Holiday Calendar

National Take a Chance Day

Next celebratedFriday, April 23, 2027

An unofficial observance on April 23 encouraging everyday courage: taking a worthwhile chance, trying something new, and acting on an opportunity instead of letting it pass.

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Last updated March 19, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEApril 23
OBSERVED INUnited States
CATEGORYHealth
SUBCATEGORYSelf-Improvement
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A name day with no documented author.

No founder, proclamation, sponsor, or registry filing could be located for National Take a Chance Day. It appears to have spread organically through online holiday-calendar listings and social media by the early 2010s, and is promoted today mainly by brands and motivational blogs rather than any originating authority. No source documents who created it or why it sits on April 23.

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INTRO

The chances you skip are the ones you keep

Ask people what they regret most, and they rarely name a mistake they made. They name the thing they never tried. The job they did not apply for. The person they never called. The trip they kept putting off until it was gone.

Two psychologists put numbers to that ache. Thomas Gilovich and Victoria Medvec asked adults to name the single biggest regret of their lives. When they sorted the answers, the regrets of inaction crushed the regrets of action: in one of their studies, 84 percent of people named something they failed to do, against just 16 percent who named something they did. The chances people skipped haunted them far longer than the ones they took.

That finding is the quiet argument behind National Take a Chance Day. The day is not about luck or gambling. It is about the small, ordinary acts of nerve that are easy to talk yourself out of, and the research suggesting those are the ones you tend to miss.

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ORIGINS

Take a Chance Day history

INTRODUCTION

The word at the center of this holiday started life on a gaming table. "Chance" entered English around 1300 from the Old French cheance, traced back through Vulgar Latin to the Latin verb cadere, to fall. The root sense was "that which falls out," a phrase used of the falling of dice.

For centuries that was all chance meant: the roll, the toss, the thing you could not control. The idea that you could measure it, and reason about it, came surprisingly late.

CHAPTER 01

A gambler's question that started a science

In 1654 a French nobleman and gambler, the Chevalier de Méré, brought Blaise Pascal a puzzle about dividing the pot of an interrupted game. Pascal wrote to Pierre de Fermat, and over a few letters the two worked it out.

Their answer introduced the idea of expected value, a way to weigh an uncertain outcome by how likely it is. Probability theory had its start, not in a university, but in a question about a bet.

CHAPTER 02

Why the mind hesitates

Three centuries later, psychologists turned to a different question: not how chance behaves, but how people decide whether to take one. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky found that the math is not the whole story. They named a quiet bias they called loss aversion, the human tendency to weigh what might go wrong more heavily than what might go right.

That single bias does a lot of work. It explains the held breath before a big ask, the offer left on the table, the safe choice made out of fear rather than reason. The brake on taking a chance, it turns out, is built in.

CHAPTER 03

A day no one signed

The observance itself has no such paper trail. No founder, proclamation, or sponsor has ever been documented for National Take a Chance Day. One neutral calendar source states plainly that its origins are unknown.

What is clear is the shape of its life. The day appeared on online holiday calendars and social media by the early 2010s and now circulates mostly through brands and motivational blogs each April 23. There is no record of who chose the date, or why.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Probability is born from a bet

Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat trade letters on how to fairly split the stakes of an unfinished game, founding modern probability.

The Yerkes-Dodson law

Robert Yerkes and John Dodson describe an inverted-U: pressure sharpens performance up to a point, then wrecks it.

Prospect theory arrives

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky publish prospect theory, bringing loss aversion into the study of risky choice.

The regret of inaction

Gilovich and Medvec document that long-term regrets skew toward chances people did not take, not the ones they did.

A Nobel for the work

Kahneman receives the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for the research behind prospect theory.

The day reaches the calendars

National Take a Chance Day surfaces on online holiday calendars and social media, with no founder on record.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Take a Chance Day

BEHAVIOR

Luck looked less like fortune and more like a habit.

