Picture this scene: my oldest stepson and the middle one have gotten into a stoush of some kind. The middle one has run into his room and slammed and locked the door. The oldest one is standing directly in front of the closed door, arms crossed, face like thunder. I’m standing next to him, waiting for him to knock on the door and apologise.
If you’re a parent, I’m confident this scene will be familiar to you.
He waits.
I wait.
He says, arms still crossed, face still like thunder, voice of doom, “I don’t want to.”
“You know what, honey, I completely get that,” I reply. “You still have to.”
He says, arms still crossed, face still like thunder, voice of doom, “My tummy hurts.”
“You know what, honey, I completely get that, too,” I reply. “I get the exact same feeling in my tummy when I have to do something like this. And you know what I’ve learned? That feeling is the shining-light, flashing-neon-arrow saying this is the thing I must do.
“Right now, you’ve got two choices. Choice one: you knock on the door and apologise to your brother. You speak that feeling in your tummy, and the feeling will come out through your apology and vanish into the ether and you never have to think about it again.
“Choice two: you walk away. And that feeling in your tummy will solidify, into a little brick. And you might not notice it after a little while, but the next time you walk away from something like this, you’ll add another brick, and another, and another… And I can tell you that we adults are all walking around with our collections of bricks from the things we never said that we should have.”
I was pretty proud of that advice. But, of course, sometimes our tummies are telling us the opposite: you should walk away. Walk away from this toxic role, this bad treatment. How can we know which one it is?
Here is my rule: when the right thing is the hard thing, my tummy lets me know.
And, if I’m honest with myself in those moments, and if I listen to my tummy, I know what the right thing is.
Kaila Colbin, Certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator
Founder and CEO, Boma
