Risk, Fear, and Choice Across Cultures

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In cross-cultural psychology, uncertainty avoidance measures one’s tolerance for ambiguity and the unknown. We use it in intercultural training to assess a person’s comfort-level with risk. It is a cultural value that has been quantified by interculturalists in order to compare your comfort-level (or lack thereof) with others around the globe. For example, US Americans and Swedes tend to be pretty comfortable with risk, while the Japanese and Costa Rican’s tend to be more risk averse.

I recently quit my job of many years and got to thinking a lot about risk, fear, and choice. Maybe we’re not measuring the right thing. Maybe it’s not how comfortable you are with uncertainty, but rather how you choose to confront the fear that comes along with it. The two are slightly different. I was extremely fearful of what to expect after quitting my job, but how did I respond to that fear? Did I dismiss it readily, ignore it completely, or did I fall somewhere in between? I’m sure we all know what it’s like to mull over something for way too long. That was me. I was so afraid of the unknown and of just jumping, that I became paralyzed with fear. This fear stopped me from living my life, and it stopped me from making choices that I knew would be good for me. That is the power of fear.

I would say that in my personal life I’m pretty fearless. I’ve moved apartments more times than I can count, I’ve up and left cities to try something new, I’ve lived abroad, and I have even left family and loved ones behind in search of adventure. However, I can’t say the same for my professional life. For some reason, fear took a strong hold of decisions about my career, and I didn’t stop it. Until now. I finally told fear, “That’s enough.” I made a choice to ignore that fear. To take from Seth Godin, I quieted the lizard brain - that voice in our head telling us to go slow and be careful; the voice inside our mind that is afraid of change.

There’s a great TED talk by Ruth Chang - How to Make Hard Choices. She gives thoughtful advice for anyone struggling with making a big decision and wanting to take a leap. For me, the fear was stopping me from jumping. It was stopping me from choosing the story I want to tell and dreaming up the life I wanted to live. And I know this fear will always be there, wanting to stop me again and again.

So maybe we all are afraid of the unknown, but it’s how we choose to respond that makes all the difference.

Contact me at hello@nicolebarile.com if you’d like to learn more or visit me here. #futureofglobalwork

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