Take one "daring greatly" action each day and see how your life unfolds.
Be it telling someone you love them, or smiling at someone in the street.
Dare greatly, and see what happens.
One action could change the course of your life dramatically.
I recently finished reading the wonderful Brene Brown's book Daring Greatly, How The Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead. I think I need to read it again, as I started it over a year ago, and have forgotten much of the beginning.
There are some awesome chapters about how not allowing ourselves to be vulnerable limits our capacity to experience true happiness. I particularly loved what she wrote about how damaging it is in our society that it's particularly "shameful" for men to be vulnerable. Well worth a read. Especially if you have boy-children.
In it she shares her own personal challenges and stories, about how not wanting to be vulnerable has impacted her life, combined with case studies and findings from her work as a social researcher/storyteller. I went to see her talk in London some time in 2013/2014 and she's as brilliant in person as she is on her TED talks.
In the book she encourages us to challenge our habitual behaviours, which have kept us safe and out of vulnerability, in order to experience life at its fullest.
One of the fab tools from the later chapters I've started applying, is when I'm feeling vulnerable I acknowledge it!!!
I mean, so simple, and yet in the past if I was feeling triggered, and vulnerable I would plough on and eventually "act out" in some way. Since reading the book, I acknowledge I'm feeling vulnerable, identify (if I can) what's causing me to feel this way, then I stop, take a breath and write or think in my head three things about the situation/person/experience that I could appreciate or be grateful for.
I don't do it perfectly, and still often try and battle against the feeling of vulnerability (which I still don't fully understand). I want to be a happy, positive, spiritual person, and recently realised I had some damaging beliefs that if I'm spiritual then I have to be "happy and bubbly" all the time. I have to deny any "negative" feelings I'm having and push them away.
Eherrrhh (imagine that's the sound of a buzzer).
In order to move through something, I have found I must acknowledge how I'm feeling, and then take action to feel better. Just pushing it down, or pretending I'm ok just perpetuates my codependency, and the issue comes out sideways.
By focusing on the things I could appreciate about the situation/person/experience I am trying to see them from my Spirit's perspective. Not the limited perspective formed through fear and lack that became my ego/personality in order to keep me safe and alive in the past. Instead, I am beginning to learn to accept reality, accept others as they are, and move through what I find challenging experiences with a lot more grace than ever before.
Every day is a new year, a new opportunity to do things differently. As Einstein said, "the definition of insanity is doing things the same way and expecting different results." Just because yesterday was mediocre you have the choice to make today a little bit better. Miracles come in many sizes, however, the most profound ones I've experienced have been the tiniest shift in my perception of something, rather than the huge Red Sea parting experiences I thought they had to be for my life to get better. .
Daring Greatly doesn't mean taking a huge leap. It means taking a small step and expecting God to take you the rest of the way. It means doing something differently. It means taking a risk and not caring what others think. Putting yourself out there for the sak e of art and beauty. Allowing your light to shine for all to see.
Unapologetically.
I hope these ponderings give you some inspiration to take a little action, step out of your comfort zone even just a smidge, and do something greatly daring today.
In the film I Bought A Zoo, the main character and his brother had an agreement, whereby they would take an out-of-their-comfort-zone action for just 20 seconds and believed they could achieve anything.
It's how the protagonist got the courage to talk to the woman who would be his wife. To talk to a woman who'd taken his breath away as he walked past her sitting in a cafe.
20 seconds is all it takes to do something daring, something that could change your life.
What will you do today? This week?
Feel free to leave comments below, and share if this touches you.
Excerpt from the Theodore Roosevelt speech "Citizenship In A Republic."
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
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