How big is your brave?

With the sun shining, top down on my little red convertible and music turned up loud, I heard the words to this song, and it made me cry.

Sara Barrellis song Brave jumped out at me. If you haven’t heard it, do yourself a favor and download ‘Brave’.

While driving I was thinking about an important engagement this summer, and I was both excited and terrified. The song really challenged me; a line in the song ‘show me how big your brave is’.

Yesterday I sat in the front row, and I stood with 69 other people from 41 countries and I pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States. Yep, you read that right, I am now a US citizen!

It was an exciting day and emotional as I looked around and thought about people’s journeys to call the US home. Diverse ages, unique stories, some escaping difficulties many of us would never know – they left their countries so they could start again here … so incredibly brave.

The last line of the Star Spangled Banner is ‘o’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave’.

So I ask you ‘How big is your brave?”

Here are three actions you could take when you need to feel brave:

Do it scared – my best friend and I have this mantra ‘do it scared’ – we both run our companies and constantly feel underprepared and overwhelmed and yet we jump in with both feet and do it scared (sometimes terrified) and yep, we are still alive.

Know your why – to keep focused and not allow emotions to overtake you, fear to swallow you or others negativity (and opinions) stop you … remind yourself why you are doing it. Write it down if you have to so you can see it and keep focused on that reason.

Talk to your fear – do I mean talk out loud to yourself… kinda. I find myself often talking to myself (crazy town in my head as you can imagine). I often hear myself saying things like ‘you got this’ or ‘you can do this’ – we all experience fear in different ways. It is your fear; it’s real so decide how you talk to it.

Friends will tell you I’m fearless. Maybe it’s my Aussie-ness? Maybe I assume everything will work out (which I do).

Sometimes our days, our teams, our relationships, our challenges, all require us to be brave. I want to make every moment matter.

So how big is your brave?

We’d love to hear your thoughts on what action you take when you are scared of doing something, share your ideas with us here on our blog.

Neen James

If you want more ideas on how to increase your productivity – check out other blogs here and several eBooks you can share with your team.