Episode #425 – The high cost of playing it safe

This is episode 425 of the Brilliant Balance podcast. Today we’re talking about the high cost of playing it safe. So thanks for tuning in today, in the middle of what I know is a very busy month for so many of the women in this community. It means a lot to me that you would press play and take a second to tune into this episode.

Because today we’re tackling something that I think shows up for a lot of us who have long histories of achievement. It shows up even for the ones who look wildly successful from the outside.

And it’s this deep, almost invisible resistance to taking risks. You know—not big reckless risks like, I don’t know, jumping off a cliff or driving a race car—but resistance to making the kinds of moves that would actually help us grow and advance our lives. Those kinds of risks.

And somewhere along the way, it’s like we learned that the safe path—the polished one, the predictable one—was the smart path.

And that anything that looked like risk, smelled like risk, rhymed with risk was something to be avoided. But what I want to explore today is the hidden cost of that strategy.

Because even though playing it safe feels responsible—and we validate our decisions by saying, “Oh, look at how responsible I’m being”—it really can slowly shrink our lives to a fraction of what’s possible.

And that’s not fun. So if you are someone who feels that tug that says, “I want more, but I’m really afraid to mess things up,” or if you’ve noticed that you always default to the reliable choice, the responsible choice instead of the exciting one…

…this episode is absolutely for you. So we’re going to unpack what’s really going on there. We’re going to talk about what it costs us, and also how to start taking meaningful risks again in a way that feels aligned, supported, and actually doable.

So let’s dive in. We’re going to get into three big things today: Why do high-achieving women default to safe mode? What are the hidden costs of playing it safe?

And how do we start taking bigger swings without losing our minds in the process? OK? So let’s set the stage for this. First of all, I mentioned this at the top of the episode: This comes up a lot with women who have a long history of achievement.

Particularly achievement by traditional measures like good grades, top schools, predictably prestigious careers. Those are the people who seem to have this deep resistance to taking risks.

And I don’t mean big, giant ones. I mean any move that isn’t absolutely guaranteed to work, right? Any decision that feels uncertain or unpredictable. Any leap where you know the landing spot isn’t already marked by a shiny gold star we know we’re going to get when we get there.

You know the pattern. And if you don’t see this in yourself, I’m sure you see it in people close to you. Right? But I’m willing to bet you might recognize it in yourself. We aim for excellence all the time. And in order to do that, we draw a circle around “excellent” that’s like: we know exactly how to get in there.

We know exactly how to land because we’ve done it before and we can do it again. But that same skill set that made us so successful—calling our shot and nailing it over and over again—starts to slowly work against us.

OK? Because excellence is great. I love to be excellent. I admire excellence in other people…until it becomes a cage. OK? And it starts to create an edge that we can’t get past because we haven’t learned how to do the next thing with excellence yet. Right? And so for a lot of us, that’s what happens. We get so good at getting things right—exactly right—that the idea of getting something wrong starts to feel intolerable. Like the stakes are just too high and we can’t make ourselves do it.

Right. The stakes are too high for the reputation that we’ve built. They’re too high for our ego’s sense of competence. They’re too high for our carefully curated image of someone who always has it together.

So instead of taking the chance when the chance comes along, we just don’t, right? We stay in what’s known, what’s proven. We make those responsible, smart choices. We pat ourselves on the back, and we keep ourselves comfortable.

I have been guilty of this more times than I can count. I promise you, I’ve been guilty of this. I also have made very courageous choices at a few critical junctures in my life. But this is a deep MO for me.

And it sounds like a good strategy until you realize the cost. And it’s a big one, right? And I want to make this paradox really clear: We think that playing it safe is protecting us, but it is actually limiting us.

It just is, OK? So why do we do it? Well, first of all, most of this starts really early, right? A lot of us learned that the way to succeed—the way to get praise, to be accepted, to be trusted—was by being the girl who got things right: the good girl, the responsible one, the achiever, the one who doesn’t drop balls, doesn’t make messes, doesn’t take risks that could make anybody worry.

And that social conditioning follows us into adulthood, where perfectionism kicks in, right? We develop this sense of over-responsibility where we think we’re responsible for everything.

And a whole collection of fears comes along for the ride. Think to yourself if any of these sound familiar: the fear of looking incompetent.

I hate that one. The fear of disappointing people. The fear of losing things like money or prestige. The fear of judgment, the fear of visibility, the fear of not living up to our own standards. These are all kind of like costumes for the same root fear, which is fear of failure. We can dress it up lots of different ways, but ultimately that fear of failure is the thing that keeps us playing it safe. So we choose the safe path over and over again…

…the thing we already know we can succeed at—not because we aren’t capable people, but because we have this very tight success threshold where the only acceptable outcome is: “This works perfectly.” And that makes risk feel too dangerous to take on.

But here’s the part we don’t talk about enough: Playing it safe has a cost—a very real cost. We don’t think about this. We only think about the benefit, right? Avoiding failure. But when we avoid risk in our attempt to avoid failure, we are actually avoiding growth.

We are avoiding growth. We shrink opportunities down to “definitely doable” size before we even explore them. We choose the smaller version of our life completely unintentionally. We don’t even realize we’re doing it.

And over time, that safe little box that initially felt so good starts to feel suffocating, right? The women I coach inside of BOLD and inside of Brave now tell me, “I don’t know why this feels so flat.”

They don’t necessarily use the word “flat.” They would say, “I don’t know where I lost my sense of adventure. My life looks great on paper. I mean, I’ve done some things here…” But they know they’re just rearranging the furniture. They’re not really going for it. And so I’ll ask them, “When was the last time you took a real swing?”

