Bula!

I’ve recently returned from a holiday in Fiji. When holidaying I often compare and contrast the local attitude to risk. Think road safety in some places of the world! Feels like complete insanity to us on first look and reduces to mild levels of insanity once you become more accustomed. Road safety in Fiji is by no means the worst in the world, in fact, it seemed pretty good overall.

One thing I learned from my holiday was why Fijians play rugby the way they do. We visited an island village. A great experience. We had a kava welcome ceremony with the chief, a stroll through the village which operated on solar and rainwater and ended up with a tour of the local school which runs K – Yr 8.

The school had a rugby pitch. It was rock hard. My deduction: no Fijian kid wants to get tackled on “concrete” and so their thought is “don’t get caught with the ball”. Hence their tendency to play wide, play fast and play risky!

Take it as a reminder that risk taking is heavily environment driven. For example, the more desperate we get to achieve a target, the more risk some of us will take to achieve it. And that can lead to some poor decision making. I explain more about this here using a pressure cooker analogy.