I read this book - The gutsy girl by Caroline Paul and obviously, I am inspired.
"Gutsy Girl" will resonate with everyone ( more so women) who were ever told, they couldn't or shouldn't... but then they went on to do it, anyway. The book revolves around encouraging girls to take on a life of adventure and have fun because after all when you look back on your life, an eventful one will feel better than a perfect one. There is no denying that adventures throw challenges that only teach you how you navigate through them, making you less and less averse to hairball situations.
"I have the butterflies in my stomach. I don't know why but I go looking for them"
- Said every brave, happy, successful woman
While the illustration of the flow chart is to help our mind decide if we should jump off the cliff, quite literally, I am looking at it metaphorically. Isn't this a question you ask yourself in any challenging situation?
The answer is right here! Because the mind works the same way, whether you are literally going to jump off a cliff or going to take a decision in life that sure feels like you are going to jump off one. I am drawing three important lessons from the book to help us non-adventurous people who are not jumping off literal cliffs every day but are definitely doing it metaphorically.
#Selfawareness
Look at the flow chart picture. When we have a challenge or a decision to make, do we feel scared? Yes, we do!
When we have the butterflies what is important is to simplify the decisioning in our head. Decide if you have the tools to help you and knowledge to use them. If not, train to the point that we feel good and sure enough that we will land on our feet. Once we are aware of our capabilities, confidence is the byproduct of it. And when you do something once, like Caroline says, the next time you will feel like a "triple somersault jump"!! Manier times, we know we are trained and can do the job, but hesitate or procrastinate because of fear. We don't bother to simplify the complex feeling of fear into simple steps to overcome it.
What follows in the flowchart is quite interesting.
#Conciousness or Awareness of Surrounding
Be sure of what surrounds you. Just being brave and making the jump isn't always the smartest thing to do. We have to make sure we are aware of where our jump will land and if we have what it takes to handle the force. Being aware of what lays ahead if we decide to do something or not, is an important aspect. It helps us cap the mind from imagining and multiplying the negative and positive effects and keep us grounded in reality. Sometimes, the possible results of a decision can be as small as just a bit of embarrassment or accolade. But we still refrain from taking the chance because we make it out to be a life-changing crossroad.
Knowing whom to trust is pivotal, I feel. It has completely changed your course in your decision tree. A mean girl ( or a boy!) can advise you to jump onto a bed of rocks and it's better to find it out before you listen to her/ him and land yourself in crutches. On the other hand, people will also tell us many reasons for not doing something brave but what matters is listening to experts and experienced folks or your trusted ones.
An 11-year-old world-class rock climber, Brook Raboutou said
"When I am on a really high climb I look down, I'm not scared. It's just so cool to think how small I am compared to the rock and how high I am."
An 11-year-old knows in its simplest form that fear is only in our minds when we are at the point of decision because what we do at that point is on us, completely. After that our capabilities, skills, confidence, survival instincts will all kick in. Once we reach the heights, its gratifying and satisfying. But you bet people would have told her not to climb that rock and what made her do it is, she knows what she can or cannot yet do.
A Female Wildland Firefighter " Ramona Atherton" said
"You practice your exits, your landings and everything else so many times that when you finally get up into the airplane, you're really more focussed on "am I going to do this right?" rather than "oh my god, I'm about to jump out of a plane."
But if you fail its ok, as long as you own it. Even at the age of 25 yrs, Dipa Karmakar, India's first female gymnast to represent at the Rio Olympics understood this. When she came 4th at the event, she was brave enough to address 1.3 Billion Indians and own the result gracefully. She said ,
"Sorry to 1.3 billion people, I couldn’t make it possible. But tried hard to do so. If possible, forgive me.”
With that said, I am making my little jump off a tiny cliff with this post.
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