Articles - Candace Doby

/25 Feb 2020

3 Reasons Why Perfectionism Is Stifling Your Courage

“A particularly big problem we’re seeing with girls now is that they are refusing to go after anything if everything isn’t perfect.” I often ask adults who serve youth what issues they see young people facing. Jen, an executive of a girls organization, had a quick answer to my question, as if she looked inside my brain and saw the question coming. Perfectionism. Her answer didn’t surprise me since I’ve had my own experiences with perfectionism, which is a broad personality style marked by a hypercritical relationship with one’s self. I once dropped off a catering meal to a local business...

/28 Jan 2020

Do You Have The Courage To “Do You”?

“What am I doing? What am I doing?Oh yeah, that’s right, I’m doing me, I’m doing me I’m living life right now, man And this what I’ma do ’til it’s over, ’til it’s over” In 2010, rap artist Drake had teenagers and adults around the globe belting out three electrifying words from his hit song Over. I’m doing me. The lyrics seemed to amplify a sense of confidence in whomever sang along and also convince them, if even for a second, to walk their own way. But experience shows that it’s not as easy to actually “do you” as it...

/14 Jan 2020

This is why you should take more risks

People who realize their potential make risk-taking routine. Say the word risk. Yep, right now … Doesn’t it sound a little vulgar? Like a curse word. “Risk, please.” Did you hear it? The -sk ending makes the word come off as both tough and a bit harsh. Add an “s” to make it plural, and it becomes full on awkward. Taking risks can be as rough as saying the word, but risks are central to courage. In fact, courage is a choice to face a risk or challenge for a worthy purpose. The word risk even appears in the center...

/04 Dec 2019

What Are You Feeding Your Fears? (Here are 10 “Food” Options To Try)

Your fears have to eat, and you get to decide what to feed them. Fears can be unrelenting like a three-year-old running around the house begging for a snack. Fears are not satisfied until they eat. The question is, what are you feeding yours? For most of my 16-year marketing career, I worked in the food service industry promoting a range of products from fast food burgers made with factory farmed meat to quick service burritos free from genetically modified organisms (GMOs). If there’s one lesson I learned from it all, it’s this: what you eat matters. A meal composed...

/05 Nov 2019

The Courage To Quit: How To Know When It’s Time To Go

It’s time to quit when the thing you’re doing is causing you to quit on yourself. I felt the edge of the sofa cushion starting to give out. I had been sitting there for a length of time I can’t remember with my torso arched over my thighs and my elbows pressed into my knees. My feet were placed firmly on the hardwood floor, but the weight of my thoughts made me sink deeper into the sofa. I could feel my butt sliding closer to the edge of the cushion which made it bend toward the floor, but I couldn’t manage to...

/24 Oct 2019

Why Inaction Might Be The Most Courageous Action

Somewhere over the course of my research on courage, I read a story about two military leaders in battle. Both were faced with a decision to advance or retreat against the enemy. One leader knew he and his men would not win, but he didn’t want to return home, dead or alive, labeled as a coward. So, he advanced, and he died. The other leader didn’t have stellar eyesight and didn’t feel good about taking his men into battle with impaired vision. He decided to stay back — knowing he would be taunted as a coward upon his return home....

/25 Sep 2019

What Do You Want The Courage To Do?

I recently asked 125 National Society of Leadership & Success conference attendees what they wanted the courage to do. Nearly a quarter of the respondents, 24.5%, wanted the courage to stand or speak up for themselves. This was the most popular response. And, it got me thinking. Of all the things we can fear, why are we afraid of siding with ourselves? It comes down to one thing. Fear of loss. Overwhelmingly, youth and adults, alike, are afraid of losing — friends, jobs, family connections, intimate relationships, status, normalcy, money, power, stability and more. And, the two biggest sub-categories within...

confidence is a key component of courage

/15 Aug 2019

Youth Are Asking the Wrong Question about Confidence

Youth all over often ask me, “how do I build confidence … to audition for a team, stand up for myself, travel abroad?” Their curiosity is good, but they’re often a bit surprised when I politely tell them, “you’re asking the wrong question about confidence.” Youth know how to build confidence – just like they know how to tie a shoe. The confidence building process doesn’t change according to tasks. Strategies used to confidently tie a shoe are the same strategies youth can use to build confidence for everything else, including the hard stuff. The Confidence Building Process Before youth...