+ Click here to read the transcript (note that the transcription software isn't always accurate with the Northern Irish accent I have)

Welcome to episode one or Courage Is Calling. I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Mel Wiggins. The leader of assembly assembly is a virtue community of women who want to build courage. And I do that through loads of different things. Essentially I coach and train and create resources and programs for women.

And. I'm so glad that you're here. Thank you so much for less than thank you for dine load-in and liken this podcast already. It means so much to me that you have chosen to spend your time here today. I'm going to dive straight in if that's okay. Today's episode. This first ever episode of courage is calling.

I thought it would be good to introduce you to what I call the courage concept. And I guess I'll rewind a little bit before I get into that and that, you know, a little bit about how I, this courage concept framework that I'm going to explain in this episode came about. So I've been built in assembly, this beautiful business of mine for almost five years.

Now, I'm on assembly actually started as an event for women. So these were women that I had met online. And we've all been there, right? We've met loads of friends online and connected through different mediums on social media. And, but I had met some of these women online and really admired their work, admired their creativity and the things they were doing in the world.

And I really wanted to connect with them in person. So I started creating these events for women together for them to come together and they were beautiful and I miss them so, so much. Especially this year where we haven't been able to gather in the same way, but these were beautiful events.

They were styled in these amazing locations and there was so much good food. From our Maison female caterers we had workshops and everything. And as these events kind of rolled on throughout the year I started just really listening to the conversations of the women around the table. And I noticed that the same issues were coming up over and over.

They were having these really beautiful conversations with each other about just failing, like imposters in their work. Not knowing how to. Show up authentically on social media without failing like a deck. Not knowing how to talk about their work with other people, not knowing how to promote themselves.

It would be so worried about what people would think, and they have all these beautiful and amazing ideas upon ideas, but there were so free to move towards them. And these conversations were so. Significant and I could hear them happen and over and over again. And so I really knew that we needed more space and something deeper to sink our teeth into as women trying to do these things in the world.

And so I started to do some coaching training and then I started to with, with the training and that I had been done Realizing that I could actually lead some workshops around these themes and talk to some of these issues that were coming up around the tables. And from there these workshops led to developing a membership community so that we could do ongoing work virtually and talk about these things online together in a really safe space.

And then some coaching courses. Developed to kind of help women dive deeper into different aspects of this stuff. And all of this, I knew that there was a bit of a framework Bria and that I wanted to pull together that actually really spoke to and communicated. Exactly what the work of assembly was, where all of these pieces came together and, and really articulated what assembly was trying to be.

And I think I knew that the main goal was the assembly existed to help women build courage. And I, not the kind of courage you need to do kind of. I guess traditionally scary things like, you know, jump out of a plan or whatever, but this inner courage that we need, when we're trying to bring our ideas to life, the courage we need to, you know, shed some of the old stories that we've had about our own capabilities and our own goodness and our own trustworthiness.

The courage that we all need to show up in the world for ourselves and to act on the dreams and the desires that we have. That just so often we ignore or we repress because they feel too scary or just too vulnerable. I wanted to be able to take all of my learning about courage, all my own experience of building something both in my previous work, as a leader in the NGO world and as a leader of this coaching business and take the evidence that I had been gathering through research and through working with hundreds of these men and women over the years. And I wanted to put some context to what that work looked like. How it unfolds and how a framework would look that would really show the women that I worked with evidence-based pieces of what it takes to really build courage with these things. And I wanted to be able to create a framework that made, it all makes sense, essentially.

And so I was just mulling on this and I could feel the thoughts of this is kind of how my brain works at swirls and swirls around for weeks. And then it comes together and unusually at happens at the most inconvenient times, you know, like when you're in the shower or, and this particular time, it was one night when I was allying bad. And it felt like the, the like essential parts of this framework came to me like a lightning bolt which was really inconvenient because.

I already don't get enough sleep cause my kids still wake through the night. So I got up and I got up because I have absolutely been there when an idea shows up in my brain and I don't pay attention to it and you lose it. And then the next day you wish that you had written the don't and you forget it.

And that's so frustrating. So I got up, I got up in the dead of the night. It really was like two, three o'clock in the morning and I grabbed my old school notepad, because sometimes we still need an old schoolnotepad. And I started to scribble. I started to scribble down and the ideas really started to flow. And I finally found a clear way to explain how we build courage in this way as women with ideas and things to do in the world. And so I thought, what better way to start this podcast than to like, share that with you today in this first episode. To really set the scene for what this podcast is going to get into, because really all of the work that I do. And every aspect of Assembly is built around the three, these three things, these three pillars for building courage.

So every bit of work that I do with one-to-one clients, every coach and program that I develop every workshop and my membership community, it all comes back to helping women grow.

And these three areas. And the three pillars that I believe are really foundational for building courage are these clarity self-trust and visibility. So let's get into each one a little bit. I'll be expanded on and given loads of nuance to these. Particular aspects of building courage as this podcast grows so you can know what to expect, but I thought, why don't I give you a little overview of why I know that these three things are so important for women who want to build bravery in their lives.

So the first thing is clarity. The first pillar is clarity, and I really believe that when we are clear about who we are, And what we stand for and where we operate in our strengths, that we are powerful. And I actually know that through my own experience on the experience of the women that I am in community with that clarity is really hard.

