Why You Keep Playing It Safe: Security, Reward and the Life You Want — an article by Carl Argent

The short answer

Playing it safe is not a character flaw and it is not laziness. It is one of two motivational systems doing its job. One part of you exists to keep you from harm: it watches for what could go wrong, protects what you have and keeps the peace. The other part exists to help you build a life worth having: it is drawn to interest, connection, accomplishment and joy, and it wants to make good things happen. Most of us have spent years listening to the first and only occasionally to the second (Elliot, 2006; Gray and McNaughton, 2000).

The way out is not to overrule the cautious part or to silence it. It is to give both a proper hearing. When you can hear what security is protecting and what reward is asking for, you tend to make better choices, and the choices tend to stick. This article is about how those two pulls work, why the safe option so often wins by default, and what starts to change when you let the other side speak.

What playing it safe actually looks like

It rarely looks dramatic. It looks like staying another year in a role that stopped fitting some time ago. It looks like the course you keep bookmarking, the friendship you mean to deepen, the idea you talk about with two people and no one else. It looks like being the dependable one, the person who makes sure everyone else is all right, while your own wishes become harder and harder to hear.

From the outside, your life may look settled and even enviable. From the inside, there may be a quiet flatness, a sense that you are managing rather than living. You might notice a small drop in your stomach on a Sunday evening, or a restlessness when a friend describes something they are starting. Nothing is wrong, exactly. Nothing is quite right either.

You may also recognise the explanations that arrive whenever the wish to change gets louder. I should be grateful for what I have. People depend on me. I have always been this way. It would be selfish to change direction now. These are not lies. Each of them contains something true. But notice that every one of them speaks for the same side of you. Not one of them asks what you want to make happen.

If that pattern feels familiar, it is worth knowing that there is a good reason it developed, and that the reason is not a lack of courage.

Two systems, both doing their job

Much of what we do can be understood as moving towards something we want or away from something we fear. These are not two ends of one scale but two separate systems, each with its own job, and a person can be high or low on either (Elliot, 2006; Carver and White, 1994).

The security system is tuned to threat. It notices what could go wrong, remembers what did go wrong, and prefers the known cost to the unknown one. When it is in charge, you tend to organise your life around not failing, not disappointing and not losing what you have. Some researchers describe this as a prevention focus: the aim is to meet your responsibilities and avoid mistakes, and success feels like relief rather than delight (Higgins, 1997).

The reward system is tuned to possibility. It is the part of you that craves a new book, a new place, a new idea or a new relationship. It pulls you towards learning a skill, going back to study, starting something, or leaving the secure and unexciting job for one that uses more of who you are. When it is in charge, you organise your life around growth and accomplishment, and success feels like joy (Higgins, 1997).

You can often feel the difference between the two in your body. Security shows up as tightness, vigilance and a wish for the conversation to be over. Reward shows up as leaning forward, losing track of time and wanting to tell someone. Both are worth noticing, because each is telling you what that part of you believes is at stake.

Neither system is the enemy. A life run entirely on reward would be reckless. A life run entirely on security would be safe and small. The people who seem to thrive are not those who have switched off caution. They are the people who can hear both voices and weigh them, rather than letting one speak for the whole of them.

Why the safe option usually wins

If both systems are legitimate, why does security win so often? Part of the answer is built into how we are made. Losses tend to loom larger than gains of the same size, so the possibility of losing something you have weighs more than the possibility of gaining something you want (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979). Bad news, bad feedback and bad outcomes also tend to grab and hold attention more firmly than good ones (Baumeister and others, 2001). The cautious voice is louder by design.

The other part of the answer is learned. Long before you consciously chose a direction, your family, your circumstances and your early experiences were laying tracks. If you were praised for being sensible, if mistakes were costly, if the adults around you were anxious or stretched, you may have learned early that the safest thing to want was very little. Being the reliable one may have been how you were loved. That lesson does not expire on its own.

There is also a quieter reason. Security has a moral tone. Choosing the safe path feels responsible, adult and unselfish. Choosing what you want can feel indulgent, even when nobody would be harmed by it. So the reward system does not only lose the argument. It often does not get to make one.

This matters because the cost of playing it safe is slow and easy to miss. Regret over things we did tends to fade. Regret over things we did not do tends to grow (Gilovich and Medvec, 1995). The safe choice rarely hurts today. It hurts in the accumulation.

What the reward side is asking for

When people finally let the reward side speak, what it asks for is usually more modest and more specific than they feared. It is rarely “quit everything and move abroad”. It is more often “learn the thing I keep reading about”, “spend real time with the people I like”, “do work that uses the part of me that is currently switched off”, or “have more of my week feel like mine”.

