We recognize and celebrate brave female leaders. The women we are featuring in our Brave Women Leaders blog demonstrate resiliency, bravery, and the ability to radiate their light brightly. They have gifts to share with the world and take tiny steps of bravery each day to share them with the world.
I am thrilled to feature Zafira Rajan as our next featured Brave Leader. Zafira owns her voice with purpose and power AND is the founder of Zafira Rajan, Inc., a branding strategy and copywriting consultancy for conscious coaches, health, wellness and lifestyle entrepreneurs.
What does bravery mean to you?
Bravery means summoning the strength — that you didn’t know was possible — to activate meaningful change in your life and consequently, those of others around you.
Personally, bravery has *felt* anything but: it’s usually mingled with fear, self-doubt, and almost backing out… But the bravest part of these moments is doing the Brave Thing anyways. I believe being brave isn’t about throwing caution to the wind, it’s being cautious and accepting that the most important thing is *trying*, without being attached to an outcome. It’s taking the risk, going above and beyond what you would usually do, putting the sweat in even when it’s hard — because honoring the process of working towards a bigger vision is really the bravest part of all.
What is one of the bravest things you have ever done?
Professionally, starting my own business *even though* I had a cushy job, benefits, and a road filled with opportunities for growth in my 9-5. In that particular environment and time in my life, I knew I had the capacity to impact far more people as an entrepreneur vs. an employee — I could help others step into their voice, grow their own audience and improve their livelihood by giving them the words they needed to articulate their vision.
For someone who swung between periods of high and low financial security as a child, this was terrifying for me but I took the same approach I take now with doing anything scary: I treat it as an experiment and evaluate its success after a couple of months. Once I created that mindset shift (that not every big move needs to be a permanent end-all), it gave me the freedom I needed to activate change in so many parts of my life. And I’ve never looked back! It’s truly wonderful how quickly you can settle into the after-effect of bravery, because those moments are usually when we are moving into greater alignment.
What benefits have come from leaning into bravery?
- Personal growth. Whether brave moments have happened personally *or* professionally, they’ve usually led to me learning something new about my own capacity and unlocking parts I didn’t know could be transformed. They’ve always helped me see things differently (usually, knowing that anything is possible if I put my mind to it!), reflect deeply and inspire new growth as a result.
- Total bliss. Like I mentioned earlier, we do brave things to move into deeper alignment — into something that will help us activate change, shift our lifestyle or how we show up for ourselves. Naturally, that result has always been such joy for me. Even if it’s a messy road to get to that result, I’ve never looked back and regretted any brave choices I’ve made.
- MORE bravery! We need to take chances on ourselves to see that it’s possible. I find that one tiny act of bravery has a ripple effect and before you know it, your definition of what’s “brave” has completely shifted. You talk to others earlier on their journey and realize you were them once, and can see how far you’ve come. Your relationship to risk and standing for what you want strengthens and becomes more emboldened, which is incredibly beautiful.
