Are you a brave person?
“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” —William Faulkner
Generally speaking, I haven’t thought of myself as a “brave” man.
I’m good in crises, and I’m willing to do really hard work for things I really believe in, but courage isn’t really something I’ve thought I had a lot of, but… that is starting to shift.
As I lean deeper into my process, into my growth, more and more people who have known me for years are commenting that they can see that I am doing hard work, asking tough questions, and confronting challenging truths about myself.
And that does actually take courage.
So instead of thinking of myself as someone who has failed in so many ways, and as someone who shies away from scary things, I’m starting to have a little bit more belief in my own bravery, and that feels really good.
What shifts have you undergone this year in terms of how you think about yourself?
Eliza Green
I’ve actually started to accept some of my personality traits and characteristics instead of fighting against them. They aren’t bad traits, it’s just I have spent a significant portion of the 35 years on the planet desperately wishing I was someone else with a different set of characteristics and different abilities. Slowly, I’m examining who I actually am and coming to terms with it. Slowly…
Lynn
I have just realized that I’m being bullied by my family members. They want me to drop my entire life and move to another state to care for my mother. She does need care, and I have been doing my best to provide it to the best of my ability, but the reason I left in the first place was – I was being bullied by my family members. I have never been, and will never be who/what they expect me to be. I will always fall short, and will always be criticized mercilessly for being who I am. What shift have I undergone this year in terms of how I think about myself? I’ve realized that the pain I felt that forced me to leave my childhood home in order to find a healthier physical and mental place for myself became a 40-odd-year journey. The last 8 years of my life have finally been happy and rewarding ones, both mentally and physically, for myself and in my interactions with the family I have created. I don’t want to regress and go back to who I once was. I need to figure out how to resist the bullies without turning into an adult version of the teenagers who commit suicide as a result of bullying. I also need to think of myself as a role model for the students I teach in this way too. How do I turn this frustration into compassion and a teaching point for the middle school students I work with?