After roughly a decade studying hundreds of self-described lucky and unlucky people, psychologist Richard Wiseman found that the lucky ones tend to create, notice, and act on chance opportunities and to follow up on hunches. He went further and ran a "luck school" that coached self-described unlucky people to behave the same way, and participants reported gains in perceived luck, confidence, and well-being. In his account, luck looked less like fortune and more like a learnable habit.

EMOTION

Two regrets feel different

Gilovich and Medvec found that regrets over things you did tend to bring hot emotions like anger that cool with time. Regrets over things you did not do lean toward a wistfulness and despair that linger, which is part of why missed chances ache longer.

PRESSURE

There is an optimal amount of nerve

The Yerkes-Dodson law, described in 1908, holds that a little pressure sharpens performance while too much wrecks it, an inverted-U curve. The pull the other way is measurable too: Kahneman and Tversky's 1992 work put the median loss-aversion coefficient at 2.25, meaning a possible loss tends to feel about 2.25 times as strong as an equal possible gain. Together they frame a worthwhile chance as a calculated one rather than a reckless leap.

MYTH VS FACT

Common Misconceptions

The myth

Science proves people always regret inaction more than action.

The truth

Gilovich and Medvec's original finding that long-term regrets skew toward inaction is real, but a large public replication at a science museum found the long-term effect nearly vanished, with about 49 percent of lifelong regrets tied to inaction versus 51 percent to action, not significantly different from chance in that larger, likely younger sample.

The myth

A 'National ___ Day' means the government officially recognizes it.

The truth

National Take a Chance Day has no proclamation, sponsor, or official status. It is an unofficial observance that spread through online holiday calendars and brand promotion, not any government action.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Take a Chance Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Send the message you have been drafting

Reach out to the person you have meant to contact: a mentor, an old friend, a contact you admire. The cost of asking is usually smaller than the regret of staying quiet.

APPLY

Apply for the thing that feels like a stretch

Put your name in for the role, the grant, or the program you assumed was out of reach. The worst outcome is usually a no you would have given yourself anyway.

TRY

Try a skill you have always avoided

Pick one thing you have wanted to learn and spend an hour being a beginner at it. The discomfort is the point, and it fades faster than you expect.

SAY

Say yes to one new experience

Accept an invitation, change your usual route, or strike up a conversation you would normally skip. Small detours are a low-cost way to let something unexpected find you.

WRITE

Write down a chance you are weighing

Name one decision you keep postponing and list what you would actually lose by trying. Putting the downside on paper often shrinks it back to its real size.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Take a Chance?

1 / 9

Where does the English word 'chance' originally come from?

Answer

It falls on April 23 each year in the United States.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

9sources
4primary records
6independently dated
Primary records
PubMed, National Library of Medicine1994
The temporal pattern to the experience of regret (Gilovich and Medvec)
The 1994 study showing actions are regretted more in the short term but inactions more over a lifetime.
View source
Richard Wiseman2003
Luck and self-development / The Luck Factor
The psychologist's account of his decade-long study of lucky and unlucky people and the behaviors that set them apart.
View source
Tversky and Kahneman, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty1992
Advances in Prospect Theory: Cumulative Representation of Uncertainty
The 1992 paper estimating the median loss-aversion coefficient at 2.25.
View source
NobelPrize.org2002
The Prize in Economic Sciences 2002, Daniel Kahneman, Facts
The awarding body's record of Kahneman's 2002 Nobel for the work behind prospect theory.
View source
Additional coverage
Royal Society Open Science (PMC)2023
A very public replication of the temporal pattern to people's regrets
A 2023 museum replication that confirmed the short-term pattern but found the long-term inaction effect nearly vanished.
View source
American Physical Society2009
July 1654: Pascal's Letters to Fermat on the 'Problem of Points'
How a gambler's question to Pascal launched probability theory and the concept of expected value.
View source
Etymonline
Chance (etymology)
Traces 'chance' to a Latin root for falling, used of the falling of dice, with the probability sense dating to 1778.
View source
Wikipedia
Yerkes-Dodson law
The 1908 inverted-U relationship between arousal and performance.
View source
timeanddate.com
Fun Holiday, Take a Chance Day
A neutral calendar listing noting that the day's origins are unknown.
View source
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