Mamie, a most-welcome regular bold participant here, has sent us a quote: "Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."
- Goethe
I've read this before, but as I told her, am always glad to be reminded. I also had the thought: Wonder if Goethe was actually a nervous procrastinator.
It's universally known that we all teach (or rattle on about) what we personally need to learn.
I'll bet Goethe was trying to convince himself. I'm going to check around and find out. Thoughts of any Goethe-ists on this would be most welcome.
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7 comments:
Oh gosh, Peggy, you're always making me THINK. Now I have to ponder what I need to learn from my rattlings on....
Oh my goodness-- I wasn't aiming at you. No, me! me!
I write a boldness blog thinking I need it. It's a daily reminder to me.
...Though I once told my psychologist husband that I thought I might take assertiveness lessons and he looked up from his reading with his eyes widened in alarm and said, "To assert WHAT? To WHOM?"
Some consider me fairly bold. I wasn't scared to go parasailing over Acapulco Harbor. But teaching a class every week...that takes all my oomph. I don't really love working with power tools either. Guess we all have our own particular brands of timidity.
That sort of "boldness" is actually something of a self-image thing, isn't it? It's the things that threaten to expose some limitations of ourselves as people, that have to do with exposing our own particular genius, our own power, and our own magic that makes so many people shy of doing so. What if we don't have any of that? What if we fail? What if people think we're ridiculous for even trying at all?
Anyway, it's the beginning that's hardest, which I think is why Goethe wisely says to simply begin it, rather than to simply do it. Once you get started on something, some venture, some bit of scary boldness, you generally discover it's not as hard as it looked. (Although sometimes it is.)
I view it as a suppose-I-let-these-people-down worry.
I've got a pretty high tolerance for looking ridiculous, I think.
But none for not-coming-through. Which is also a matter of self-image, I suppose.
BTW, seems Goethe was truly a Wolfgang, not so nervous. I find reference to his "titanic personality."
cool blog
On this point, this is your opinion? It appears that we need to communicate!
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