Daring Greatly

By looking at my previous blog posts, you can see that the ‘21/’22 and ‘22/’23 school years were not conducive to my new hobby of blogging. After four posts, I fizzled out. The me of even about five years ago would have deleted everything and never dared speak of it again. I would have viewed it as a failed plan and myself as a failure. Harsh, I know, but while I preached a “growth mindset” to my students and coached them through overcoming challenges, I found it too difficult to extend the same courtesy to myself.

What has changed in these few years? It is working on myself for myself. Not learning something because it would serve me in my professional life as all my previous learning has been but for me and only me. Has it helped professionally now too? Oh yeah! But that is just a happy side effect compared to creating a better relationship with myself.

The person whose work really helped tip the scales in my favour is Brené Brown. Her work on vulnerability showed me just how unwilling I was to be vulnerable. Daring Greatly (2015) centers on, in part, this quote by Theodore Roosevelt. I invite you to read it and sit with it for a minute.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Do I think sporadically blogging on education as a hobby is a daring feat? No. Do I think giving something a shot and having the new-found courage to come back to it years later is? I do.

So, if you are on your educational journey, I invite you to reflect on your learnings. Are they for your work or for you? Do you balance these out in order to show up as your best self in all situations?

How might you go into this new school year daring greatly?