Translator: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Mile Živković
What comes to mind when you hear the word “courage”?
I’d like you to consider the title of my message:
“Without fear, there is no courage.”
We all have fears,
whether you are a student or a teacher, married or single,
a national or new to this country.
I’d like to share with you an idea I got
from a book about courage that got me thinking about my fears.
When I read a good book,
it gets me thinking about things I haven’t thought about in a long time,
like dreams, or problems, or opportunities.
This happened when I read “In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day,”
by Mark Batterson.
It’s about how to survive and thrive when opportunity roars.
It’s a story about courage,
about a man name Benaiah, who chased a lion down into a pit,
and then, despite the snow and slippery ground,
he caught the lion and killed it.
Well, normal people don’t chase lions,
so this guy was having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day,
but the story later goes on to say
that King David put Benaiah in charge of his entire body guard.
So, this story serves to show
that our past experiences can prepare us for our future opportunities.
How we react when we encounter lions can determine our destiny.
We can run away from our greatest challenges,
or we can chase our destiny by seizing opportunities.
The book posed a question for me:
what if the life I really want and the future I was created for
are hiding right now behind my biggest problem,
my worst failure or my greatest fear?
So, I asked myself,
“What lion-taming skill is most difficult for me to master?
Defying odds, facing fears,
reframing problems, embracing uncertainty,
taking risks, seizing opportunities,
or looking foolish?”
These ideas reminded me of three challenging instances in my life
that I want to share with you.
One: reframing problems as a student.
Another one: taking risks and embracing uncertainty with my family.
And the last one: unlearning my fears as a teacher.
First, I’d like you to consider how to reframe a problem.
To all the students in the audience,
you may be anxious about taking the right classes.
When I was in high school,
I had a college requirement of taking two years of a foreign language.
I initially chose German because my dad’s family is from Germany.
After my freshman year,
the academic advisor called me in and then said
I wouldn’t be able to take the second year of German
because it would conflict with another college prep course that I had to take.
I was so bummed.
Though, I didn’t want to take Spanish, it fit my schedule, so I took it anyway.
It’s amazing, the opportunities that this detour turned into.
My senior year in college,
I had the opportunity to do my student teaching in Costa Rica,
where I used my Spanish for six months.
That overseas teaching experience prepared me
for my current teaching position here in Xi’an, China.
Another time, when I was teaching in California,
they needed another chaperone
to take their advanced placement Spanish students to Costa Rica for ten days,
where all my expenses were paid.
And the, my husband’s dad’s family is Hispanic,
so I could use my Spanish to speak to his grandparents.
This example serves to show
how we can stop asking to get out of difficult circumstances
and start asking what can we get out of those difficult situations.
As long as we don’t focus on our disadvantages
and don’t make excuses,
the impossible odds can set the stage for amazing results.
To stop complaining, we can think less about changing our circumstances
and think more about changing our perspective.
Courageous lion chasers
don’t let what they can’t do keep them from doing what they can.
Consider your perspective on a problem in your life.
Can you reframe it?
Next,
I’d like to share with you about an example in my family.
We took risks by moving out of our comfort zone.
Looking in the rearview mirror,
I can see how the biggest risks have opened the doors
for the greatest opportunities.
When I got married,
my husband and I made a five and ten-year plan for our future,
and following this,
I just realized that getting married was a huge risk,
having each of our two children was a huge risk,
moving to Africa was a huge risk,
and moving to China was a huge risk.
You may be wondering, “Why is this a huge risk?”
Well, in America, living the American dream,
with kids, and a two-story house, and three cars, and a dog,
comes from both parents working.
Following our five-year plan,
I quit work to stay home with our baby.
So, this meant we were living on only one income,
and this is when we found out that my husband had lymph node cancer.
Well, health care insurance is very expensive,
and medical treatments are very expensive,
and Gabe got so weak that he had to quit his full-time carpentry job
to work part-time with youth to support the family.
When Gabe was on chemotherapy, we were told not to have any more kids,
and this is when our youngest child decided to come along.
After that, we found out that I had a cancer tumor in my right eye,
and following our ten-year plan,
we moved to Africa to help an orphanage with a building project.
But I couldn’t do my medical treatments in Africa,
so, after six months, we had to move back to the United States.
This is when our current teaching position in Xi’an, China, opened up.
I had a friend in America say,
“I can never do what you do, moving with your family!”
Though, she wanted to.