Right? And the answer is a long time ago. Too often, that is the answer I get back. And you see it when people reflect later in their lives: If you think about the regrets of the dying, the regrets aren’t usually about failures.

In fact, this is pretty widely published. They’re about the chances they didn’t take, the business they didn’t start, the pivot they talked themselves out of.

The move they didn’t make because it felt uncertain. The relationship they never pursued. The dream they stayed realistic about. Those are the things that come up among the regrets of the dying—because by that point, when they’re looking back on their life, they’re realizing what the cost of safety was. We think safety is comfortable.

We think that by avoiding all risk, we’re doing the right thing. I mean, that’s always been the story I told myself in those circumstances. But the truth is: safety often becomes stagnation, and stagnation breeds resentment—especially in people who are wired for growth. I think we’re all wired for growth. Maybe some of us more than others.

I am especially wired for growth. And if I feel like I am stagnant, I am cranky about it. I am angry at the people who I think are involved in that, even if that person is myself. And the root of that stagnation is almost always a desire for safety.

So we end up with this nagging sense that there’s more in me, but it’s trapped under layers of fear that we’ve dressed up as responsibility so we can feel good about them. Because who doesn’t want to feel responsible? That seems like such a good thing to do.

If we’re like, “Oh, I’m not doing it because I’m afraid,” we feel like an idiot. If we say, “I’m not doing it because it’s irresponsible,” we can justify that. I have had many conversations with women who are making a “no” decision about something and dressing it up as being responsible.

“It would be irresponsible of me to do this right now, given the many responsibilities that I have,” right? We’re addicted to being responsible. But safety—even in the name of responsibility—when it becomes stagnation and you start to feel yourself (I’ve used this metaphor before) like a stagnant pond…

Think about how gross a stagnant pond is, right? It’s got a layer of green on top. It smells bad. Compare that to a flowing river…

…or a gushing waterfall, right? There’s movement and energy and renewal and freshness in moving bodies of water. When we’re talking about a stagnant pond—stagnation—it’s the last thing I want to be, OK? But we can end up there before we even know what happened. But here’s the good news.

Risk-taking is the way out, and risk-taking is a skill. It’s not a personality trait. It’s not something you’re born with. You don’t have to be like, “Well, I’ve been a risk-taker since I was a toddler.” It can be learned. It can be developed. It can be strengthened. But this is important: Most of us don’t learn it on our own.

Most of us don’t just wake up one day and say, “I think I’m going to get better at taking risks today. I’ll just go take some bigger swings.” It just doesn’t seem to work that way. You really need people around you who are doing the same thing—who are stretching, who are taking leaps, who can normalize what measurable risk actually feels like so your brain doesn’t start to misinterpret every discomfort as danger.

And so having a structure that helps you see: Where are your blind spots? Where do I have an old pattern that needs to be interrupted?

Where do I need to be pushed when I want to shrink back? A structure that helps you do that is absolutely the game changer. So I’m taking a big swing right now in my life and in my business with Brave.

I’ve been talking about this for a couple of weeks. The vision that we are chasing right now as an organization with this endeavor is bigger than anything we’ve done before. I’ve grown my team.

I’ve brought in experts. I’ve upgraded our technology so that the experience we create for you can be truly first-class. And guess what?

All of that carries risk, right? Because if you want to live a bigger life, if you want to build something really meaningful, if you want to reinvent something, if you want to step into the next version of yourself, you’re going to have to take some risks.

And it is uncomfortable, right? It’s uncomfortable. We’re not even talking about reckless ones, remember. These are measured, calculated, strategic risks. And the skills it requires to take those—most of us never got taught.

We were too busy making sure we knew what to do to get an A on that test. We were too busy making sure we knew exactly what we had to say in the interview to get that job. So we never got taught how to do this. We were busy learning how to succeed on a very well-defined path. We weren’t learning how to be bold enough to chart our own path.

And Brave is the place where you get to practice that. In my world, Brave is the place we’ve built for you to build that muscle—where you can get supported instead of doing this in isolation. Where taking bigger swings starts to feel normal because the women around you are doing it too.

Because yeah, there’s a cost to risk. We know there is. But there’s also a cost to avoiding risk. And so if you’re somebody who’s feeling that stagnation—that little ache, that restlessness that says, “I think I’ve got more in me than this”—then it might be time to stop playing it so safe and actually take the next brave step.

OK, so I just want you to check in with yourself today. Does this resonate with you? Is there a place in your life where you know you’ve been playing it safe? Is there a move that you’ve been thinking about making, but you’re talking yourself out of it?

Or a dream that you’ve kept on the shelf because the idea of failing just feels too risky. Those are the signs, y’all. If you see yourself in those stories, if you are starting to feel that kind of pull…

…I want you to make sure that you know what’s going on in Brave. And again, there is a page built for you. It’s brilliant-balance.com/brave. I’ve been talking about this for a few weeks because all we’re doing inside of Brilliant Balance right now is getting ready for these doors to open in January. But we built this experience for this exact moment in your journey.

To help women like you stretch themselves. To get out of stagnation. To move into bigger possibilities. To take bigger swings. And when we open those doors, I want you to already know you’re ready.

So if you head over, the link is in the show notes, or you can follow what I just read: brilliant-balance.com/brave. Get on the waitlist so that when the doors open, you have the first chance to come inside and be a part of what we’re building.

That is all for today, my friends. I hope that you are back off to the holiday hustle, doing all of the things. This is a busy, busy week in the whole cycle. So take extra good care of yourself, and go be brilliant.