Monthly Musing – May 2026 – Bold and Brave
I’ve had a lovely few days away this week with one of my best friends and her other best friend to celebrate a Big Birthday. My friend’s intention for our trip was to try new things that were Bold and Brave – we stayed at a beautiful hotel in the Welsh countryside, and I would have been very happy to have spent our time in the garden sipping cocktails and telling stories of being Bold and Brave on other occasions – but my friend had other ideas!
We did sit in the garden sipping cocktails, but we also went clay pigeon shooting, kayaking and learnt how to throw pots using a potter’s wheel, and they were brilliant things for us to do. There was lots of laughter, and we all learnt something new. The weather was gorgeous and we had a wonderful time – and can’t wait until my friend’s next Big Birthday to do it all again!
We got chatting to another lady at the hotel. She was older than us and travelling alone, and she thoroughly enjoyed the stories of our day over dinner. She told us that she wasn’t creative at all and not particularly one to step out of her comfort zone but appreciated that we were doing something out of the ordinary.
Imagine our surprise when after breakfast on our last day, she caught up with us in the hotel lounge just before she left, excited to tell us that she was so inspired by what we’d been doing that she had booked herself onto a craft course to do something she had always wanted to do, but had never felt Bold or Brave enough to do before. We were thrilled and as we were heading off to learn how to use a potter’s wheel and none of us had ever done that before, it wasn’t long before we had all agreed that it was important not to let being perfect get in the way of being good (paraphrasing Voltaire, to whom this phrase is attributed). We certainly hadn’t expected our conversations to have this result – but who knows how far the ripples will spread when you drop a stone into the water?
Never one to avoid bringing socks into a conversation at every possible opportunity, it made me think about the number of people who tell me that they are too afraid to cast on in case they go wrong. I say that it’s never an issue as you can always unravel and start again – and it turns out that it’s the same with clay pigeon shooting and throwing pots as well. If you miss the target, you load up your shotgun and have another go. If your pot goes more than a bit wibbly and is not likely to end up looking like anything you’d ever be able to use, you stop the wheel, scrape off the clay and start again.
It sounds so easy and so obvious – is there really anything about that which involves stepping out of our comfort zones? But let’s not forget that as adults, we put more pressure on ourselves than is necessary and if we miss all the targets or don’t produce a pot in our first half hour that would be worthy of gracing a shop shelf, we think we’ve failed.
Perhaps the biggest aspect of Bold and Brave is allowing yourself not to be perfect straight away, setting the bar a little lower than you might do so that the enjoyment of doing whatever it is becomes more important than the outcome.
Inspired by my friend’s determination to do things both Bold and Brave, I think that mindset can apply to anything in our daily lives, not just holiday activities. We’re all busy and can’t spend every day doing some new adventurous activity, but we can take steps out of our everyday routine to do something extraordinary. A change to a meal plan, a different route home from the shops, a phone call or a message to someone you’ve not spoken to for a while; all are tiny steps but might lead to something unexpectedly Bold and Brave in a direction we never expected but end up being grateful we followed.
I might not have brought home a shop-worthy pot or be waiting for the call from the Olympic kayaking or clay pigeon shooting teams, but I’ve brought home some fabulous memories and if that’s being Brave and Bold then I’m going to do more of it – and I’m excited to see where it leads.
