Risky Enough!

Eight Grade. Our group was called - Hell Skool (I know! I heard you scoff. But in our defence, we were a group of six teenagers who were 2cool4skool).

During a particular Chemistry class on a mundane Thursday, my group decided to bunk the class, simply because three of my friends hadn’t carried their textbooks, which was an abominable crime in the eyes of our Chemistry teacher.

I, the certified scaredy cat, and the stereotypical nerd of the group, was too afraid to bunk the lecture. I was also carrying the textbook, which made it even more conflicting for me to consider bunking.

My friends noticed my hesitation and were kind enough to not coax me further and left me behind. Halfway through the lecture, the teacher noticed that a few students were missing and somehow she managed to hunt down the missing students. I saw my friends being paraded through the corridors with their heads bowed down. They were punished by being asked to stand outside the classroom for the remainder of the lecture.

The ruckus these girls created outside the classroom was worthy of being documented. They had the time of their lives outside and I could hear their endless muffled waves of laughter every few minutes. I giggled every time I heard them laugh, and mostly I sighed! I wished I was out there.

I kept wondering, why did I never accompany my friends in their harmless but risky endeavours. Their risks were almost, always calculated. Nothing would go south drastically. But I never gathered the courage to risk alongside them.

Then again, what is a risk?

I read somewhere that ‘risk’ is the possibility of loss.

Daniel Kahneman (an Israeli-American psychologist and economist) once said that an important part of taking a risk is having a well-calibrated sense of your ‘future regret’. Simply put - you need to accurately understand how you’ll feel if things turn out differently than you hoped.

Thus, maybe ‘regret’ is the best definition of risk. Real risk would be the regret (or the lack of regret) that might come years or decades later.

We spend so much time trying to quantify risk when the answer is just figuring out what we will or won’t regret.

Since childhood, I have been risk-averse, always playing it safe. Too safe. I rarely, if ever attempted doing anything that was conventionally not acceptable. I played by the rule book too diligently. All this because I could barely handle the risk of failing in anything that I undertook.

I disliked failing. I would only ‘risk’ it when I was sure of not failing, And that meant I didn’t take a risk at all.

Over the years, I have been slowly building my risk-taking appetite. Though, somehow, I calculate risks differently for my personal and professional life. I am pragmatic, but mostly risk-averse when taking decisions professionally and I am delusionally optimistic when taking decisions personally.

In my personal life, all my ‘risky’ (or apparent risk-taking) decisions are now calculated considering the ‘regret minimization framework’. The framework is simple. The goal is to minimize the number of regrets in life. The idea is to project yourself into the future and look back on your decision from that perspective.

It sure is a fun way to live and also a liberating mindset to have.

Personally, I now take decisions purely on the basis of avoiding future regret. Pursuing different professional degrees, starting a newsletter, writing cold emails as personal letters, experimenting with different dishes (tasting paan-flavoured chai), and on and on. You get the gist.

Professionally, though I am still building a risk-taking mindset. While working on my brand I tend to take risks that are just enough to not disturb my mental peace. I tend to only push myself just enough to try somethign new but not enough to dream or pursue my wild aspirations.

It is a long way to go but maybe asking myself everyday how I'd feel at age 70 and that might do the trick.

Lastly, I wish I’d risked being punished alongside my friends that mundane Thursday morning. If I could I would love to go back in time and bunk a class with them.

To avoid such cookies in my regret jar, I am going to take some more risks or actively seek a Co-Founder who’d risk more :P

As always a song recommendation. Girta Sambhalta by Aditya N, Nayantara Bhatkal. I highly recommend listening to these on your earphones. (On a side note, please clean your earbuds often! :p)

Before you go, enjoy some favourites from my gallery!

Until the next one sending love, a warm cup of chai and a nudge to risk some more,

Krupa 🌺