One of my former coworkers has a beloved coffee mug that reads: “Life is all about how you handle Plan B.”  Before starting this blog about how to nurture courage in our children and ourselves as parents, I had honestly never thought about how important it is to frame some of life’s unexpected and challenging circumstances as “Plan B” to help boost our capacity for the six types of courage.  It now strikes me that much of human courage, and a truer measure of our success in life, has to do with how we handle adapting, often in a singular moment, to the unexpected and challenging circumstances of our individual lives.  In terms of parenting, since my kids were young I have had lots of conversations with them about differentiating life’s “big stuff” (i.e. life-threatening illness) from the “small stuff” (i.e. not getting to push the elevator button).  When my son was about five years old, after one such conversation when he was upset about a playdate cancellation, he proclaimed: “You know Mommy, if you reeeeaaaalllly think about it the big stuff can just be smashed apart to make smaller stuff.  It’s all just small stuff!!” (You can read about Jennifer’s perspective on  “Plan B” by clicking here. You can also read more about cognitive reframing in one of my former posts A Hurricane is Coming.)

Well, it didn’t take long for me to decide that I would lace up my sneakers and still run the marathon as scheduled–it would just have to be around my hometown instead. I figured I had done all my training and had collected some $3,000 in charitable donations for the Alzheimer’s Association in honor of my mother and uncle. I had all my gear ready. I was good to go!

Next, I cancelled my hotel reservation and diverted the refund to the Red Cross Relief fund for Hurricane Sandy. I wrote an email to all my sponsors who had so generously donated funds notifying them that I keep good on my promises. Not one of them asked for a refund! Instead, I received a flurry of supportive emails that strengthened my resolve to run. My husband and I then planned and drove a few possible 26.2 miler routes starting from our house. Some more hilly than others, through battlefields my ancestors had once fought on. I’m a little superstitious and also a big believer that everything happens for a reason; I figured running close to home on the same day, starting at the same time, from my own front porch instead of from the Hudson River’s edge on Staten Island, was what was meant to be. It always feels right and good when I’m living in the flow.

When I called my uncle to inform him that I was still going ahead with my run on my own, to honor his courage in facing down Alzheimer’s, his response: “Well, how like you. This means you’ll win the race, of course!”


Starting out!

I carried all the names of the family members my sponsors had honored through their donations. I read it out to myself and sent prayers for each of them at 13.1 miles and again towards the end of my run–when I really needed their strength and inspiration. I thought of the families struggling to recover and repair their lives after Hurricane Sandy, especially the mom from Staten Island whose two young children were torn from her arms by a giant wave and both of whom tragically died. A loss which I can only imagine must take the most courage any of us as parents can muster.

I reflected on how truly grateful I am to be healthy enough to run on behalf of such important causes. I also thought, “Girl, if you can give birth twice, you can do this!”

Around mile 16, I felt the presence of other runners coming up behind me. Being Canadian, I promptly apologized for hogging the narrow slip of road we were needing to share along my route, only to turn around and find two twin guardian angels—my son’s ex-girlfriend and her twin. They told me not to talk, good advice, and to just keep running. Not long after my mind went to an altered state and I just kept saying to myself “Just keep running, just keep running.” No deep insights. But maybe that’s enough: just to keep moving, putting one foot in front of the other, staying VERY present, especially when you have to dig deep during tough times.

I had always minimized the legendary “Wall” that every marathoner talks about, around miles 20-24. That is until “The Wall” found me at mile 22. It became too much to take a drink, stomach any energy “goo,” and it became very evident that I was going to have to draw on something much stronger than myself to finish this particular race. Most marathoners would agree that at this stage of a 26.2 miler, the balance tips in favor or mind over matter. I kept counting down the blocks and kept with my plan to run and not stop—no matter what! At that point, if I had stopped I figured I would lose all momentum and fall face-first onto the pavement. I was really concerned about honoring my commitment to my sponsors. Everything became very simple.  Just breath, just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and push just that little bit further than I think I can: the essence of physical courage.  The type of courage that Jennifer’s friend Jane, a former professional ballerina, talks about in this post: Dancing Through Pain.



Almost across the finish line

A few blocks from home, I could hear a chorus of girls singing “She’ll be coming around the block, when she comes…” Total relief! One final hill and I’d be home. I did my best, hunched over at this point, to challenge that hill, and was met at the top by my daughter and a group of her good friends. One of whom I overheard saying, “Your mom seriously looks like she’s going to die.” Then followed a series of inspirational chalk sayings along our block, with my husband and son holding a make-shift finish line, fashioned from some spare rope from our garage, for me to cross some 4 hrs. and 25 mins. later—first, of course, as predicted! My twin angels clearly gracious enough to let me win this one!

