The Wobble: Part Two - Bravery

In Part One, I wrote about the wobble: that quiet destabilising many exceptional women in leadership describe. Not confidence, not self-esteem, not self-efficacy. Security. I ended with questions rather than answers. 

I took this to our Ebb & Haven Community and a rich and fascinating conversation surfaced. 

This is me, reflecting on the generous sharing, sensemaking and discussion, still thinking in draft. It's the thread I've been pulling on: where security actually comes from, how it's tangled up with bravery, and the question I'm left holding at the end of it all. 

Where does our security actually come from? 

It turns out environment plays a huge part. It can feed our sense of security and it can subtract from it. Our surroundings hold symbols that tell us stories about how secure we are -  the number of plants on a desk, the freedom to make a space our own, or the experience of that being taken away. These things create or limit a sense of belonging, and belonging is inextricably tied to identity. 

So, it makes good sense to me that our sense of self, our internal security, is inextricably connected to this external security. The two aren't separate systems. What sits around us shapes what sits within us. 

It isn't only the environment. It's also the relationships within it, and it's what those relationships have taught us. We derive our security from people and structures we've learned to trust: relationships, authority figures, fathers, chief executives, organisations. And for so many, all of it can be taken away in a single moment. 

What I'm hearing is that these moments don't simply pass. They lay down memory. We hold onto them as protectors against future hurt. We talk a great deal about adaptive capacity — our ability to adjust, to meet complexity, to evolve. But I've been wondering lately: adapt towards what? 

Because adaptation has a direction. When the ground shifts beneath us, we adapt — that much is certain. But we can adapt toward a wiser, braver, more evolved self… or toward a smaller, more contracted one. The cleared desk. The plant kept small enough to carry out in one arm. The part of ourselves we keep packed and ready to leave. That, too, is adaptation. It's intelligent and it's protective, but it adapts us into a smaller version of ourselves. When adaptation reduces rather than expands our capacity, we may find ourselves in a maladaptive state. 

This is the question the women we gather with keep living: when the system destabilises us, which way does our adapting take us? The same capacity that can harden into armour is the one that lets us step bravely into who we are. 

Security, age, and coming out swinging 

Here's where it gets interesting to me. As we increase our security — through experience, through age, through maturity — something loosens. “We give fewer f’s”. We become more willing “to come punching out of that paper bag.” 

And this interplay seems to influence something important: whether we can “step bravely into our values”, challenge, or speak our truth. As our security rises, our capacity for bravery rises with it. 

Why bravery gets wobbly 

But as our capacity for bravery increases, the wobble re-emerges. Because the braver we are, the more pushback we tend to get. 

And the pushback doesn't seem evenly distributed. It depends on what's driving the bravery. Is it bravery in the service of advocacy for others — or advocacy for self? That distinction seems to make it acceptable, or not. 

There's another layer. Is our bravery only welcomed when it comes wrapped in grace and gratitude? Because the moment I step fully into it and set gratitude down, especially on my own behalf, it can be read not as courage but as ingratitude. As though gratitude were the price of admission for having a voice at all. 

Grateful for what, exactly? 

Grateful for a seat we earned? For belonging that should never have been in question? When gratitude is genuine, no one has to ask for it. The moment gratitude becomes expected and our bravery is only welcome if it comes wrapped in it, is the moment it has stopped being gratitude at all. It has become the price of admission for having a voice. 

The decision point 

There's also something here about decision points. Before we step into bravery fully, it feels like there's a moment of choosing. A quiet declaration: I'm going to decide that now is the time to be secure and to be brave – in my career, in my life, in my role. I'm up to the challenge. I'm up to “punching out of the paper bag”. I'm up to stepping fully into it. 

But the choosing doesn't end there. After that choice point, we grapple with the next question: are the people around me okay with this? If I make this decision, what's at risk, and what's the cost? What I notice is that the cost and the risk are lowered by certain things, like whether the bravery comes sufficiently complemented by gratitude or not. 

What are we being invited into? 

So, what I'm starting to tune into is this link between our security and our bravery, which leads me somewhere that both excites and unsettles me. 

What would happen if we were to step fully into our bravery? What are we being invited into here?  

I think we're being invited to step fully into our power, fully into our wildness. That invokes another wobble which may show up as: Am I ready for that? Do I trust myself enough for that? Do others trust me enough for that? It opens a whole new layer of questions beneath the first. 

The question I'm left holding 

So, this is where I land — not on an answer, but on a bigger question. 

As we step fully into our bravery, what is the role of wisdom? Is it just bravery we're reaching for — or effective bravery? Because bravery without wisdom might simply be “tilting at windmills.” I don't yet know the answer, but it feels like the right thing to keep holding. 

——— 

I am deeply appreciative of the generative wisdom and bravery of our Ebb & Haven Community, and of the generosity with which they shared their experiences and questions. 

This is the kind of question we make space for at Ebb & Haven. If the wobble is familiar to you, I’d love to know: what helps you steady it?