Step Up or Step Off

As we step into spring, I’ve been thinking about people stepping up.

There’s a lot of it going on around us, it seems, positive signs that even in the toughest economic winters people are as resilient as ever. Of course, that’s the nature of “tough times,” isn’t it? We all have a greater opportunity to overcome, perhaps, to dig a little deeper, to find the heroes in ourselves.

A recent example that sticks out to me is a woman in her mid 40s who graduated at the top of her 2009 class from a college in California. She was valedictorian. The remarkable thing was, she was a single, working mother of 13 kids (8 of them adopted), and she had taken in dozens of foster kids over 25 years as a stay-at-home mom. When asked why she did it, she explained that after her divorce she realized she needed a college degree to get a decent job, and she wanted to inspire her kids. When asked how she did it, she said she just did it. She and the kids all helped each other with chores and homework.

She told interviewers, “You know what … if you want to do it. Just do it. Do it afraid and the courage will come later.”

But with every opportunity to step up, like this one, there’s also an opportunity to step off, to find a reason to do nothing or take a less heroic path. We always have an opportunity to blame others, to view ourselves as helpless victims, to rationalize excuses for our low expectations or outcomes, to believe that we can’t make a difference. We might hear some of these common cop-outs in our own head:

“Everyone else does it.”
“I’m just one person.”
“That’s not my job.”
“No one else cares; why should I?”
“I did my part; those other people dropped the ball.”
“She made the mistake.”
“I don’t get the credit I deserve.”
“Life isn’t fair.”

Let’s face it; life isn’t always fair. It’s often not very fair at all. We have big challenges and bad breaks to overcome on our journey through it. But, we are ultimately defined by how we respond to what life throws at us (and it’s been throwing a lot at many of us lately).

Stepping out of this cold winter with a mind to step up a little more might just lead us somewhere warmer and brighter.

Small steps…. We might choose to act with integrity during a tempting moment to do otherwise (even when no one else is watching). We might choose to commit a selfless act during a tempting moment to do otherwise. We might choose to dig a little deeper within ourselves, to light a candle rather than curse the darkness, to do it afraid and let the courage come later.

Happy spring, and happy stepping!