Celebrate risk-taking and the lessons from it

Are you celebrating risk-taking and the lessons that come from it?

Or are you only celebrating when risks turn out as hoped? 🤔

The first will lead to more risk-taking.

The second will lead to more risk-avoidance.

How can we celebrate more risk-taking and lessons learned?

1. Tell stories

When someone takes a risk and it works out, ask them what they learned. Then tell the story to others.

For instance, when I was working at HBO in 2004 I wanted to start a podcast. Everyone thought it was a stupid idea.

I had just read Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" and loved the idea of doing an audio version of it for adults. So that's what we did on my first podcast - "The Andy Savage Show".

I thought if we could get 10,000 people to listen then maybe HBO would let me do it for real. And if not, I'd figure something else out.

We got 50,000 people to listen the first week and HBO gave me my own show the next day. It worked out because of risk-taking but also because I took risks during the process (like calling up comedians and asking them to be on my show even though I had no show).

People love stories about risk-takers who take risks and then succeed as a result (or fail as a result but then find success later on). These are great stories to tell at parties or when meeting new people or whenever you want to inspire others or make them laugh or whatever you want from telling these stories.

2. Write down your fears before taking a risk. Then check back with those fears after taking the risk (and hopefully succeeding) to see how they were wrong or right in some ways but mostly irrelevant now that you have taken the risk and succ

For instance, when I started writing this list of things one can do to celebrate risk-taking more often, I felt afraid about what people would think about me writing such a list (what if people think this is stupid? What if people don't like me anymore? Etc). So I wrote down my fears so that i could remind myself after writing this list why these fears were not relevant now that i have taken action based on them anyway .