My Personal Reflections: First dates and taking chances - Spring 23

I recently started reading Michelle O’bama’s book: The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times. As she states herself, it’s part self help (I am a sucker for a self help book) and part memoir (I devoured her first memoir Becoming, during lockdown) and I’m already hooked. Michelle offers words of wisdom and encouragement on daily struggles we will all encounter at some point and quite frankly, I’m keen to become her BFF.

Quite early on in the book, she talks about feeling nervous when embarking on a new adventure-she talks candidly about how she wanted to say no, when Barak asked if he could stand for president. In the early chapter she says:

‘There’s no getting around the fact that our nerves will ride shotgun with us pretty much any time we approach the unfamiliar, anytime we move into a new frontier and feel the stakes get bumped as a result…who doesn’t bring a spoonful of fear to the first day of a new job? … Or on a first date?’

She goes on to say: ‘These are moments of distinct discomfort…but they can be thrilling too.

Why? Because we don’t know what lies on the other side of that initial experience. The journey to get to it might just be transformative….How will you meet your soulmate if you don’t go on that date?