In this episode, I want to talk about bravery, and building your bravery.
Bravery is built on Confidence and Resilience.
Confidence is based on your skills… tasks that you know you can take on because you have the skills to complete the task with sufficient quality.
Resilience is, in part, the ability to learn from your work, even though it may not be perfect.
For me, the early days of my Facebook lives were a great example. I had the confidence in my skills…I knew at had (and still have) the raw skills to do the video. I had some experience with public speaking and preparing a message. I had done some test runs with the FB Live software and my camera to make sure I was recording and would have something to post. The toughest skill that I felt ‘rusty’ at was recording a talk with no one, no human, to talk to. For resilience, I knew that I could survive a less-than-perfect video posted online. I knew that my family and friends would grant me a lot of grace in the early days because I cared about my message more than my perfection. And, I knew that I could learn from each video how to make a better video the next time. And THAT’s resilience. I could bounce back and move forward!
Bravery is much like a muscle. It’s a little weak at the beginning, but once you start to test it, and take some baby steps to gain confidence in your skills and grow your resilience (that ability to learn and move forward), then you build your bravery over time.
Bravery is also rooted in your purpose. For me, this is about sharing this message about the criticality of Deep Joy and the possibility, to ability, that each of us have to choose to live in Deep Joy. In part, bravery is knowing that your purpose is important, and stepping out into the unknown, the uncomfortable zone, the risky zone, in spite of that.
Your purpose is more important than your perfection.
Don’t let your imperfections block, or slow down, your purpose.
Deep Joy is a life inside of confidence, hopefulness and resilience. It doesn’t mean that I’m ‘giddy-happy’, ecstatic all the time. Deep Joy is an underlying base of faith in the future, faith in your skills, and faith in your resilience to learn and ‘bounce forward’. And faith that your purpose is important – more important than your fears. Deep Joy isn’t blind to the negative things in life – death, loss, sickness. Deep Joy is a muscle to grow to survive and thrive in the face of all of that. And bravery – built on confidence and resilience – is a huge part of that.
I hope you’ll take steps to grow both the confidence in your skills and the resilience to learn, grow, and move forward…the skill to learn and return. With that, you can feel more brave and take more baby steps to ‘re-wire’ your brain… with baby steps of bravery you’ll grow your bravery over time.
To deliver a small bit of your value, watch how it is used and enjoyed, learn and adapt – learn and return – is also a key element in the world of Agile thinking, Agile business and Agile product development (the other thing that I coach on, for business teams). Those first small parts might not be perfect and might be ‘whole’, but we can be brave and put it out there… because the value comes from seeing how it ‘lands’ with people. Learning and adapting is more important than perfection. (There may come a time to perfect what you’ve got so that you can scale and mass produce, but that can come later.)
Purpose drives our motivation to step out there and be brave. Your purpose might be chosen by you and delivered to a small group, perhaps just your close family or friends. Or it might be a global purpose, a ‘just cause’ to which you’ve aligned your heart.
I hope you’ll take a small step to be brave – to stand in your confidence of skills and resilience to ‘learn and return’. Your baby steps will become stronger, and soon you’ll be running a marathon to live and accomplish your purpose.
This episode was taken from my Face-to-face Friday video recorded September 18, 2020. Click here for the original video, and grant me some grace… it was pretty ‘raw’.