My learning? In a nutshell:

• Disappointment gets in the way of decoding Plan B.

• Grace is accepting what happens as meant to be.

• Never underestimate good running shoes, hydrating, and regular re-fueling.

• Don’t believe every thought that pops into your head—especially those at mile 22 that start “I can’t…”

• Everyone needs a loyal pit crew. Treat them well! Give thanks!

• Stretching and being flexible can’t be underestimated, especially after 40.
• What we think is the big stuff can actually be broken into smaller, more manageable, stuff—especially when we focus on what’s truly important in life. Which, in my opinion, is to love and be loved.  It takes all six types of courage to live this value!


Across the finish line with my twin guardian angels!

A couple of years ago, Jennifer, my husband and I took our kids to a ropes course called Adirondack Extreme. It is described as an “Aerial Tree Top Adventure” which includes a complex ropes course suspended between trees at 10 to 60 feet off the ground. It promised to be a fun physical courage challenge. Little did I know that it would be more of an emotional and social courage challenge for me. The labyrinth of ropes wouldn’t prove to be my biggest adversary, but untangling myself from my own perfectionism would be.

Jennifer did not climb due to an old injury, but she supervised our daughters on the kids’ course. My husband, our son, and I challenged the adult course. We attended a brief instruction on how to put on our harness, how to securely hook and unhook ourselves along the course, and how to ask for help—if push came to shove and we decided we were done at some point along the increasingly challenging course. I paid pretty close attention to the introductory talk, but only half-listened to the “asking for help” part. As I’ve written about previously in my post “Quitters, Campers, and Climbers,” I’m not much of a quitter. I’m a climber who, I’m embarrassed to admit, even sometimes secretly feels superior to quitters.

By the time I reached mid-course, my then 12-year old son was lapping me. He seemed recklessly, blissfully unaware of all the risks that I was quickly becoming aware of as I looked down from the tree tops to the ground twenty, then fifty, feet below. He just kept saying “Mom, this is SO much fun. It’s easy!”

I can assure you this course was NOT easy! And I was so over the idea of this being fun. The more joyless and humorless I became, the more rigid my body became.  My joyful son, on the other hand, had the agility of a monkey; while I swung precariously, holding on for dear life with increasingly sweaty palms, between the various rope mazes. He was fearless, while I was quickly becoming fearful.

One of the big differences between kids and adults in terms of risk assessment is the cognitive tricks that our minds begin to play with us as we develop. According to child psychologist Dr. Tamar Chansky (2004), in her book Freeing Your Child from Anxiety: Powerful, Practical solutions to Overcome Your Child’s Fears, Worries, and Phobias, we feel anxious when we begin to confuse the possibility of occurrence with the probability of it actually occurring. Dr. Chansky writes that the “Anxious Response= Overestimation of Threat + Underestimation of Ability to Cope.” So, while I was focusing on whether or not the ropes were strong enough to hold me, the possibility of falling, how painful it would be to hang upside down for an extended period of time waiting for help, whether or not my children (who I no longer had in sight) were okay or not, and how embarrassing it would be to quit; my son was enjoying each new obstacle on the course while feeling totally secure in his crotch harness and physical ability.

At the second to last level, all alone now on the course, I was officially scared. But quit? OMG, no way! Quitting = Failure, to the perfectionist mind.  Which is, as Jennifer wrote in her last post Failure is Always an Option, “tantamount to total annihilation.” At the very least, annihilation of the ego. Success for me, at times, can be deeply intertwined with trying to prove that I’m lovable and valuable. In short, I wasn’t a kid who learned that her success in life is based on who she is, not on how she looks or what or how well she does. A perfectionist places more value on how she appears to the world than on who she is on the inside.  This misplacement of her inherent value creates a fragile ego swinging precariously from one success to the next, desperately trying to avoid the identity-crisis pitfalls that mistakes, and especially failure, threaten.  It’s also what makes perfectionists highly competitive and probably not all that relaxing to be around sometimes. Needless to say, this aspect of my personality is not particularly healthy–nor is feeling secretly superior to quitters, for that matter! These are not personality characteristics I wish to pass along to my children. Instead, I parent my kids in ways that focus on their inherent value.  I focus less on how they look and what grades they get, but more on the core qualities they are developing as kind, loving human beings.  I encourage them to listen to their limits and feelings, to focus on their successes, to identify goals that are truly important to them (not society at large), to do their best because there is no such thing as perfect, and to be gentle with themselves when they make mistakes.  I’ve coached them to develop an internal locus of control (you can read my parenting tips here: Are You an Inny or an Outy?) And I’m known for saying “I love who you are, and who you are becoming.”  Let’s be honest, embracing this kind of unconditional acceptance of both ourselves and our children is kind of radical—especially today in our culture of overachievement! Dr. Brene Brown’s book The Gifts of Imperfection is a great resource for anyone interested in understanding and letting go perfectionism!