One for us. We have so many competing. Responsibilities in our lives. And we have so many messages from our culture and society about who we should be and what we should do. And what path to take that, being clear up by what we want and who we are, and what we stand for is really difficult. So this work around clarity means really connecting in and honing our values.

So knowing high, what we really believe, what we really stand for, aligns with the work that we want to do in the world. I think this work around clarity also means finding out about what actually feeds our core, what actually sustains us as human beings individually more than what the self care kind of movement and ideas that.

Are often peddled to us in these signed bytes help us stay. And I also think that clarity comes when we discover our secret sauce. This, the space, this beautiful space of convergence, where. Our skills and our passions and the people we want to connect with come together. And so when we're really, really radically clear about who we are, about what we stand for and where our unique impact and gift set, we can see that courage will begin to grow.

The second part of this framework for building courage is self trust. So I'm going to try and not go off and around here, but I feel so strongly about this this idea of self trust, because we still continue to operate in a world that has. These big and small systems that indicate that women are not to be fully trusted, not to be trusted with our ideas, with our bodies, with our opinions, with money, with our voices, with how we feel all of that.

But we know that that's not true. We know that we are to be trusted, and we know that a world where women are excluded or not fully trusted is only a half whole world. And so we must begin the work to untangle those systems, rebuild those systems by actually learning to trust ourselves. And this means that self trust becomes a really radical act to fully trust that you are resilient.

That you are capable, that you are able to be committed to things that come your way, that you are fully trustworthy to make good decisions, to show up for yourself to really fully trust. All of that is a bold rebellion and I'm totally here for it. But we need the tools, right? We need the tools to unpack.

All of this conditioning that has led us to not trust ourselves, to not trust our own thoughts, to not trust our own instincts and to do this. We need a toolkit. We need a toolkit that is robust and evidence-based for working through our fears. We need tools to help us fine tune and actually cultivate our intuition, our sense of inner knowing.

And we also need the tools to harness curiosity, to continue to be curious. And wonder about what is possible in the world. What's possible for us, what's possible for others. And I believe that curiosity is a great antidote to fear and confusion and not trusting ourselves. So developing beautiful self-trust is such a hugely important pace and building courage.

And then the third and final pillar. And this framework for building courage is visibility. And I imagine as you're listening to this and you heard me say the word visibility that even, maybe feel a bit squirmy inside. And I just want to recognize that this is actually often the hardest part of building courage in a way, because it actually, it really, it requires some action.

It requires some real stretching. Some risk and a whole hell of a lot of vulnerability, because be invisible with your ideas and your project and your words and your body and your thoughts is quite terrifying for most of us. And it brings up. So much for us around worthiness to be heard fears of what people will think all of that, but let me tell you, I really believe the reward of visibility and showing up is, is actually in the trying.

It's in the show and up that we get to learn so much about ourselves. We get to see what we're capable of and we get to notice what impact we can have when we really honor our ideas on our desires through to action. So we don't let them just sit there. We follow them through to action. That's where we get to learn.

So much. And I want you to know that we need you, we need your visibility. We need to see you. We need to hear your ideas. We need to discover your innovative solutions to things in the world world we need to hear and say, and fail and touch your creativity and, and acknowledge the things that you do that bring joy to the world.

And we need to show up in a way that. Is honest to us, not in a way that we feel we're expected to. And I just think it's such a beautiful thing to see a woman really owning her ideas, owning her voice and her brilliance in her own way. And I believe that actually be invisible. You know, the hard thing is that it often requires us to wake up parts of our voice that we maybe have allied to you.

Fall to the wayside. I think it requires us to wake up our authentic voice so that we can communicate in a way that feels honest and really reflective of who we really are, not our performative Instagram self. I also believe that be invisible allows us to build magnetic community. People who really get what we're trying to do and say, and hire me isn't as that.

And we also need to recognize that when we are building a magnetic community, we also have to be equipped to handle the potential repelling of some people. And that's okay too. That's how magnets work. And finally, I believe that visibility gives us the opportunity to really ask for what we want a concept that well it's so far removed from the lived experiences of.

So many of us as women we get to practice asking for what we need. We get to practice giving opera people the opportunity to join us in the things that we're doing to buy from us, to connect with our ideas, et cetera. So visibility is actually the part of building courage that. Allows us to take action with clear minds that trust ourselves.

And you know, that I always preach that courage loves action because it gives us so much information, no matter what, which way it goes. So there you have up a brief introduction to what I call the courage concept, this framework, and three core pillars for brilliant women. Like you who want to build courage.

I really hope. That here in a bite, some of this has been helpful for you, and you're able to see yourself in some of what I've shared about this framework. This is just the beginning and I really hope that when you're approaching something in your own life that needs some bravery, that you can dive into those three things and understand a bit more about why.

If you need it and what you might need. Thank you so much for last night, really. And truly, I am so glad to be here in your ears, in this space. And I'd love to hear from you if you're taking anything away from this episode, if anything has kind of. Resonated, please feel free to get in touch. Feel free to share this episode with your friends to DM me with any of your thoughts, or you can send me an email at hello at malware and Stockholm.

And until next time, I'll see you later.