Kayt Sukel - The Art of Risk: The New Science of Courage, Caution, and Chance

Intelligent, informed, and deeply curious, The Art of Risk is a revelation.

W ILLIAM S OUDER , Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Under a Wild Sky

A fascinating and beautifully written tour de force on the curious ways our brains weigh decisions.

C HRISTINE G ILBERT , founding blogger of AlmostFearless.com and National Geographic Traveler of the Year

This book is a road map for understanding boldness. Read it and get ready for a bolder lifestyle.

T ODD B. K ASHDAN , professor of psychology, George Mason University, and author of The Upside of Your Dark Side

A smart, lively book that makes you want to reexamine the decisions youve made in your own life.

J ENA P INCOTT , author of Do Chocolate Lovers Have Sweeter Babies? The Surprising Science of Pregnancy

Also by this author

This Is Your Brain on Sex

Published by the National Geographic Society
1145 17th Street NW, Washington, DC 20036

Copyright 2016 Kayt Sukel. All rights reserved. Reproduction of the whole or any part of the contents without written permission from the publisher is prohibited.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sukel, Kayt.
The art of risk : the new science of courage, caution, and chance / Kayt Sukel.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4262-1472-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4262-1473-8
1. Risk-taking (Psychology) I. Title.
BF637.R57S85 2016
155.9dc23
2015010776

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Interior design: Melissa Farris

v3.1

For Ella.
Im betting on you, kiddo.

ONCE UPON A TIME, I WAS A RISK-TAKER. For most of my life, in fact, I was known as such. Even when I was a toddler, Im told, the word most often used to describe me, by family and strangers alike, was fearless. There was no tree too high to climb, no puzzle too hard to solve, and no peer too intimidating to approach. That quality stayed with me as I grew into adulthood. As a teen and a young adult, I usually responded to any dare with Why not? I climbed mountains, swam with sharks (both literally and figuratively), hiked desolate trails, traveled extensively, and jumped out of perfectly good airplanes. I fell in love more times than I could count, eventually marrying a soldier during a time of war, and then moved across the Atlantic to live with himand have a babyin Europe. While he was deployed to Iraq, I could have come back to the States to find a job or stay with family. You know, the predictable response to being left on your own for a year with an infant. Instead, I strapped my young child on my back and headed out to explore Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Later, I divorced that soldier, moved back to the States, and started over from scratch. I immersed myself in researching and writing a book about love and sexand even had an orgasm in a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner (and then watched that orgasm go viral on the Internet). And thats just the highlight reel. Time and time again, I faced challenges head-on (and often dealt with less-than-ideal immediate outcomes) to fully immerse myself in the world.

For the better part of my life, you see, I threw my arms open to possibility and embraced riskthinking my fearless nature played a big part in my successes. I tallied my big mistakes, both professional and personal, like notches on a headboard, believing that my foibles offered me as much, if not more, than my achievements when it came to reaching my potential.

But now? Im no longer so certain. Im not sure Id classify the place Im currently ata bored, single mom living in the suffocating confines of suburbiaas success, exactly. And frankly, when I look closely at my situation, it doesnt seem all that different from where my more play-it-safe type of friends ended up. But one thing is clear: Somewhere along the line, while taking all those risks and tallying up all those mistakes, I lost my mojo. These days, Im no longer looking for my next adventure. The only thing I seem to be looking for is the next Law and Order marathon on cable. I appear to be suffering from a reverse midlife crisis. Instead of approaching my 40s with a 22-year-old boy toy and a Corvette, Ive joined the PTA and bought myself a nice, reliable station wagon. When I take a hard look, I realize Im now much more of a spectator than a participant in life. And it bothers me. A lot. But not enough, thus far, to do anything about it.

I am not sure what has changed in the past few years to cause this reverse midlife crisis. Could it be my environment? My age? My gender? Exhaustion? The responsibilities involved in single motherhoodor perhaps just motherhood in general? A raw and battered psyche after a painstaking divorce? A lack of crazy peers whispering the right kind of suggestions in my ear? A newfound fear of consequences? Or is some other factor at play? I cant be sure of the answer.

But I need to find out. Because I find myself at a bit of a crossroadsin both my professional and personal lives. And if risk-taking was a key component of my success in the past, I need to find a way to harness it in my future.

You see, my work life is not where I want it to be. Like many of my peers, I seem to err on the side of playing it safe when it comes to my career. With retirement lurking on the horizon, fixing me with terrifying, not-good-enough, youre-going-to-die-broke-and-alone type stares, its hard to imagine a career path these days where you can forgo safety. Especially when you have a child counting on youpaying the bills (and paying the bills in a place with a decent public school system) seems nonnegotiable. But safety, especially as a writer, is tedious