Definitions of ‘Strong’

No Need To Stay Strong (Part 2)

Introduction

My coaching client was suffering, a little, because she was, and I quote: “trying to stay strong, but it’s tough.” And I wondered to myself, right then and there: what if you didn’t have to ‘stay strong’?

Part 1 of my post answers that question, whilst part 2 continues on the theme of strength. In particular, on what it means to be strong in the first place…

 

Another Definition of ‘Strong’?

What if being strong meant you could be whatever was coming up for you in that moment?

• So if you felt like crying, you could cry.
• Or if you felt like being ‘weak’, you could be ‘weak’.
• If you felt you wanted to ask for help, you could do so.
• If you felt completely lost, then that could be okay.
•  And if you just didn’t know what to do, then that could be okay too.

What if we’ve got it all wrong about what it means to be strong?

What if being strong didn’t have to take any particular form at all?

What if strength, like beauty, comes in many forms, and not just society’s accepted and most acknowledged form?

What if pretending to be strong was really a disguised form of weakness?

And what if acknowledging your weakness, when it appeared, was the greatest form of strength?

What would it mean, then, to ‘stay strong’?

 

Inspirational Quotes About Strength?

What if I could find an inspirational quote (or two) about strength that could make my point precisely?

What if, eh, what if?…

“To share your weakness is to make yourself vulnerable; to make yourself vulnerable is to show your strength.”
– Criss Jami

“Sometimes you don’t realize your own strength until you come face to face with your greatest weakness.”
– Susan Gale

“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.”
– Brené Brown

“I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence, but it comes from within. It is there all the time.”
– Anna Freud

And, lastly…

“Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass. It’s about learning how to dance in the rain.”
– Vivien Greene

 

Some (Provocative) Questions About Strength

Let me finish, then, with some maybe provocative questions about strength.

(I like asking questions, rather than providing answers, as it allows YOU to pause for a moment and see something new for yourself. Is this a strength in me, or just a way to hide the fact that I don’t have all the answers? Hah,  I think it’s just a good way to be with another person, really: to listen, rather than to tell…)

• Who is it that you think has to stay strong in the first place, anyway?
• Who is it that you think has to stop procrastinating?
• Who is it who has to do what they said they were going to do?
• (Who, exactly, do you think you are?)

Or, how about these questions that question strength itself:

• Can your strengths be your weaknesses and your weaknesses be your strengths?
• Can embracing a weakness be a strength?
• Can only relying on a strength be a weakness?
• Who really is to say what is strength and what is weakness?

Seriously, aren’t we all really just making it all up?

(So, again, why would you ever ‘try’ to be strong?)

 

So, what if you didn’t have to ‘stay strong’?

You don’t need to stay strong.

You don’t need to stay anything.

You are the continuous ebb and flow of the formless becoming form, moment after moment after moment. To stay ‘anything’ is to deny the nature of life itself. (So there!)

What if you didn’t have to ‘stay strong’?

You don’t.

Because strength is Who You Are.

Should you but notice this.

Simple as that.