Worth the Risk Quotes

“You are not here to live a what if life. You are here to live a what is life.”
― Kristen Lee, EdD, LICSW, Worth the Risk: How to Microdose Bravery to Grow Resilience, Connect More, and Offer Yourself to the World

“The world doesn't need our airbrushed stories or curated, scripted, boring, conforming selves. It needs our truths, messiness, weirdness, creative energy, and resistance.”
― Kristen Lee, EdD, LICSW, Worth the Risk: How to Microdose Bravery to Grow Resilience, Connect More, and Offer Yourself to the World

“Microdosing bravery is a way to keep nourishing your indomitable spirit.”
― Kristen Lee, EdD, LICSW, Worth the Risk: How to Microdose Bravery to Grow Resilience, Connect More, and Offer Yourself to the World

“When we microdose bravery strategically and intentionally, we can experience the therapeutic benefits: fun, growth, freedom, and connection that makes discomfort worthwhile.”
― Kristen Lee, EdD, LICSW, Worth the Risk: How to Microdose Bravery to Grow Resilience, Connect More, and Offer Yourself to the World

“Trying to skirt risk is how we squeeze out all the fun and stunt the most wondrous gift: imagination.”
― Kristen Lee, EdD, LICSW, Worth the Risk: How to Microdose Bravery to Grow Resilience, Connect More, and Offer Yourself to the World

“The biggest lie anxiety whispers at us is that we're the only ones, that it's some sort of moral failing when we need help. Don't trade the short-term comfort avoidance gives for the long-term relief that comes with working through what's uncomfortable.”
― Kristen Lee, EdD, LICSW, Worth the Risk: How to Microdose Bravery to Grow Resilience, Connect More, and Offer Yourself to the World

“Real risk isn't always grandiose. The act of swallowing bravery is often so miniscule, it goes completely unrecognized by the outside world. In due time our psyches and souls are primed to adapt, integrate, and digest even the rustiest, clankiest, most bitterly jarring parts of life; to become more comfortable with the uncomfortable so much so that it becomes lifeforce. Microdoses help us build the fortitude to absorb, integrate, expand, contribute, and construct the new matrix of presence and inter-beingness. The cumulative effect of such actions cannot be overstated. Consistent microdoses of bravery have powerful, palpable effects. Vitality emerges through the nourishment of real droplets of risk, sustained over time; not impulsive grand gestures and binges disguised as noble and big.”
― Kristen Lee, EdD, LICSW, Worth the Risk: How to Microdose Bravery to Grow Resilience, Connect More, and Offer Yourself to the World

“Resilience is generated when we move from "me" to "we." Hiding only erodes resilience and weakens our bonds with one another, the very thing that can cement our indomitable spirit and keep us from total ruin. Pretending we are "fine" is not an act of courage, nor will it truly protect us from the gnawing pangs of thinking that we're the only ones. The biggest lie our minds can tell us is that we are the only ones when the only way to break free is to tell our truths.”
― Kristen Lee, EdD, LICSW, Worth the Risk: How to Microdose Bravery to Grow Resilience, Connect More, and Offer Yourself to the World

“Fighting injustice can have a way of turning people against each other instead of being able to clap back at the origins of the problems. Tackling the deep and complex work of combating racial, social, economic, and environmental injustice and working for access, equity, equality, eradicating ism's, peace, and ensuring human sustainability requires boldness, humility, hyper-vigilance, and relentless commitment to accountability...”
― Kristen Lee, EdD, LICSW, Worth the Risk: How to Microdose Bravery to Grow Resilience, Connect More, and Offer Yourself to the World

“We need a revolution in mental health awareness to help us grasp the wonder and complexity of human behavior, health and functioning, and the nuances and intersections of brilliance and madness. This starts with dismantling myopic myths that prevent us from seeing the simultaneous wonder and complexity of our fullest selves. It involves providing access to the tools that mitigate being overtaken by the ravages of burnout and mental decompensation: the very risks of living in the modern world. Our sense-making approaches need to be comprehensive- grounded both scientifically and medically, steeped in love, and in ways that account for the multidimensionality of emotional and spiritual essence. Those that go beyond what the mind can first conceive of. This new mental health imperative relies upon universal precautions and a vehement resistance to linear checklists and binary labels that frame our gorgeous spirits solely as either complex and fraught or indomitable and wondrous. It also relies not on good will and best practices but the moral courage of policy makers to treat human beings like human beings. Dogs are often treated better than people. This is our new imperative: to radically change the way we care for ourselves and one another. We cannot extricate ourselves from the fact that the lines we walk are incredibly thin and blurry, and our only hope is to rewrite and navigate them together in solidarity, with every measure of creative reason and conscious community that can be mustered...”
― Kristen Lee, EdD, LICSW, Worth the Risk: How to Microdose Bravery to Grow Resilience, Connect More, and Offer Yourself to the World

“Fighting injustice can have a way of turning people against each other instead of being able to clap back at the origins of the problems. Tackling the deep and complex work of combating racial, social, economic, and environmental injustice and working for access, equity, equality, eradicating isms, peace, and ensuring human sustainability requires boldness, humility, hypervigilance, and relentless commitment to accountability . . .”
― Kristen Lee, Worth the Risk: How to Microdose Bravery to Grow Resilience, Connect More, and Offer Yourself to the World

“Courage is not always found in grand and dramatic gestures or jaw-dropping feats. It is the grassrootsy, unassuming brand of bravery that should not be underestimated.”
― Kristen Lee, EdD, LICSW, Worth the Risk: How to Microdose Bravery to Grow Resilience, Connect More, and Offer Yourself to the World

“What if you woke up today and saw yourself as the gorgeous enigma you are? That you no longer have to explain, justify, or rationalize your essence and birthright to be the epic ball of energy that you are?”
― Kristen Lee, Worth the Risk: How to Microdose Bravery to Grow Resilience, Connect More, and Offer Yourself to the World