One of the many gifts of being a parent, in my opinion, is that we get the chance to teach (and learn from) our kids what we, too, need to learn in life.  In essence, parenting has given me the opportunity to release myself from perfectionism’s uncomfortable grip and develop the kind of self-acceptance and love that my kids seem to instinctively possess.  And now I was about to model that it’s sometimes okay to quit!

When I reached the next tree post, I found myself hugging and not wanting to let go of that tree with the kind of intense love usually reserved for extreme environmentalists. I was done! It was suddenly much more important to me to listen to my body’s limits and find my kids on the course than to prove to myself and others that I could finish. Suddenly, quitting was not only an option, but it was okay. I couldn’t remember the code word the guide had told me to yell if I needed to be rescued, but in any situation screaming “HELP!” usually works.  I started with a timid “Helloooooo. Guide?!” which quickly progressed to screaming above the treetops “HELP! I need to get down now.” 

In a matter of minutes, a very kind and capable young man arrived on the scene to lower me from the towering heights of my new BFF. I told him I was okay and felt surprisingly calm.  I wanted to reassure him that I wasn’t going to cling to him like a crazy lady when he finally reached me.  He, in turn, reassured me that this kind of thing happens every day.  That made me feel a lot better!  I found myself laughing, recalling my high-pitched screams for help above the tree tops, and relaxing as he lowered us to the ground. I was amazed not to be embarrassed. The earth did not open up to swallow me whole when my feet reached terra firma. Throngs of people weren’t waiting on the ground to laugh, jeer, and otherwise poke fun at my failure. These are the kinds of thoughts that keep perfectionism well-fed, by the way, and keep us from trying things that might mean risking failure in some way, shape, or form. In fact, I felt kind of proud of myself. I had actually asked for help and received it! Trust me when I say, it took more emotional courage for me to quit, ask for help and trust that it would arrive, and social courage to risk embarrassment amongst my peers and family, than the physical courage to force myself to finish the course.

I could have focused on my failure and spiraled down into an abyss of low self-esteem, but I made my failure okay by focusing instead on what I was able to accomplish. I made it okay to quit by untangling who I am as a person from my perfectionist expectations.  I discovered that the belief that you are already “good enough,” no matter what you are able to accomplish, is perfectionism’s personal kryptonite. Adopting a new respect for quitting has also freed me up to be willing to climb again! 

By honoring the type of courage I actually needed to develop, I was able to reframe my perceived physical courage “failure” as an emotional courage accomplishment. We can do this for our kids, too, by helping them to recognize the gains they make everyday, by breaking apart difficult tasks into smaller more manageable and achievable ones, and by celebrating their successes. We can help them identify which of the six types of courage they are developing, and are capable of, in everything they do!

As I was writing this post, I asked my daughter to define failure.  Her answer: “There is no such thing as failure Mom. Whatever you are able to do is okay.”  When I also asked if she’d like to try the adult course with me again this summer, now that she’s almost 12, she said: “Probably not.  I’m not a big fan of heights.”

You can read more about coaching kids to face challenges in my previous post: Discourage/Encourage: What’s a Parent to Do?

Lion’s Whiskers offers this courage challenge:

As an opportunity to practice what it would be like to put your physical courage muscles to work, we recommend discussing some possible worst-case scenarios.  Part of helping your child to be courageous in life is to simulate solutions to both common and uncommon survival situations.  By knowing what to do and, as the Boy Scouts say “Be Prepared!,” your chances for survival increase exponentially.  We’ve had some fun writing this post.  We even found ourselves in hysterics at times imagining some of these scenarios and what we might do–especially if we didn’t have a walking stick with us.  But we hope that you will take this post seriously about how important it is to review some basic safety tips with your family.

2.  How do you fend off a shark attack?

(This is a BIG problem in the U.S.–who would have known? We’ll assume you are outside in this scenario.  Don’t stand under a tree.  Do not take shelter under any structure that is made of metal, like a tower or flagpole.  Keep clear of water.  Don’t lie flat on the ground.  Kneel on all fours, with your head low–kinda’ like you would when praying for your life.  If, on the other hand, you are inside: avoid all plumbing and electrical appliances.

