A few months ago I watched a TED Talk from today’s guest, Caroline Paul. It was called “To Raise Brave Girls, Encourage Adventure” and, as a father of two daughters, to say it connected with me is not a strong enough sentiment. Her talk was not just something I watched thinking “huh…that was interesting”, rather it made me fully self assess what I was doing as a parent, how we are unintentionally nurturing fear in our girls, and what strategies we can use to change fear into bravery. It’s my favorite TED Talk EVER!
Because let’s be honest, we all want our daughters (and sons) to grow up to be courageous, happy, brave members of society who are confident in their decisions. We want them to experience life and all that it has to offer, to go out and embrace their own adventures, and use those adventures to develop self understanding and realize just what they are capable of.
Caroline has embraced a “jack of all trades” attitude and has spent her time throwing herself into all sorts of experiences. Just to mention a few adventures: she had an entire career as a San Francisco firefighter, was on the national Luge team (think sledding down an ice tunnel at speeds over 50mph), guided whitewater rafting, flew paragliders, and now flies experimental airplanes.
In this conversation Caroline shares stories from her life of epic adventure, discusses what we can do as parents to raise brave daughters, and how to encourage “risky play”, amongst much more.
Caroline’s book “Gutsy Girl: Escapades for Your Life of Epic Adventure” is a book that empowers all girls to have adventures, face adversity and be brave. In fact, I would honestly encourage everyone to check it out. So if you’re reading this and you have daughters or nieces, this is something I would highly recommend gifting. As I prepare my 7th grade classroom for the upcoming school year I’m envisioning an “Adventure Book Shelf” where kids can check out various books that help encourage positivity and multiple copies of “Gutsy Girl” will definitely be available to each and every one of my students.
I honestly think Caroline’s mission of empowerment and advice is one of the more important messages we have had the opportunity to share, so I hope you enjoy today’s episode and receive as many takeaways as I did. Humongous thanks to Caroline for chatting with me! You are definitely beyond inspiring and I wish you nothing but luck in the future!
Thanks for listening! Go out and have your own adventure this week!
More from Caroline Paul:
Caroline’s website: http://www.carolinepaul.com
Gutsy Girl website: http://www.thegutsygirl.org
Order “Gutsy Girl”: https://www.amazon.com/Gutsy-Girl-Escapades-Your-Adventure/dp/1632861232/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499430678&sr=8-1&keywords=gutsy+girl
NY Times article “Why do we Teach Girls that it’s Cute to be Scared?”: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/opinion/sunday/why-do-we-teach-girls-that-its-cute-to-be-scared.html
TED Talk “To raise brave girls, encourage adventure”: https://www.ted.com/talks/caroline_paul_to_raise_brave_girls_encourage_adventure/transcript?language=en
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