Underneath those wishes sit a few needs that appear to be shared by almost everyone: to feel capable at something, to feel connected to others, and to feel that your choices are your own rather than imposed (Deci and Ryan, 2000). Curiosity, interest and enjoyment are how the reward system points you towards those needs. They are not distractions from a serious life. They are information about what a serious life, for you, would contain.

There is also a compounding effect. Positive states such as interest and joy tend to widen attention and open up options, while fear narrows both. Over time, moments of engagement build resources that outlast the moment: skills, relationships, resilience and a sense of who you are (Fredrickson, 2001). Goals that come from your own interests and values are also pursued with more energy and are more likely to be completed than goals adopted to please or to avoid (Sheldon and Elliot, 1999).

It is worth saying that reward is not the same as recklessness. The pull towards a new relationship, a new skill or a different kind of work is not a pull away from responsibility. It is often the part of you that would make responsibility feel worthwhile again. People who have room for interest and enjoyment in their week tend to bring more, not less, to the people who depend on them.

In other words, the wish you keep postponing may be doing more than asking for pleasure. It may be pointing at the conditions in which you become more fully yourself.

Hearing both without letting either drive

Most people arrive at a decision like this with one side already in charge and a vague guilt about the other. They have either resolved to be sensible and feel flat about it, or resolved to be brave and feel frightened about it. Neither resolution holds for long, because the side that lost the vote does not go away. It waits.

The aim is not to win an argument with your own caution. If you try to bulldoze the security system, it tends to get louder, and it usually knows something. The aim is a different kind of conversation, and it tends to have three parts.

Let security say what it is protecting

Behind “I should be grateful” there is usually something concrete: a mortgage, a person, a memory of what happened last time. Named plainly, these concerns become things you can plan around. Left vague, they become a fog that makes every direction look dangerous. Security is far more willing to allow a step when it has been asked what would make the step acceptable.

Let reward say what it wants, in its own words

This is harder than it sounds, because the reward side has often been interrupted so many times that it speaks in hints. A flicker of envy, a subject you cannot stop reading about, a version of yourself you catch glimpses of with certain people. It helps to treat these as data rather than as foolishness, and to ask what they have in common.

Find the step that honours both

People who make sustained changes tend to share two things: a sense that a route exists, and a belief that they can walk it (Snyder, 2002; Bandura, 1997). Both are built by small, real steps rather than by resolve. A step that reward finds worth taking and security finds survivable is the step that actually happens. Deciding in advance when and where you will take it makes it far more likely to occur (Gollwitzer, 1999). What that step is, for you, is the work. It is rarely the obvious one.

Try it this week

Choose one wish you have postponed, however small. On a single page, write two short columns. In the first, let the cautious part of you say everything it is worried about, as concretely as it can. In the second, let the part that wants this say what it hopes for, in plain words, without justifying itself. Then read both columns as if a friend had written them. Do not decide anything. Just notice which column you have been listening to, and which one you have not.

Quick answers

If you want to take this further

Working together adds what an article cannot: your actual situation rather than a typical one, a strengths profile that shows what you can draw on, and a first step chosen so that both sides of you can live with it, then reviewed against what really happened. You can read more about coaching with me and a free initial conversation is the usual first step. Where the safe choices seem to be held in place by something heavier, counselling is also available.

Sources and further reading

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: the exercise of control. New York: W. H. Freeman.

Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K. D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology, 5(4), 323–370.

Carver, C. S., & White, T. L. (1994). Behavioral inhibition, behavioral activation, and affective responses to impending reward and punishment: the BIS/BAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(2), 319–333.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268.

Elliot, A. J. (2006). The hierarchical model of approach-avoidance motivation. Motivation and Emotion, 30(2), 111–116.

Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56(3), 218–226.

Gilovich, T., & Medvec, V. H. (1995). The experience of regret: what, when, and why. Psychological Review, 102(2), 379–395.

Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999). Implementation intentions: strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54(7), 493–503.

Gray, J. A., & McNaughton, N. (2000). The neuropsychology of anxiety: an enquiry into the functions of the septo-hippocampal system (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Higgins, E. T. (1997). Beyond pleasure and pain. American Psychologist, 52(12), 1280–1300.

Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: an analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263–291.

Sheldon, K. M., & Elliot, A. J. (1999). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longevity of well-being: the self-concordance model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(3), 482–497.

Snyder, C. R. (2002). Hope theory: rainbows in the mind. Psychological Inquiry, 13(4), 249–275.

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