In this life, there are those seemingly few that are willing to dare greatly and take upon themselves real risks with real consequences, pro or con; and then there rests the majority of us, that either carefully weigh their risk -to-reward ratio before acting, or if especially conservative or especially risk averse, concern themselves mainly about what they might well lose, if they risk even just a little bit. For all those people that are especially risk averse, they don't seem to apparently recognize that in avoiding risks at all costs, this thereby often compromises them in their good ability to subsequently achieve something of real merit, personally or on a professional level, just so they can remain safe. In other words, for them, it's never about winning, but rather it is a lot more about not losing what they already have, so that, for better or worse, for them, they settle with what they have.
Of course, not everything that we have a fear about is a reasonable fear to begin with; so that, for instance, those that won't step into the ocean, for fear that some creature might hurt them or that they could drown are in most instances, being far more dramatic than an honest appraisal of the situation so warrants. So too, those that consistently see the bogeyman time and time again, in which a reasonable person does not, are going to live lives in which they are not going to achieve what they could possibly achieve because of those unreasonable fears. Further to the point, those that are too risk adverse, while living in a country that prides itself on being egalitarian, fair, and civil, are thereby placing more weight upon the shoulders of all those other people that will have to step up in their absence to test the system to see whether, in actuality, that construct is true; and thereby it is those other people that take those risks, which are the ones that help to make or maintain progress, for all.
While it is true that nobody wants to be a loser, and that few people wish to lose anything of value; the fact of the matter is that in order to get ahead in life, people typically have to risk something of themselves in order to get something of value, in return; and perhaps just as important, it should be recognized that typically risks must also be taken just to hold on to what we already have. In other words, life is not static, so that, each day we are either progressing or we are regressing in what we have, so that those that are intent that they will not ever lose something of value, are in actuality going to have to be proactive in order to hold on to even just that.
All of this basically means that for all those that have a great fear of losing something of real value, that they should probably not follow the strategy of trying to build some unbreakable fortress and thereby actually expect that such will never be breached. Rather, they should concentrate more upon the knowledge that there is strength in numbers, so that the more people that are joined together, believing in the same values and the same ideas that they hold dear and do not desire to relinquish, often leads to the discovery that by being more proactive in defending as well as propagating that which they as a group value so highly, that they will not lose such.