Raising Your Hand First

This week marks the start of the Jewish New Year.  Our daughter read Torah in front of more than 1,000 congregants during the holy service. When approached a few months back, her hand shot up without hesitation at the opportunity. She studied and practiced.  Then came the big day and we witnessed emotions we’d never seen from her before, the outfit meltdown, the anxious energy, all those pre-performance jitters that live rent-free in my own head.

What got me wasn’t just seeing her nervous for the first time. It was recognizing my own pattern playing out in miniature. She said yes first, then figured out how to make it work.  At what point did I stop raising my hand?

Somewhere along the way, fear started showing up earlier in my process. It used to be I’d feel the fear and know the only way through was to do the thing anyway. Now the fear arrives during the thinking phase, sets up camp, creating doubt, procrastination, sometimes full avoidance. 

The wild part about doing hard things is how your body screams danger while your brain catalogs every possible disaster. Then you do it anyway and realize you just got the best kind of high, the one that comes from managing through something really difficult.  I am here to declare to you that I have survived all of the hardships I’ve been through, so why do I think the next one will break me?  I have a perfect record (to be clear, not a record of being perfect)!

My daughter stood there trembling until her moment came. Then the trembling stopped, her preparation kicked in, and she sailed through it. Afterward, I don’t think she’d ever been more proud of herself.

The lesson she taught me this week is to keep raising our hands for the opportunities and trust that our talent and preparation will carry us to victory, before insecurity ever gets a chance to take the mic.

From your biggest champion,
Nicole