INSIDE OUTSUBTEXT OF RISK
The subtext that you send out when you take a risk, when you
chance something, is one of confidence and aggressiveness. The
very act of going out on a limb says to people that you are a
person of action.
A group of us were sitting on the deck of my friend Steve's
house one evening watching the sun set over the Pacific. Steve,
who had been tossing pennies into the bubbling hot tub claiming
it acted as a wishing well, said, "I saw a job I could apply for
the other day. Selling fax machines. It said absolutely no experience
needed. They have their own list of customers."
I smiled. Steve was a compulsively successful Hollywood writer
who had once confessed to me that he had more money than he
knew what to do with. "So you're job hunting," I said.
"Well, I read the want ads. There was one for a retired couple
to look after an estate out in the valley, but my wife says I'm not
retired yet." He tossed another coin into the hot tub. "You know,
I never had a real job. I started writing and selling right after
the Korean war, and I was making a hundred a week before
I was twenty. Whenever we got together, my dad used to ask
me when I was going to get a real job. He'd come up with
some position he'd heard about that paid forty or fifty dollars a
week, but as he pointed out, it was real work." He hesitated,
then in a serious voice added, "I guess what I want to find out
is whether I could really hold down a job. It would be a risk to
try it."
We were silent for a while, then Larry, an executive in a large
industrial corporation, cleared his throat. "I think the risk is in
changing jobs. I used to be a hospital administrator, and while I