And this is the stage that was set for us,
and it’s been the perfect fit for our family.
It seems like the more risks I take, the easier it seems to become.
For my last example,
I want to share with you about unlearning my fears as a teacher.
I will use the leadership class that I teach at Xi’an International School
as my example.
I encourage my students to dream big, and they do.
They have tackled an infinity of huge projects
like a community carnival and a charity concert.
Students can be unpredictable.
Even though I have very reliable students, being their advisor is very scary.
Because I have no co-adviser if anything goes wrong during these events,
I am going to be the one to blame.
What if I let my fear keep me from doing it?
I can think of the amazing stories, and memories, and experiences
that I would have missed out on.
I like living life to the fullest,
and I want to live in a way that’s worth telling stories about.
Consider that the greatest breakthroughs in life
happen when we push through our fears.
What fears do you have?
When we’re born, we only have two fears:
the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises.
Ah!
(Laughter)
All other fears are learned.
But fear can be fun,
like at a challenging ropes course, high in the air.
We can face those fears and begin the process of unlearning them.
For example: a neuroscience experiment was done with a finger-tapping exercise.
Scientists studied the brain as people would tap their finger.
What’s astonishing is that, after the course of time,
the part of the brain working goes stronger
because of the finger-tapping exercise.
So, this shows that we can retrain our brains
and start unlearning our fears.
As you practice a new skill, you can rewire your brain.
Are you willing to face and unlearn one of your fears?
In conclusion,
if we wait for conditions that are just right to seize an opportunity,
we may be waiting forever.
We don’t have to get it perfect the first time,
but we do have to start somewhere.
Our dreams can become real, one opportunity after another.
If our fear of failing is keeping us from seizing opportunities,
we need to remember that our willingness to fail is a prerequisite to success.
I learned to juggle from the Klutz Juggling Book.
The first step to juggling is to toss three juggling balls up into the air,
and let them drop on the ground,
and then pick them up.
The reason why we have to do this
is because a juggler has to learn to do this a lot
as part of the learning process.
As you’ve listened today, I hope things have surfaced in your mind:
problems that need to be reframed,
risks that need to be taken,
and fears that need to be unlearned.
I hope you now have the courage to chase lions and other fears in your life.
(Applause)
What comes to mind when you hear the word “courage”?
I’d like you to consider the title of my message:
“Without fear, there is no courage.”
We all have fears,
whether you are a student or a teacher, married or single,
a national or new to this country.
I’d like to share with you an idea I got
from a book about courage that got me thinking about my fears.
When I read a good book,
it gets me thinking about things I haven’t thought about in a long time,
like dreams, or problems, or opportunities.
This happened when I read “In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day,”
by Mark Batterson.
It’s about how to survive and thrive when opportunity roars.
It’s a story about courage,
about a man name Benaiah, who chased a lion down into a pit,
and then, despite the snow and slippery ground,
he caught the lion and killed it.
Well, normal people don’t chase lions,
so this guy was having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day,
but the story later goes on to say
that King David put Benaiah in charge of his entire body guard.
So, this story serves to show
that our past experiences can prepare us for our future opportunities.
How we react when we encounter lions can determine our destiny.
We can run away from our greatest challenges,
or we can chase our destiny by seizing opportunities.
The book posed a question for me:
what if the life I really want and the future I was created for
are hiding right now behind my biggest problem,
my worst failure or my greatest fear?
So, I asked myself,
“What lion-taming skill is most difficult for me to master?
Defying odds, facing fears,
reframing problems, embracing uncertainty,
taking risks, seizing opportunities,
or looking foolish?”
These ideas reminded me of three challenging instances in my life
that I want to share with you.
One: reframing problems as a student.
Another one: taking risks and embracing uncertainty with my family.
And the last one: unlearning my fears as a teacher.
First, I’d like you to consider how to reframe a problem.
To all the students in the audience,
you may be anxious about taking the right classes.
When I was in high school,
I had a college requirement of taking two years of a foreign language.
I initially chose German because my dad’s family is from Germany.
After my freshman year,
the academic advisor called me in and then said
I wouldn’t be able to take the second year of German
because it would conflict with another college prep course that I had to take.
I was so bummed.
Though, I didn’t want to take Spanish, it fit my schedule, so I took it anyway.
It’s amazing, the opportunities that this detour turned into.
My senior year in college,
I had the opportunity to do my student teaching in Costa Rica,
where I used my Spanish for six months.
