On Vulnerability

I mentioned that I wanted to bring a sustainability initiative or goal to my company as a way to contribute to moving the sustainability movement forward. God, just writing that sounds hopelessly vague. (I'll think more on that later.) I was seriously doubting myself, thinking "they're going to wonder what this has to do with anything and why I'm asking for this and what I propose they do and then they're going to tell me they don't have the time or resources to do it." That thought kept returning and putting me down every time I came back to this idea. (It still does - look at what I wrote up above: "hopelessly vague". That's not very encouraging to myself.)

It turned out that I had already been sent a source of inspiration for this particular battle - my boyfriend's sister had sent me her two favorite books of 2020, one of which was Daring Greatly by Dr. Brené Brown. It has helped me frame the thinking I describe above as: my thoughts are trying to protect me from being vulnerable. Trying to keep me from mentioning something that is deeply important to me to someone who might not care. I'm seeing that overcoming self doubt is a continual  process. It's the moment of taking your foot off the ground, sending it into midair, before planting it one step further. And you have to keep doing it. And sometimes you stand still for a long time, or just shift from foot to foot uncomfortably. I've been doing that for a few months now. In my next post I'm going to talk about the steps that I have managed to take as I came to this conclusion. But for now, I'll leave you with a slightly revised version of the Theodore Roosevelt speech Brene opens her book with: