Welcome to the celebrate brave podcast. 

I’m Nicole Trick Steinbach, your host and the international bravery coach. On a mission to redefine brave. How we identify it, live it, and most importantly, celebrate it. Because when you build your brave, you change your world and that changes the world. Talk about something to celebrate. Let’s go. 

Hello, brave people. Today I am going to talk about a misconception. I hear about bravery so often it blows my mind. Okay. Here’s the misconception; brave equals hard, hard equals brave. Okay. So I know where this misconception comes from. It comes from our outdated. Very masculine, very,” not getting us to where we want to go”.

The definition of brave, a definition of brave that focuses on crushing the competition, slamming hands down on the desk, and taking no prisoners. Rushing into burning buildings and going to war. Yeah. If that’s the only definition of brave we’ve got, of course, brave is hard. But you and I, we’re shifting the definition of bravery.

We are. Yes. Yes. Okay. There’s some of that, there’s place for that, of course. And there’s a bigger, juicier aspect to brave. Some people call it; tend and befriend. It’s, you know, we focus on this very masculine fight flight freeze, right? I’m not going to totally geek out on this, but the research for that is incredibly limited. And it also is based on. White traumatized European soldiers

 At the turn of the last century. Okay. What has been explored with much more depth and has shown that it’s much more inclusive is yes, yes, yes. A moment, a time. Of Fight/ flight /freeze. I think we can agree that that’s part of our lived experiences, but more importantly, the longer response is, tend and befriend.

If we take war on one side, then it’s diplomacy on the other. If we take flight, then it’s befriend on the other. It is this move to take care of ourselves and others around us and reach out to build community, to do the same with others. Tend and befriend. So if we are over here thinking, Oh, it’s all this, all this stressful stuff. That’s what brave is. Of course, brave is hard. 

We are looking at this way more holistically for the time and the place we live in now and the future we want to live in its things like. Saying, I love you for the first time to a friend or a new partner. Asking for the income that reflects the contributions and values. We bring into our professional settings. Saying no, just no, no excuses, just no. Asking for feedback. From someone we know is going to give us the feedback. All right, these are all the moments of tend and befriend that belong in brave. This is brave and therefore does brave have to be hard?. No. Brave does not have to be hard.

Does that make it easy? Sometimes, not often. Often we are still going to feel the fear. We are still going to feel trepidation. We will still experience stretch. And that doesn’t have to be hard. I’m going to share two personal stories that really personify exactly what I’m talking about. And, I’m laughing a little bit about myself when I tell these stories because now I look back on this and I’m like, Hey Nicole, how on earth did you not see that? But at the time, I really didn’t. I really, really didn’t. So here we go. 

So the first story is about discovering magic, my own personal magic. It is so clear to me now, after a good 20 years that my magic is running towards when the poopoo has hit, the fan. Things have gone wrong and it’s just not clear which way.

Up down left right forward, backward circles, triangles. I don’t know. I love that stuff. And also when, a group or a person knows this isn’t what I want. I’m not sure where I want to go, or I know where I want to go. I don’t know how to get there. Right. That to me now is so clear. That that is my magic. It was not clear to me for a long time.

And the way it became clear is tons and tons and tons of small brave moments. There is one that utterly just, whew. I had this big moment of illumination and that was, I was still in my corporate career. There was an issue, a problem, a team, and a product that was suffering. And I’m on this big global call. When I say big and global, I mean, big and global.

So there were tons of names on there, right? Tech companies bringing everybody that could have any sort of stake into this, onto the call. I’m on the call. And someone says, you’re right. We need that workshop. We need to get everyone in the room.  And, by that, it doesn’t necessarily mean a physical room, can also be a virtual room.

All right. We need to get everyone in the room. We need to have these hard conversations. Can y’all check to see if Nicole is available? Which Nicole is the response because, a hundred thousand people, there’s quite a number of Nicole’s. And someone says, let’s get Nicole Trick. And someone else says, yeah, she treats executives like they’re humans.

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I went off mute and I said, Hey guys, I’m already here. Very happy to run this workshop. Who is in the small planning team? Let’s go. When we got into that small planning team, I send to the person who said, yeah, yeah, let’s get Nicole. Let’s get Nicole. You know, she treats executives like humans. I was like, what, what does it mean?

Why is that something? And the whole group reflected back to me in that moment. But also later during the workshop, after the workshop, during our time of working together, that my magic was bringing everyone into a room, treating them as humans, as equals. Some of them had more authority, but that doesn’t mean that they have more humanity.

And working through really difficult stuff with humor and ease. 

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Now, during that process, there were comments like executive B isn’t making decisions, and that’s why executive B is in this project. That’s a brave freaking statement. And it was done with ease because I go towards challenging situations. I lead best in times of change.

Was it brave? Was it difficult? Heck yes. Was it hard? No, not really. No, not really. It also wasn’t the first time difficult conversations needed to take place and I stepped into them. Brave. doesn’t need to be hard. 

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And the second story, right? So there’s a large group story. And I laugh at myself because, Oh my gosh. It’s so clear looking back. Okay. The second story is actually the story about how I got pushed into being a coach. Yes, dear listener, dear brave human. I got pushed into being a coach. So here’s the story. For years, I was the bossy older sister. I was the tell it all. I was the do it all. I was all of these things, right.

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And I got confused between aggression and assertiveness and thank goodness my manager believed in me and made sure that I got some coaching. It was life-affirming, life-changing. Incredible, and I’m still in contact with that first coach. It was really, really fantastic. Now of course I had to spend a year, well I didn’t have to spend a year. I chose bravely to spend a year essentially apologizing to people. I had been a real Butthead. Anyways. So, I’m in a meeting room, there is an executive board member and I’ve been doing communication work for him. He has seen my growth in the last, I don’t know, 18 months. And I had had numerous conversations with him about my own experience with coaching. Well, somehow in his head it had become a conversation about how I also coach. I don’t know how that happened, but somehow it happened. So it’s after this meeting, it’s a pretty fraught meeting. It’s, it’s a difficult meeting and everyone is standing up. I’m like 15 years younger, at least everyone in the room. And I’m the only woman. And I think I was one of three, non-Germans, I think three or four, can’t remember exactly. 

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So everyone is standing up, we’re moving around a bit and because I’m doing communications, I am literally next to the executive and I’m turning to say, Hey, did I capture this correctly? And he says, he points at this gentleman, this, this fellow executive. I think he was maybe director level at the time and he points to him and he says, Nicole, that guy has got it. He needs help, go coach him. Okay. Now I have physically turned to identify who are we pointing at? I mean, this, this executive, this board member’s arm is all the way outstretched. He is literally pointing with his finger and there is no bones about what’s happening in this conversation. Right? And so I have now turned away. My back is to the executive and I am looking at this director, this guy with potential who needs coaching. And I identify him, I turn it back to the executive, to the board member and he’s gone. He has been swallowed into the mist of his executive assistant, of his, you know, office manager of all these things. And they are now moving him to his next meeting, which is, you know, how it happens. 

Well at this moment in time, I have a choice. I can either sit back and explain why I didn’t follow through or, I can walk across the room. I’m in this room, I deserve to be in this room, obviously. Introduce myself, start a conversation, and kind of laugh at what the situation is. So I, of course, I take the latter because that’s how we move forward. We move towards opportunities that we quote “are not ready for”, quote “came too early”. So this gentleman actually ended up being my first coaching client. I did not call it coaching at the time because I coach consult. I am not here to hold people’s hands and listen to their excuses and say, that’s right.No. If I remember correctly, this and I remember correctly, I don’t know why I just said that. That’s so funny. 

Anyway, this gentleman, he didn’t have time. He didn’t have time to meet with his employees. He didn’t have time to review in detail, the materials that were sent to him. Instead, he would walk into meetings with people he didn’t really know that well with no idea of what was happening on that interpersonal level and destroy. He was a stickler, perfectionist. He would destroy what his colleagues what the product team, what the project team had spent weeks and weeks and weeks working on, and always getting him on boat.

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But he wasn’t really on the boat because he wasn’t really responding or reading things because he was quote “too busy”. I’m a coach consult. So I send to him frequently; that’s just not true. That’s not true. If the executive board member, if the senior vice president, if the president, if the lead architect, if they can all sit down regularly with their direct employees and know what’s happening in the projects and in the products so can you, you are not that special. In fact, in trying to make yourself special, you are actually limiting your career opportunities because that’s how I talk. 

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Was it sometimes scary? Yeah. The time that he stood up, stood up, and walked out of the room, he didn’t slam the door, but boy, I’m pretty sure he wanted to, was terrifying.  Was it hard? No. Brave can be the feeling, the stretch, the tingle of stepping into your awesome. We have been socialized that those feelings inside of us, some of us have it in our belly. Some of us have it in our heart space and our chest. I knew someone who said, Oh my gosh, it goes up and down my spine. That’s when I know I’m terrified. 

What if our socialization is wrong? What if, that up and down the spine and that stretch in this chest area and those butterflies in the belly and that restlessness in your shoulders. What if, what if, what if that is your body getting ready to be awesome? What if those feelings are excitement?

What if those experiences, are how you experience brave. It would change. It would change how you respond to them. It would change how you notice them. And I know for a fact, I know for a fact that it changes how I behave, what I believe to be true, and how my clients behave and what they believe to be true.

And it all loops back to a fuller, more inclusive, more real, definition and identification of brave. Identify those feelings, identify those responses, identify that experience, and redefine it, redefine it. What if that response is you getting ready to be awesome and stepping into your brave? What would that……..change. 

Thanks again for listening today. If you are ready to build your brave for more money, deeper relationships, and more opportunities in your life. Reach out to me, Nicole Trick Steinbach. I would love to help you. And please remember to rate and review this celebrate brave podcast so that more people can support our movement to redefine brave, how we define it, live it, and celebrate it.

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 Brave it up.