Tuesday
Sep252012
40 Things That Are Brave To Do
Tuesday, September 25, 2012 This list goes well with a couple of other fear and bravery lists I've written before. Check out 25 Things of Which I Am Afraid and 25 Things That Make Me Feel Brave.
the Palinode over lunch
- Stand alone in front of people and sing, act, be funny, or deliver a talk
- Have a dissenting opinion and voice it
- Share your smallest, everyday fears
- Ask for help
- Go to the dentist
- Quit a comfortable job
- Have faith in something
- Tell someone you love them
- Stand up for someone else
- Defend the rights of someone you dislike
- Face a review of your work
- Risk your own life to save another
- Be ordinary
- Stop talking and listen
- Eat unfamiliar food
- Tell people what you are good at
- Forgive someone...
- ...and, even more difficult, forgive yourself
- Admit when you are wrong
- Walk away from something that hurts you
- Parent a child
- Feel afraid but take the next step anyway
- Move to a new city
- Confront the person who has hurt you the most
- Ask for what you want
- Give up something you love
- Volunteer to help people in hard situations such as palliative care or homeless shelters
- Get married
- Go out by yourself in public
- Audition
- Learn to live through, and sometimes beyond, grief
- Come out of the closet
- Spend time on a nudist colony
- Accept criticism without shooting the messenger
- Set out your boundaries and be firm about them
- Let go of anger and resentment
- Admit that you don't know how to do something
- Cry
- Be satisfied with what you have
- Live mindfully
I need to acknowledge that this list has about a hundred co-authors, because after I'd worked on it for a while, I asked the fine people of Twitter what they had to add, and they had a lot to say.
And you? What do you think are brave things to do?
Reader Comments (15)
Great list. Thank you.
Being married to someone who keeps taking pictures of you and putting them up on the Internet.
Oh #39 speaks to me big time.
What a fantastic list! Really. Here are my suggestions for numbers 41, 42 and 44:
41. Honestly rate how many of these you have actually done
42. Ask a trusted friend to list which of these THEY think YOU have done
43. Respect their opinion (and acknowledge the implicit praise therein) without deflecting any you don't agree with
I love this list!
This list is striking for several reasons, chief among them the fact that what one person will see as an everyday activity, another person will see as brave.
Number 15, for me? No big deal. Number 38? A daily occurrence. But number 18 or 34 are terrifying to me and wouldn't be to someone else.
It's always salutary to run smack up against your assumptions. Thank you for that!
This is an amazing list. Thank you!
I had never questioned my fear of nudity until I read 'go to a nudist colony' on your list. My first reaction was 'why would that be there THAT IS A RIDICULOUS IDEA?' and then I realized that absurdly that would scare me more than pretty much anything else on the list. So, I am going to go to a nudist beach. Who knows? I might even like it.
Wow!
Believe the things you would tell a good friends. Like how those who say awful things are really showing more of themselves than telling the truth about you. Or how it really does pay to try and try again, because if nothing else you'll know you gave it your all.
This is such an incredible list...So good! For me, it is standing up to the people I love or even being honest with them when they don't want to hear what I have to say--which is pretty much anything about the reality of how some of them are harming themselves.
So I actually don't do that EVER. Hah. But I have to, I need to. I need to be brave.
Besides all the things on this list--which are in fact all very difficult.
Be yourself. Truly and honestly yourself.
A wonderful set, although I am biased toward 40 item lists. ;-)
I am proud to say that I have done most of these things, but that doesn't mean they don't still terrify the hell out of me. The mere thought of #11 makes me cringe, and #21 makes me steel myself every day.
Each one on this list is so much emotion packed in a few words after a number! There is one I can add as a mom/parent: watch your children (or people you love) do the items on this list. :)
I love this list. It's scary and awesome.
I love this list. More than this list, I love the conversations I saw spiraling outward from the query that sparked its creation.
It made me all *stick arms! exuberance!*
Eat dinner alone in a restaurant.
For me, it's a brave thing to believe in forever in a relationship. I am working on being brave, and believing in it.