Why You Might Just Be Someone Else's Inspiration Without Even Knowing It

The other week I was having a coffee with a friend when she suddenly turned to me and said "you are so good."

I'd just told her I was still planning to meet my daughter in London at the end of June. I had been wanting to go to the National Portrait Gallery for so long but I kept putting it off. I couldn’t really afford it. However, when I saw that there was a Marilyn Monroe exhibition on and a David Bowie event it kind of tipped the balance and then when my daughter said she would meet me there and it became a fait accompli.

I asked my friend what she meant.

"You go and do things that most of us just think about."

I had to sit with that for a minute.

Because from where I'm sitting — in my kitchen, berating myself that my business is taking so long to get off the ground, adding to the ever growing list of things I meant to do and haven't — I am absolutely not someone who does things. I am someone who thinks about doing things, worries about doing things, and then feels guilty about not doing things.

But apparently that's not what she sees.

She sees someone who spent New Year in Morocco. Someone who got on a nine hour flight to Costa Rica a couple of years ago, despite being genuinely scared of flying. Someone who got on a train from Devon to London on her own last year (its just not something I do) and then flew to Bologna to see Fontaines DC because her daughter thought it would be a great birthday present. It was.

What she didn’t see was myself and my husband refusing point blank to go to Morocco and then being gradually persuaded to change our minds. That I felt genuinely sick with nerves about going. That I panicked in the days before – I always panic before holidays but this was on another scale. My brain just isn’t very good at dealing with the unfamiliar. She didn’t see me watching Beauty and the Beast on the flight home from Costa Rica as I was genuinely too scared to sleep after we had a problem with the plane and then turbulence. She didn’t see me planning the route to Stansted in minute detail on street view so I knew exactly where I was going.

I didn’t do any of it because I felt comfortable or even particularly brave, none of it felt brave from the inside, but because our intrepid daughter said “it’ll be all good”. And do you know? It was. It always is. Things don’t always go according to plan but it’s always pretty good. And I am always glad I’ve done it.

But here is what I’m realising. The yes is the thing. Not the fearlessness - I don’t have that. Just the eventual, slightly grumpy, what have I agreed to now yes.

And maybe just maybe that is worth giving myself a little credit for.

We are so much kinder about other people’s courage than our own. Sometimes we see friends do something small and call it inspiring. We do the same thing and call it nothing.

Your friend is watching you. She might not be saying it. But she's watching and thinking I wish I could do that.

The question is whether you can start watching yourself the same way.

— Jewels