some of these limits are good: You hold yourself back before running into the street (if not, please stop reading; time to get back into your ball).
Before you read the rest of this, do yourself a favor: Privately identify one thing you’re not saying or doing – because of fear.
Risks can be physical (hang-gliding) or emotional (speaking in front of a high-powered group of decision-makers). It’s the emotional risks we’re talking with you about today.
Most of us are risk averse – we automatically run from risk. Maybe you’re like this, too. You traipse through your day when suddenly – BAM – you hit your emotional comfort zone wall. Instead of going through said comfort zone, you unconsciously bounce off of it – and head right in the other direction. This happens quickly (in a microsecond) – without our awareness – often throughout each day.
Here’s what you’re giving up: Glorious treasures, matey. Dig your fists through the plentiful bounty that lies behind Wall Number Two (a’hem cough: we’re referring, here, to your Risk Wall)…gleaming gems such as:
- Success or promotions at school or work
- Amazing, authentic personal relationships!
- Banishing da funk: Funky, stagnant moods and the nagging doubts about whether your life has purpose
- Path to a FULL LIFE (top that one) – a life of meaning, joy and exhilaration
In our young adult and teen confidence workshops (we have confidence workshops for adults, too), we watch scores of participants take healthy risks. Spoiler alert: No one has died or had a psychotic break. Most of the time, they’re successful. I mean, by the 1970s, Superman (one of our early workshop participants) became able to withstand an atomic explosion and even flew through the core of a star (stretch goal!)*.
And when participants weren’t successful, they’re still glad they took a risk – they learned from it. Plus, they got a much needed lung-full of fresh, BPE-free oxygen. Seriously: Their hamster ball became much bigger and they gained far more inner power than they ever realized was possible*.
Fear is part of the human experience. That ‘Fearless’ bumper sticker with the edgy font? I can’t stand that thing.**
- The goal isn’t to be fear-less. That goes against our very nature.
- The goal is courage: having fear and moving forward anyway.
- The word courage comes from the Latin cor meaning “heart”.
And, risk is rarely as scary as it seems. Reid Hoffman, Founder of LinkedIn says, “…the surest way to succeed is to take startling – yet intelligent – risks, again and again.” Maybe Reid hasn’t flown through the core of a star (YET. We’re not giving up on you, Reid!), but he’s hardly ‘meh’ in terms of healthy-risk outcomes.
What is the fear that holds YOU back? That thing you’re not saying or doing because of your fears?
If you don’t act on your risk now, when will you do it? Truth: We’re worried that you’ll bookmark that risk and get to it ‘later’ like so many adults tell us (“Boy, I wish I had taken this confidence workshop when I was younger”). We so hope that ‘later’ for you isn’t two decades from now (the very source of life regret).
So, name one healthy risk – small or big – that you can take or schedule right now. Healthy risk taking is good for you.
When you take that risk (small or large – it all counts), tell us about it in a sentence or two. Your name will be entered to WIN either a Harry & David Savory Sweets Box or a Harry & David Snack Box! Enter once monthly (because healthy risks are good for you!)
More power to you! Take risks.
Dan + Sioux
* Superman refuses to listen to us about healthy vs. unhealthy risk; we have tried!
**I’d rather be fishing.
If you’re the lucky winner, you’ll receive Harry & David Sparkling French Cider made with handpicked apples fresh from the orchards of Brittany, France. Guess what: If you’re one of the winners, you can gift your selection to someone else (lucky them)! Take a Risk. Remember: enter once monthly (healthy risk taking is good for you)!
