What’s your superpower?

My youngest son asked me the other day what superpower I would pick if I had a choice! I said: SPEED like the Flash, that seemed like the best choice at the time. I imagined doing my kung fu with lightning speed and all the things I could achieve in only a few minutes.

While we don’t get to pick them, we all have a unique combination of strengths and some we may not even realize.

Todai Bauers kindness project, my Student of the Year Award, and my Psycho-Cybernetics book all inspire me to work on my confidence and I may have discovered something.

Interestingly, I have never consciously decided to work on self-esteem before. I have been annoyed with my lack of, for as long as I can remember, but I have lived day in and day out, accepting it as something set in stone, that is just who I am. I feel a shifting in my attitude lately. It's kind of fuzzy yet, but the gears have started turning. I don't know if it is my age that causes these reflections or just the path I took that brought me here today.

Reading the compliments in the kindness book was very interesting! I had a chance to read not only mine but also Leon's and what stands out to me is, that there is a distinct pattern for each person. I 100% agree with Leons and would probably with yours if I read them all!

Creative, was a word used a lot to describe me. I have always viewed myself as such, so no big surprises there but I have been made aware of something else, that may serve me a lot in my future endeavors.

"Being afraid and doing it anyway!"

This has come up a lot lately and it made me look back at my life.

Hi, I'm Laura and I’m 45 years old today.

I grew up as a shy, very scared of everything, single child in East Germany. I drove my dad nuts with me tears and fears as he was hoping to raise a warrior.

I was not an overachiever, labeled as solidly average in most I did, ok in school but almost failed my grade 10 exams because of my lack of English skills!😜

Despite my teacher's doubts I moved on to Highschool and later University and graduated successfully with my architecture degree. I decided all of a sudden to go alone on a trip to Australia for three months, where I ended up meeting my husband and no, I did not understand a word he was saying back then. We also traveled to India for a couple of months, and I wonder to this day where I dug up the courage to go.

I then found myself in a veryyyyy long distance relationship and came eventually after 4.5 years to the conclusion that it was time to move to another continent. I continued my "scared of everything live" in Canada arriving in January of 2008 at -30 degrees  (the coldest I had ever felt), sitting on an acreage with no friends nor family and Jason gone for 6 weeks at a time. I will admit there were many moments I asked myself what the heck am I doing! 

There are things I absolutely love and am super passionate about, and yet it costs a lot of courage repeatedly every time I do them, like setting up a booth and showing of my art, or sleeping in a tent in the wild or paddling the ocean in a nutshell. The list of things I am afraid of but did anyway goes on. I mentioned a few big ones which make me super proud but there are many, many little ones that seem so ridiculous and I am ashamed to admit them but they are just as true and hard for me: Like there were very simple phone calls at times or coming to the first I Ho Chuan meeting, or driving on Canadian roads or speaking up even in a very small circle of people.

The book I read has prompted me to think of events in my life I'm proud of and when I first tried there wasn't as much that came to mind. When I started typing this blog though and listing examples I all of a sudden had more than I need to share. The bottom line is I have spent way too much time beating myself up over being afraid rather than feeling proud of doing all these things in spite of it! Maybe fear is not the enemy after all and maybe being afraid doesn’t mean I’m weak, it may just be the opposite.

I’m trying to look at this as my super power now and I’m hoping to read a bit more about all of yours!