Are you risk-averse? Does the thought of failure make your gut clench? Me too. Risk is a funny thing. We wouldn’t go for a flight in an ultra-light airplane because you are all exposed way up high there. But being that most accidents happen in the home, we dangle over kitchen counters, reaching for that box way in the back while standing on a wobbly kitchen chair. We do all sorts of out-of-code repairs on our homes, fiddle with machinery without unplugging them, and eat all kinds of poisonous junk.
My point is that risk-taking is a matter of perception. Perhaps the most common and quintessential forms of dangerous risk-taking are alcohol abuse and smoking. But they are legal, and all sorts of other potentially fun things are not.
Like myself, the articulate and talkative individual is a good case study of someone who is risk-averse but gets into trouble all the time. When you use too many big words in the wrong setting or can’t shut up when silence is golden, that would not be risk averse.
There are some potential advantages to being a loudmouth, though; you become pretty good at sprint running and agile at dodging fists flung at your face.
So think about this the next time you are offered hang gliding, parachuting, or Russian roulette as a leisure activity. You already do many risky things without much thought or care for their danger.
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