SAID NO ONE EVER
Hello there! I hope this week finds you taking up space in places you used to shrink yourself. I'm sipping Scottish Breakfast Tea this morning and thinking about what it means to be bold.
I don't consider myself a particularly bold person. When I was a kid, maybe. But now I'm more cautious and I love a plan, or better yet, a colour-coded spreadsheet with said plan on it! I used to get down on myself for this and I still do sometimes. I felt like it was a failing on my part, that I was the embodiment of an un-fun person.
But what I have come to understand is that this structure is simply what I need in order to take bold steps in my life.
A few weeks ago I talked about feeling confronted and the questions we can ask ourselves when difficult feelings arise. For me, an almost inevitable part of embodying boldness is a pattern of fear, confrontation, self talk, planning (heck yeah a spreadsheet!) and then I move forward. These are the foundations I need so that I can feel a sense of safety as I make the bold move and feel confident in it.
From the outside looking in (especially in the days of social media), we can sometimes get the sense that to be bold, you just go for it. You don't think, you do. You believe in yourself enough to take the leap, consequences be damned! And while I love the excitement and drama of this narrative, it's not mine and I don't think it's most other people's either.
I wanted to try surfing so I took a lesson, cooking and baking generally require a specific recipe I can follow before I slowly start to wander with my ingredients list, exploring clothes that didn't hide my entire body meant wearing them around the house first, teaching yoga required training well beyond the minimum requirement followed by planning my classes to such a specific degree that I wouldn't allow myself to deviate.
Over time, I gain confidence and don't need to do things in the same way. These days I'll happily roll onto (and usually directly off) a surf board, cooking feels less frantic, I'm happy wearing clothes that I love and don't hide me, and I could drop and teach a yoga class this second if you needed me to. But in order for that confidence to land, I needed to create a safe container where I could try and possibly fail. It's not flashy, but it works for me.
Yes, I've caught myself using my planning to a degree that hampers my progress but I think the biggest shift for me has come over the past year where I stopped telling myself that I needed to be someone different. Someone who leaps without looking and does it gloriously well. Once I accepted that this is who I am and I don't need to apologize for it, things started to move forward and I used my little containers to carry me.
You can be bold. You just need to do it in a way that makes you feel good. That might be simply going for it or it might be a pro con list that dovetails into a nice spreadsheet. That's up to you!
Be your absolute lovely self and see what happens. To me, that is the boldest thing of all.
As you move through this week, be bold and remember to treat yourself and your body with love, respect and kindness.
Much love,
Helen xo