Wednesday, September 14, 2016

How were you brave today?

" How were you brave today?" I asked my son as we were winding down the night and he was getting ready for bed. And without even stopping to think about it, his answer was " I was courageous by going into a scramble of feet trying to randomly kick the ball somehow I kicked the ball to my teammate."  I listened with him more struck by the choice of words "scramble of feet" and validating the courage because to a child who is very cautious -I knew this was a very daunting experience.  But he did it :) 

Whether we realize it or not, we take brave steps every day. From trying to be friendly to coworkers who may look right through you, to going to a meeting that we wouldn't otherwise thing we have nothing to contribute to, to speaking your mind, to making a choice to stay away from individuals that are harmful to you, to making phone calls to people that actually owe you money, to making a stand to face the unknown and embrace whatever it may give us, to making life changes such as a move, marriage, launching a new project, or even changing a style of ourselves?  And so often so many of these actions are not looked at as courageous -it is something we don't validate ourselves for - we just simply do it and move on. 

What if we took the time to reflect on our simple acts of bravery. How would we respond to ourselves and more than that, what would be our reaction? If we had a mirror or a movie that would replay to us the brave act that we did - how would we feel? Would we want to change something about it? Would we be in awe? Would we look at that and say, "hey, i can't believe I did that - if i did that, then I can do anything i put my mind to."  Would we begin to be more understanding of ourselves and less judgmental of ourselves?

Courage is an act of bravery.  Courage is an internal force that speaks to you when you are often silent I believe.  It comes to you when you are seeking ways of changing or facing new situations. It is not so much a conscious act, it is impulsive.  It is almost as if your inner voice is speaking to you and pushing you to do something that you otherwise would not do.  Courage is not bitter, but sweet.  Because when one is courageous, one is also letting go of a shed of our skin by doing something new.  One is continuously moving forward rather than shrinking back or staying numb.  Being numb is fear -courage is willing to take a risk subconsciously or consciously by making a move. It's like in chess -we can't just stay in position, we have to take a stand and move in the right direction. 

So I went to sleep last night with a warm fuzzy feeling proud of my son for moving his feet in the right direction even if he may have been scared -resting in the fact that he knew he was brave in what he did.  Thinking to myself that this is a practice I would like to continue -

So a journaling prompt for you is :  How were you brave today?

Happy Journaling!
 

No comments:

Post a Comment