Earlier this year I tried on something new and had some really expansive results.  I committed to doing something brave every day for a week.  Mostly, I wound up inviting fellow coaches and consultants to lunch.  These were people I either didn’t know at all or had only met once or twice in passing.  They were people with impressive resumes, and the story I was telling myself, the reason I hadn’t invited them before, was that they must be too busy and that they won’t have time for the likes of me.  As you might imagine, my story was shattered over and over again as people happily accepted my invitations and I began meeting with them. 

 One of these people, a fellow coach, has become an ongoing coaching partner with me.  We talk with each other about our ideas, our resistance, and help each other gain perspective and move forward.  He has told me on a number of occasions about the value he gets from our discussions, and now he is sharing his genius with many more people.  And I might never have called him!  Before calling him, my fear of rejection not only kept me from gaining a valuable contact and learning from him, it also kept me from sharing my gifts with him, and kept my gifts from rippling out into the world.

 Another brave act for me was contacting someone that I had a conflict with.  I was running around with the thought, “Please please please don’t let me run into Jane today.”  Who wants that?  I cleared up the conflict, and can’t say this person is a friend now, but calling her eliminated that nagging anxiety of unfinished business waiting for me.  Eliminating that worry freed up energy to spend in more constructive ways.

 Here’s another brave act: I contacted my old boss and suggested we host a workshop together for nonprofits.  Again the thought was “Who am I to do this?  I don’t have thirty years of experience in this field.  Nobody’s ever heard of me.”  The truth is that I do have something to offer, just as you do.  The result: Twenty people got together last Tuesday to talk about how nonprofits could collaborate, and my contact information was distributed to a wide field of the nonprofit community.  Wow.  How’s that going to ripple out into the world?  What if I hadn’t made that suggestion?  As Marianne Williamson says, “Your playing small does not serve the world.”

My invitation, then, is to do something brave, even if it’s just for a day.  Consider doing it every day for a week, or maybe once a week for a month.  What have you done that was brave in the past, and what were the results?  What’s something brave that you could do today?  What’s the story you’re telling yourself that isn’t true?  How might your brave act serve you and the world?  Good luck, and let me know how it goes.