Be Bold, Be Brave

This week on Instagram, our challenge has been to be bold and brave. If you didn’t know that, why aren’t you following me on Instagram? LOL.

Over the past few weeks and as I face my coaching practice squarely, I have found myself telling various people and myself to be brave and be bold. This is simply because I believe going for your dreams requires at least a little bit of bravery and boldness. You have got to be audacious enough to believe that this could be mine. I dare say it takes a little bit of appropriate arrogance. A why not me attitude!

Watching an episode of Madam Secretary, a show loosely based on the life on Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State, I came across the following
quote:

This week I got a LinkedIn notification that brought this quote to life.
It was regarding a lady who attended the first vision board workshop I ever ran in 2015. Seems like ages ago. It was about a promotion. I thought this can’t be right, she only just got a new role which was a promotion a few months back. Maybe she was just updating her profile I thought. But then I looked at the role and it was significantly much more senior to the one she had told me about. So I contacted her and I think my question was “you haven’t changed jobs again have you?” LOL. To which she responded yes, within the same company – so another promotion.

This lady is an inspiring story to observe. She came on the first workshop in 2015 and admitted to possessing the required professional qualifications to progress in her career but had remained in a role beneath her qualification due to a lack of confidence.  Three months later she changed jobs for a role in keeping with her qualifications and got a £10k raise in the process.  In November 2016, she returned for another workshop, and the following week was head hunted and added another £5k to her salary in a new role. So that’s a £15k pay rise in one year. So you can imagine my surprise when I got this LinkedIn notification about 7 months after that. On sharing her story with me, she referred to her new found confidence from the vision board workshop.
Whilst I would like to take all the credit for this, I can’t take full credit. Once again I refer you to the quote above from Madam Secretary.

We need the courage to act on our dreams. This lady found confidence but activated the courage required to go for dreams by putting herself out there – boldly and bravely. Your dreams can remain in your head, on paper or on your board but without action, it remains an idea.

Sometimes, we may get no for our efforts but sometimes, we get a resounding yes but what I do know is we’ll never know until we try.

Perhaps next time I think I’m going to chat a little bit about the difference between boldness and recklessness. Let me know if you are interested in that.

In the meantime, in what way do you need to be bold and brave?