Be Brave! Mindful Kids: An Activity Book for Children Who Sometimes Feel Scared or Afraid

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You might find it helpful if you’re already convinced that your young person needs to be encouraged to face challenging situations, and you want some tips on how to help. So, as your adolescent progresses through key steps toward meeting a challenge, reward those steps once they are completed. This reminded me of something the late John O’Donohue once said (and I’m paraphrasing), which is that curiosity is always stronger than will.

If you are looking for an educator’s perspective on how to support students who have experienced trauma, and how to do so from an equity lens, Alex Shevrin Venet’s book Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education (2021) has influenced much of my own thinking and writing. Cast your mind back and find the moments, no matter how small, you have already stepped out your comfort zone and lived to tell the tale. When you assume things will turn out fine, for example, you may be less hesitant to engage in action. If so, they may be more motivated to take on the challenge and feel that they have a secure base from which to start. Or tell a 6th-grader considering a poetry contest how much they have always impressed you with their vocabulary and their analogies.Demonstrate a healthy embrace of challenging situations yourself, and explain how and why you go about facing these situations. I never would have thought that shy little girl would now be challenging you to be brave and persistent too. Not all useful challenges are large, time-intensive or require a lot of thought – they may just emerge naturally, in the moment.

A focus on goals is especially helpful for increasing your self-confidence, maintaining motivation and focus over time and for increasing satisfaction and wellbeing in your work and life. Start with a strongly held belief and seek to expand your understanding of different perspectives so you can ensure your responses are as empathetic and holistic as possible.Professional courage is a special brand of bravery because it is rarely defined as an impulsive battlefield moment with life-saving potential. Rationally, we know we won’t die, and our world probably won’t end, but it’s hard to get to ration when we are in a primal state of fear. You can express courage in a frontal approach or in more nuanced strategies—and these will vary based on what’s optimal for a particular situation. Fear of failure, fear of criticism, fear of rejection… can feel like our worlds will end (and to a point, they do — this is the breaking down of the ego, but that’s a story for another day).

Maybe I will lose people from my circle, maybe I will fail — if so, this is ok (well, accepting that this is ok will always be an ongoing process). This sense of overall self-efficacy allows you to take on the challenges of the day in their entirety, not just one or two moments that require courage. Certain career goals may motivate you to take that expat role or reach for the next job that will stretch your current skills.

Sometimes when we face our fears, it is almost a matter of survival… when I finally faced some of my demons around alcohol and negative patterns of behaviour, it really was a matter of survival because these things were slowly killing me — alcohol led me to some very dark and dangerous places, and sometimes, I am genuinely surprised that I am alive. While you can plan for years or give yourself positive encouragement, the best way to build your courage is to just do the things that you want to try but are scared to do. This is why, to be brave, means first acknowledging our fears; dissecting them, shining a light on them to see that (more often than not) they are not as scary as we imagined.