There are a lot of things to
aspire to in this world. The words aspiration and ambition are everywhere. Somehow, during the early years of our adult lives, we are most vulnerable to the sense that we should all be
striving for something bigger, better, faster, brighter . . more. But
what exactly is that?
It’s no secret that, now more than
ever, one of the keys to success is to have hustle. By now we've all discovered that we have to figure out what we want and pursue it
aggressively. But you barely have to type the
words “how to choose a career” into a Google search (which turns up about
1.4
trillion results in less than half a second, by the way) to find scores
of
advisors who say the ticket to professional happiness is simply to
discover what
you’re passionate about and then do that.
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| Scary can be courageous. (source) |
Yet the relentless pursuit of
passion is about as useful as a butter knife in a sword fight if you don’t know what your passion
is. And not surprisingly, there are few
employers willing to pay a living wage for someone to devote their professional
energies to self-discovery – although if you know of one, please share.
So I think it's time to free
ourselves from the concept of passion and embrace another concept:
bravery.
Bravery is not something that we are
used to seeking out in the same way that we look for passion. I
don't even think most of us consider bravery in the context of our
lives at all. When I think about bravery I think about people
like Navy SEAL Lt. Dan Cnossen a college classmate of my husband who battled back from unthinkable injuries after
he stepped on an IED in Afghanistan in 2009, or Abby Rike who was a
contestant on the Biggest Loser and whose story about reclaiming her life after
losing her husband and two kids in a car accident left me in a sobbing puddle
on the floor. These people are amazing. They overcome challenges most of us
never have to face. My tendency is to
reserve use of the word bravery for people like that – who do things I feel I
never could.
But recently I had the privilege
of hearing a presentation by Dr. Brene Brown (who I now want to invite to my house
for dinner and a Downton Abby marathon, although that’s another story). Dr. Brown talked about how we have to embrace
vulnerability in order to be great, because, as she says, “our willingness
to own and engage with our vulnerability determines the depth of our courage
and the clarity of our purpose.”
What?
Did she really just tell me that
the times when I feel scared, exposed, and laid bare are really my bravest
moments? That in order to actually achieve
(that word again!) I need to dwell in and even seek out situations that push my
comfort zone rather than spend my time hanging out in the cushy lounge next
door where I feel safe?
That sounds horrible.
But the reality is that most of
the people we revere as brave do this all the time. They expose their vulnerability more often –
not less –
than the rest of us. They
join or start groups to share their stories, they write blogs or books
or go on TV and talk about their pain and what it has done to their lives. They
quit jobs they hate because they know something else is waiting for them. They
take the hard assignment that they aren't sure they can pull off. They
call off the wedding that they knew wasn't right. They sign up for a
marathon even if the
farthest they’d ever run was a mile during the fitness test in high
school. They move to a new city where they don’t know a soul. They
choose to dress differently, to live differently, to love differently.
All of these things expose people
to the possibility that others will witness who they are and criticize them.
They open themselves up to failure in exchange for the risk that they might
succeed. And they are brave precisely
because they make themselves vulnerable.
This is something I’ve been
working on a lot recently. So I’m telling myself that when I feel scared, what I’m really feeling is myself being brave.
That is something we can all
aspire to.
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