Creative risk-taking: How to eat dirt and reconnect with your inner child

If your born around 1982 you’ll likely resonate with the idea that right now your are too old to rock neon and too young to retire it!
If this sounds like you then there is a high chance you loved Nirvana but were too young to make their concert before Kurt kicked the bucket. You had every belief that you looked cool donning a pair of seventies style converse in the nineties and yet these days you smile smugly every time you see someone in their high tops. You know how things tick when it comes to digital devices -if compared to your parents -but you aren’t quite ready for TicTok.
Yet there is one thing that makes you different from your so called ‘millennial’ counterparts. Your appetite for risk!
Let’s face it — you grew up in the eighties. You ate dirt riding ridiculously fast down dirt tracks on anything with wheels. On holidays you ran out first thing in the morning to meet the neighbors kids and you didn’t come home until it was time to eat. You had no fear and yet somehow things are beginning to change.
Millennial risk-taking vs the certainty complex:
Unlike your own desire for risk and ambiguity most Millennial’s have developed a ‘certainty complex’. They seek out risk averse environments and poses a keen ability to create the illusion of spontaneity.
This can be seen in the state of entrepreneurship. Millennial's are the first to claim the mindset or status of an entrepreneur but when it comes to the more falsifiable measure of entrepreneurship, the older generations are doing the heavy lifting.
If you’re anything like me you don’t consider yourself young and you have visible signs that you are getting old. When it comes to business, chances are you’ve already started one, if not two or more businesses, and you aren’t looking to stop anytime soon. Don’t despair!
According to Start-up Victoria (AUS) and the Kauffman Foundation (US), the average age for a successful startup-founder is approx. 40 years old. In fact, the percentage of Millennial entrepreneurs sits well below that of other age groups. Which highlights that despite popular myth, “Millennials are on track to be the least entrepreneurial generation in recent history” (John Lettieri-Economic Innovation Group). So where does that leave those born on the cusp who are still technically a millennial?
More importantly, as an ‘on the cusp’ millennial, how do you continue to nurture your natural desire for risk taking whilst existing in the body of someone far less malleable and in the mind of someone far more likely to question every decision?
Practice!
The realities of risk-taking:
I’ve recently taken up mountain biking. The first time I did it I was going through a tough time emotionally so I naively decided to dive straight in. I went from Green runs to Blue runs in a day and the next day gambled on Black. I went a little too far.
I paid for it when my bike flipped over me on a near vertical hill and I toppled into the blackberry bushes which were scenically placed on either side. I came out with only a few minor cuts and a bruise the size of my thigh.
The eighties kid in me got straight back on the bike but this time I was super cautious of every move, every turn, every rock and every hill.
That same year I was given a snow board. Once no stranger to eating snow, after the biking fall, I could not find the confidence to turn the board downhill from the nose.
This was the exact same problem I had encountered in my creative business pursuits. The inability to pull of the most fundamental move — to simply get started.
Unfortunately, this regression into a state of extreme cautiousness after a fall, fail or set back is something I’ve seen play out many a time in my career as a creative and founder. Burn me once, you won’t get to burn me twice. I retreat. The millennial in me claims to be otherwise but I’ve already checked out. I self-censor, tone things down, don’t speak up. You name it. Anything to avoid risk.
So, whilst the sporting analogy is interesting, what is really worth asking is how this state of frozen fear is going to impact the future choices of on the cusp millennial's in business. And even more importantly, what can we do about it?
Practicing ‘getting back on the bike’:
The way I see it is if you’re going to get back on the bike, you have to do so with the same confidence and appetite for risk that you had when you started.
I went mountain biking again. On day one I went on the Green run. On every down hill I dismounted and walked. At the end of that day I went to the ‘skills park’ and tried to find my confidence to go down the steeper hills and to do some of the jumps. No luck.
Day Two I had the realization that as with creativity and business, it comes down to skill. Skill that is developed through practice. So I practiced. I practiced shifting my mindset from one of fear to one of positive motivation. Safety was front and center in my decision making meaning I took calculated risks.
Day Three saw me on the Blue runs, going down hills with steep vertical inclines.
I’d practiced my way out of a risk-taking rut. I’d honed my confidence and reconnected with my inner-child.
There is no doubting that the way in which I approach risk as I push forty is going to be different than the way in which I approached risk in my youth.
Yet there is no doubt in my mind that if you loose that confidence to lead the game then there is a high chance your creative and entrepreneurial pursuits will suffer. The creative, considered, critical and consolidated ideas and actions of our generation will be lost without some sort of risk-taking.
If like me you were unfortunate enough to loose yours then I suggest you practice getting it back.
Start by rockin’ some neon!
Follow me here for more: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliviailic/
