“Don’t worry, I’m being careful!” my five-year-old said as he tried to pick up a piece of broken glass off the kitchen floor with his bare hands.

Twitching a few times before getting the words out, I said, “No, stop, don’t pick it up! With some things it doesn’t matter how careful you are – they aren’t safe.”

I wouldn’t recommend anyone pick up broken glass with their bare hands. But his comment made me stop and think.

Often, we see all of the risks in life like I saw the broken glass. There’s so way we can approach it safely – it’s just too risky. There’s too high of a chance of getting hurt. Instead of cleaning it up, we walk around it over and over again, pretending it just isn’t there. We avoid facing up to unresolved heartbreak. But not taking those risks limits us and keeps us scared.

But what if we all had his level of confidence? What if we could brush off fears with a simple “Don’t worry!”

Maybe then we could clear the path to make our lives more beautiful. Perhaps, to quote sociologist Brene Brown, we could live a more “whole-hearted” life. Maybe all of the risks wouldn’t seem so scary anymore. We could even see them as opportunities for growth.

Or maybe we would get hurt. Taking risks is risky. There’s no guarantee of success.

But that confidence would give us the ability to wash off our wounds, put a Band-Aid on it – Hello Kitty, perhaps – and stand back up. We’d learn that we need to use a different tool next time or have a different approach to the problem. Or perhaps we’d learn we need to ask for and accept help from someone more experienced and wiser.

But if we never tackled the problem, we never would have learned those lessons.

Of course, I stopped my kid from cleaning up the glass with his bare hands. I got out the broom and dustpan and swept it up. While the glass is long gone, I hope his confidence – tempered with wisdom – remains with him for a long, long time.