• Toddler:  the next time you are hanging out together on the jungle gym, taking a walk, or tumbling in gymnastic class, see if you can create an opportunity to push yourselves just a little bit harder, just a little bit longer.  When your child says “I can’t.  I want to be carried,” see if you can coach him/her to build some endurance with the play.  Promise, “Let’s just play for 5 minutes more, and then we will take a break.  I know you can do it!”
• Preschooler:  the next time you are headed out on a wintery walk, let your child choose if he/she will wear a coat.  Pack the coat along with you, just in case.  After 5 minutes or so on the walk, ask your child “Do you feel cold enough to need your coat?”  Let them have the experience of needing to wear the coat, instead of just assuming or wanting that for them.   
• Early elementary student: ever been drenched in a rainstorm or fallen overboard?  Uncomfortable isn’t it, to be walking or swimming around in water-soaked jeans.  How about simulating such an experience for your child by encouraging them to take a bath tonight fully clothed?  See if they can stay in the tub or shower for 5 minutes in their soaking wet, heavy clothing! 
• Upper elementary student or ‘tween:  have a sit-up challenge with your child tonight.  Before heading to bed, ask your child if they would like to see how many sit-ups you both can do in 5 minutes.  You can do them as slowly or quickly as you want.  Teach them how to do a sit-up, if they don’t know how, or google how to do one effectively if it has been awhile.  The goal is to experience the pretty much immediate discomfort and encourage one another to push through that feeling until the timer goes off.    
• High schooler or teen:  The next time your teen goes to raid the fridge, ask “Are you hungry?  How do you know you’re hungry?”  Have a 5-minute discussion with your child about the difference between craving and hunger.  Sometimes we crave sugar and simple carbohydrates, when our bodies really need a muscle and brain building protein-enriched meal.  Sometimes we are hungry for time, attention, rest, or human connection, more than we are for food.   Sometimes out of emotional discomfort, we hope food will fill the void.  True hunger is different.  A discussion like this can also help us develop compassion for what it might be like to be truly hungry due to poverty or famine and to develop gratitude for the food that we do have in our fridge.  Pausing before eating can also help develop tolerance for being “just a little bit hungry” and still being okay when we can’t immediately satisfy every craving. 

Dr. Lisa’s Parent Coaching Tip:

I would have thought that one of the side effects of writing a blog about courage would be an increase in my own courage quotient. In fact, over these past months researching, discussing with Jennifer, and writing about how to nurture courage in kids, I’ve noticed more moments when I’ve wanted to quit than climb.  Granted I’ve recently taken on several new projects and a new job, my kids started new schools, and my husband started a new business in one of the toughest economic climates since the 1930’s.  My learning curve is steep and the challenges real.  But as someone who’s prided herself on being what Dr. Paul Stoltz (1997) defines as a “climber” in life, noticing that my inner “quitter” is alive and well is, well, humbling. 

In his book The Adversity Quotient: Turning Obstacles into Opportunities, Dr. Stoltz outlines three types of approaches that people take in life, using mountain climbing as a metaphor.  Listed below are his definitions, excerpted from the introduction of his book (1997) :

“Quitters simply give up on the ascent—the pursuit of an enriching life—and as a result are often embittered.  Quitters tend to blame others, become overwhelmed, and allow adversity to endure longer than necessary (5-20% of folks, according to a poll that Dr. Stoltz and his team of experts took of 150,000 leaders across all industries worldwide).

Campers generally work hard, apply themselves, pay their dues, and do what it takes to reach a certain level.  Then they plant their tent stakes and settle down at their current elevation. Campers tend to let adversity wear them down, resort to blame when tense or tired, and/or lose hope and faith when adversity is high (65-90% of folks).

Climbers are the rare breed to who continue to learn, grow, strive, and improve until their final breath, who look back at life and say, “I gave it my all.” Climbers tend to be resilient and tenacious.  They focus on solutions versus blame, and they are trusting and agile (the rare few).“

The adversity continuum ranges from: “avoiding, surviving, coping, managing, to harnessing adversity.” (This brief summary is taken from The Adversity Advantage: Turning Everyday Struggles Into Everyday Greatness by Erik Weihenmayer, Paul Stoltz, and Stephen R. Covey, 2006).

Despite now living in the historic town of Saratoga Springs for over four years (not knowing before I moved here that my ancestors were born in Saratoga many generations before), I hadn’t yet climbed the Saratoga Monument erected in memory of this famous battle.  I’ve wanted to. But our timing was always off given the limited hours this monument is open.  The Battle of Saratoga was a turning point in the American War of Independence from Great Britain.  On the 100th Anniversary of the victory, a rock-faced granite obelisk that stands 154 1/2 feet (49 meters) was erected in memory of this battle.