Lorraine Cohen at Powerful Living asked: What’s the bravest thing you ever did that you’re most proud of? What gave you courage to be brave then, that continues to give you courage today?
This past March I chose a path that frightened me to the core, yet allowed me to confront my fears and become braver day by day. It was starting this blog. In my day-to-day life I am rather shy, not shy in a sense that I am scared to say hello or engage in casual conversation, but shy in that I tend to share very little of substance with others. As far back as I can remember I’ve always seen things just slightly differently or perhaps more accurately just cared about different things. When I would push through my reserve to express my thoughts or ideas they often appeared so random or perhaps so at odds to what others knew of me that the usual response would be either confused laughter or utter bewilderment.
I don’t remember a time in my life until I was at university that I shared my deepest thoughts and it didn’t result in either head-shaking laughter and a quick change of subject or a blank stare and a quip on how confusing I was. In addition, school was rather challenging for me. Although I deeply love learning I get bored easily and find it quite difficult to accept arbitrary instructions. If an instructor couldn’t tell me why I often just didn’t listen. Similar to other facets of my life I pushed the boundaries often to my own detriment, this time in terms of deadlines, core requirements, subject matter and assignments. So I creatively bumbled through my education having an amazing time yet leaving huge gaps in my learning that continue to bother me. Gaps such as graduating from university without ever managing to pass even pre-algebra and substituting “special projects“ for all but two of my required science classes. My foundations are very eclectic.
Although I love ideas I have never really known if my thinking is solid and I rarely challenged myself to take an idea to completion. This left tons of fragments of “great” ideas swimming in my head, but also the frustrations of watching “my” ideas become popular sometimes years after I first began thinking about them. Lacking any sort of external or internal discipline the few times I would try to fully develop an idea I failed miserably - likely due to my belief that smart people didn’t need to do things like write outlines or complete multiple drafts. These failures led to even more self-doubt. Over the years this self-doubt morphed into a belief that would hit at my lowest moments that I was completely stupid and cause me to just freeze.
What gave me the courage to be brave? Nothing big and dramatic just a slow accumulation of a lot of things including:
- A long-term love who believed in me and encouraged me to try my hand at writing and who told me regularly how much he loved my mind even when he didn’t understand what I was saying.
- A boss who put ego aside when I tentatively explained why the path she (the company) was on was heading down a road to sure disaster and she found my outsider view convincing. Slowly that view became valued by others as well and I saw that my thoughts (at least in this arena) made a difference.
- Starting a company with Erin and watching it grow and become a success on our own terms.
- A new friend who seemed genuinely startled to hear me call myself stupid (and was intelligent enough to know) and whose encouragement of, and patience with, my endless questioning is rivaled only by Erin’s.
And mostly I’ve become brave through the process of blogging itself - the thinking, creating, reading, writing and posting and most of all through dialogues with people I greatly respect. In addition to slowly writing about ideas that have been in my head literally since my teens I’ve encountered people who have challenged my thinking at every level and realized that even though I might not be able to articulate exactly what I mean what I say is understandable if others want to hear. I’ve (with some bumps and helping hands) managed to continue writing even when those moments of absolute self-doubt overtake me and those moments have occurred less and less as the months have worn on. Now even when I think I’m stupid I know I’m not and my reserve is slowly being chipped away.
Erin and I were interested in hearing about the bravest thing you’ve ever done Todd, Pippa, John and Pamir.
Related Posts:
Dreaming into Awakening, by Pippa at her blog Pippa’s Porch
The Bravest Thing I’ve Done, by John Allison at Technology for Living
Understanding Courage
Soul Bravery, by Pamir at Reiki Help Blog
Sometimes There’s a Fine Line Between Bravery and Foolishness, by Mark Lapierre at The Winding Path
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