Brene Brown once said, “We can measure how brave you are by how vulnerable you’re willing to be”. While I know she is right, I can’t help being afraid of the word ‘vulnerable’. In my head, I ask myself what I am willing to be vulnerable to? What could I do to be more vulnerable? After much thought and a lot of fear, I realized what I am afraid of. I am afraid of working hard and failing. The fear of failure is very common in our world. Thirty-one percent of people have this fear, which puts it above the fear of spiders. The reason why I have this fear…
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Q&A with Emily Stevens
Emily Stevens is a life coach and therapist who loves helping others let go of their anxiety, help them gain confidence, and set healthy boundaries for her clients to be able to live the life they want. What made you want to do both therapy and life coaching? Well, I started out just as a therapist, and I really liked working with my therapy clients. It has its limitations, though, as far as you can only see people in person and all that stuff. And I wanted to expand but I also wanted the ability to help people who maybe don’t have a specific diagnosis that maybe don’t realize that…
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I’m Not Courageous
She seemed nervous. When I asked Brynn if I could interview her, she didn’t know what for, she didn’t even know why I wanted to interview her or what it would be used for. I was nervous too. I didn’t know what was going to happen in the article and this was my first time doing a project so big. Courage was something so easily explainable and yet I had a tendency to ask the hard questions. Even though this was the case, she explained courage as understanding consequences and yet doing it anyway. She referred to Brene Brown, a researcher who studies shame, courage, and vulnerability. Brynn said that…
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The History of Courage
Courage has been defined in many ways since ancient Greece. The history of courage is something that can help us to understand courage a bit more and how we can apply it to our own lives. It’s no lie that courage has been discussed many times from ancient Greece to today. Even though it has been studied for centuries, we still can’t seem to get it out of our heads. What is courage? How can we become courageous? These questions have fueled the conversation on courage since the beginning. All of them, trying to figure out exactly what courage is and how we can use it for ourselves. Starting in…
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The Woman with a Necklace of Thorns
There are few faces as iconic and recognizable as that of the woman with a necklace of thorns. Her head adorned with flowers, her most notable feature that is never to be forgotten in each rendition of her portrait are the wispy eyebrows that meet in the center above the bridge of her nose. For those of us that see beyond the face in each portrait, there can be found a story of a courageous and resilient woman. Frida Kahlo was known most for her self-portraits. Each one depicted her face as honestly as a photograph, but the surroundings told a story of pain and suffering. She wasn’t a stranger…
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The Fear of the Unknown
*Into the Uknown plays in the background* I think that we have had enough catchy Frozen songs to last a lifetime but what she says about going into the unknown is true. There are times when we have to face the unknown when we have to face our futures. Today, I met with my school advisor and she gave me the day I am going to graduate from college with my bachelor’s in communication. When anyone asks me what I feel about this, I always tell them, “a bit excited and a bit terrified.” Truth is that I have no clue about the type of future that I want. I…
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Grit Isn’t Going Anywhere
Throughout this month we have talked about grit. Grit when it comes to failure, when it loyalty, and when it comes to effort. One thing that I know for sure is that grit is hard. When I think about the people who have to get up every day even though it is easier to stay in bed, I know that they are doing it because they need to. They want to help themselves and they want to help others. Grit isn’t only about making sure you stay strong amidst a struggle. It is also being there for yourself, others, and trying to smile when all you want to do is…
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A Converted Buddhist Shared What Faith Means to Him
It’s funny how the first interview I wanted to do for this month ended up being the last. I learned about world religions in my church class and the two that piqued my interest where Hinduism and Buddhism. When all of my ideas for this month started to swirl in my head, I knew that I wanted to interview one of these two religions. What ended up happening is that I couldn’t find anyone until this past week. That’s when I found a Buddhist from the Awakening Valley Sangha named John Judd and he helps to run the sangha in Provo, Utah. John has always lived in Utah. In fact,…
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It Must Be True Love
Who do we fall in love with? Why do we start to love them in the first place? These are just some questions I have about the person we are trying to find. Some people call them soulmates, others kindred spirits, but when it all comes down to it, it is the person we want to spend the rest of our lives with. Something that both of my grandparents have taught me is that the people we are going to spend our lives with can be anyone. My grandmother and grandfather, Joan and Robert, had known each other for two years before they started dating. They were on a double…
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4 Things I Learned Last Year
It has crossed my mind many times just how much each topic I have written about in the past five months have related to each other. As I considered this, I often wondered if connecting the topics together would result in a bigger learning opportunity and teach me more about each topic. For those who don’t know, so far we have talked about courage, creativity, gratitude, hope, and finally change. At first, when I was looking at each of the topics I was going to write about it didn’t seem as though any of these would cross over into the other categories. But as I started writing each topic, I…
