The Proper Level of Risk

In my earlier posting I shared that there were two major factors that affected your confidence in your competence or what we refer to as your successability. The first factor is clarity and the second is the proper level of risk. In this posting I want to share with you what the proper level of risk means.

Motivation is at an optimal level, that is the highest level possible, with tasks of a moderate level of risk. Both high risk challenges and low risk challenges are related to a decrease in motivation. To optimize your motivation, you need to set your risk at a moderate level.

One way to do this is by carefully setting up what are called mastery experiences, experiences in which you are successful. You need to be careful because if you only experience easy successes, you train yourself that success is easy, which can result in you being less able to handle difficult situations. When you experience more difficult successes, on the other hand, you build resilience, and train yourself that success is a result of sustained effort. Hard work and struggle makes you stronger. You want to avoid extremely difficult challenges if you can, however, as you are likely to fail. Failure, though it can be a great learning experience, if it occurs too often, will rob you of your motivation.

In my next posting I will share how we walk that line between easy successes and difficult successes, and an interesting game called the ball in the box game.