That overseas teaching experience prepared me
for my current teaching position here in Xi’an, China.
Another time, when I was teaching in California,
they needed another chaperone
to take their advanced placement Spanish students to Costa Rica for ten days,
where all my expenses were paid.
And the, my husband’s dad’s family is Hispanic,
so I could use my Spanish to speak to his grandparents.
This example serves to show
how we can stop asking to get out of difficult circumstances
and start asking what can we get out of those difficult situations.
As long as we don’t focus on our disadvantages
and don’t make excuses,
the impossible odds can set the stage for amazing results.
To stop complaining, we can think less about changing our circumstances
and think more about changing our perspective.
Courageous lion chasers
don’t let what they can’t do keep them from doing what they can.
Consider your perspective on a problem in your life.
Can you reframe it?
Next,
I’d like to share with you about an example in my family.
We took risks by moving out of our comfort zone.
Looking in the rearview mirror,
I can see how the biggest risks have opened the doors
for the greatest opportunities.
When I got married,
my husband and I made a five and ten-year plan for our future,
and following this,
I just realized that getting married was a huge risk,
having each of our two children was a huge risk,
moving to Africa was a huge risk,
and moving to China was a huge risk.
You may be wondering, “Why is this a huge risk?”
Well, in America, living the American dream,
with kids, and a two-story house, and three cars, and a dog,
comes from both parents working.
Following our five-year plan,
I quit work to stay home with our baby.
So, this meant we were living on only one income,
and this is when we found out that my husband had lymph node cancer.
Well, health care insurance is very expensive,
and medical treatments are very expensive,
and Gabe got so weak that he had to quit his full-time carpentry job
to work part-time with youth to support the family.
When Gabe was on chemotherapy, we were told not to have any more kids,
and this is when our youngest child decided to come along.
After that, we found out that I had a cancer tumor in my right eye,
and following our ten-year plan,
we moved to Africa to help an orphanage with a building project.
But I couldn’t do my medical treatments in Africa,
so, after six months, we had to move back to the United States.
This is when our current teaching position in Xi’an, China, opened up.
I had a friend in America say,
“I can never do what you do, moving with your family!”
Though, she wanted to.
And this is the stage that was set for us,
and it’s been the perfect fit for our family.
It seems like the more risks I take, the easier it seems to become.
For my last example,
I want to share with you about unlearning my fears as a teacher.
I will use the leadership class that I teach at Xi’an International School
as my example.
I encourage my students to dream big, and they do.
They have tackled an infinity of huge projects
like a community carnival and a charity concert.
Students can be unpredictable.
Even though I have very reliable students, being their advisor is very scary.
Because I have no co-adviser if anything goes wrong during these events,
I am going to be the one to blame.
What if I let my fear keep me from doing it?
I can think of the amazing stories, and memories, and experiences
that I would have missed out on.
I like living life to the fullest,
and I want to live in a way that’s worth telling stories about.
Consider that the greatest breakthroughs in life
happen when we push through our fears.
What fears do you have?
When we’re born, we only have two fears:
the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises.
Ah!
(Laughter)
All other fears are learned.
But fear can be fun,
like at a challenging ropes course, high in the air.
We can face those fears and begin the process of unlearning them.
For example: a neuroscience experiment was done with a finger-tapping exercise.
Scientists studied the brain as people would tap their finger.
What’s astonishing is that, after the course of time,
the part of the brain working goes stronger
because of the finger-tapping exercise.
So, this shows that we can retrain our brains
and start unlearning our fears.
As you practice a new skill, you can rewire your brain.
Are you willing to face and unlearn one of your fears?
In conclusion,
if we wait for conditions that are just right to seize an opportunity,
we may be waiting forever.
We don’t have to get it perfect the first time,
but we do have to start somewhere.
Our dreams can become real, one opportunity after another.
If our fear of failing is keeping us from seizing opportunities,
we need to remember that our willingness to fail is a prerequisite to success.
I learned to juggle from the Klutz Juggling Book.
The first step to juggling is to toss three juggling balls up into the air,
and let them drop on the ground,
and then pick them up.
The reason why we have to do this
is because a juggler has to learn to do this a lot
as part of the learning process.
As you’ve listened today, I hope things have surfaced in your mind:
problems that need to be reframed,
risks that need to be taken,
and fears that need to be unlearned.
I hope you now have the courage to chase lions and other fears in your life.
(Applause)
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