Hi everyone. Its Sonia McDonald and welcome to my daily courage podcast, where I may be talking about everything, leadership, courage, kindness, being inclusive, and just rocking it, getting out there and rocking it and being the best you can be. And what does that mean? Oh my gosh. Where do I start? What does that mean? Well, it definitely means embracing yourself. It definitely means owning who you are and knowing who you are as well. And can I tell you that takes a journey now? I am turning 50 this year. I know, I know I'm turning 50 this year and it's pretty scary actually. Like I never ever thought, gosh, I'd be turning 50. It just seemed to creep up on me. I started to think about how quickly time has gone and wow.
What I would say to my younger self. And I would definitely say to her, please start loving and embracing yourself. That takes real courage to know who you are and what you stand for. And, and you know what I think about, I think about my life and the different experiences and my career and my journey. And, and I think about reflect on all those elements and of time and all those experiences of courage that, that I demonstrated that at the time, I didn't realize which really courageous.
And I think we've all been there. I think that if you reflect on your life or kind of look, do a bit of a, like a life map or, you know, journal around your achievements and where you've been and where you are today, and you think about everything that shaped you. I think sometimes we're surprised at being times in our lives where we are truly courageous, but if you're listening to this and you kind of go hang on, maybe I'm too young to have experienced, you know, true courage it'll come. And when it does come, you know what embrace it. Because as I always say, courage is fear. It's not the absence of fear. It's just the mastery of fear. And there were so many things that I really feared when I was younger. One was feeler, fear of failing, and now I really embrace spelling right now.
Today I go, wow, I wish I'd, I wish I kind of had the courage to fail a lot more because maybe I would have done and gone for a lot more things and I didn't do it because I feared failing. And now I kind of go bring it on, like bring on the failing. Cause I know that it's going to help me be even better and greater. And I think, you know, that's, that's what we need to do is just embrace the fear, you know, and move through the fear and go, you know, what if the worst thing that happens if I fear failing or the worst thing that happens is I fail. You know, I'm not going to die, I'm going to fail. And you know what, if I fell, I'm gonna learn something from it. I'm going to learn. I'm going to learn a great lesson.
I'm going to learn something about myself. It's probably even going to help me be better next time and just embrace it. I am actually learned more from my stuff ups and my failings and I have anything else. And so just go for it. Just kind of embrace the fear and just go for it. And it does, it does take the time to also be who you are and, and what you stand for as well. Reach out to the team at Leadership HQ, McDonald, Inc, or via my website, soniamcdonald.com.au. And let's start, let's start being more courageous. Cause I think we need people. I think we all need to see more courage and kindness within ourselves and around the world. And it does start with us. So go out there and be that wonderful daily courageous leader in person and embrace courage and embrace that fear and be who you are. That is most important. So thank you for listening and go out there. And rock it, thank you.
