This week I joined the amazing Steve Chapman and his dog Poppy for a brainstorming walk in the woods. The topic I was picking Steve’s brain on was the idea of Bravery, a theme I come back to again and again in my writing (simply search this site for the word “brave” and there are many posts!), plus I work with brave and transformative leaders, so hey, going to be a focus for me always!
Steve is quite brilliant at provoking thought in different directions, and on this occasion, he mused around “what if we consider brave as a verb? We are all “brave-ing all the time”.
After all, we are being brave simply by being human. Every step we take, we could stumble and fall. With every breath we take, what guarantee do we have that our body will take another one? Steve also reminded me of the quote:
You are a ghost driving a meat coated skeleton, made from stardust, riding a rock, floating through space. Fear nothing
What if we recognise that each of us is “brave-ing” all the time, in ways conscious and unconscious, small and large. Some people fly by intuition and their friends and family consider them really brave, yet I’ve often found that such people are so used to being the way they are that they don’t consider what they do as courageous at all.
So, to bring awareness to your own “brave-ing” and to work your “brave-ing” muscles a little more, an exercise.
Write down three ways you were “brave-ing” in the last week. Ok, you can’t use walking or breathing or hurtling through space, but perhaps you had a courageous conversation? Perhaps you tried something that scared you a little? Perhaps being brave simply meant to not say something in a moment where normally you would?
Whatever comes to mind, write them down. Three times you were “brave-ing”.
PS Poppy was “brave-ing” constantly on our walk, the little daredevil. Funny thing though, I bet if you asked her, she would just say she was having fun, she does that all the time 😉