The book | Read in June 2016 | Rating 4.25
I read The Gutsy Girl when I was travelling in Greenland, quite appropriately. I had first heard about Caroline Paul a few months before, in her Tim Ferriss podcast. She has an incredible bio (including lunger, firefighter, paraglider, author, and pilot) and there couldn’t be a better author for this book.
Yes, it’s aimed at younger girls, but that shouldn’t stop you from reading it. Here’s an excellent summary fromCaroline’s website: “It’s Lean In for middle grade girls, set not in the workplace but on bicycles, tree branches, sea kayaks, and cliff edges.” If you’re a female adventurer on any level, you should read it. And buy it for all the young gutsy girls you know.
Notes and takeaways
- “I had been a shy and fearful kid. Many things had scared me. Bigger kids. Second grade. The elderly woman across the street. Being called on in class. The book Where the Wild Things Are.”
- “Adventure is worthwhile in itself.” —Amelia Earhart, pilot
What had happened to the shy and fearful kid? She was still there. But somewhere along the way I had decided that she wasn’t having a lot of fun. I wanted a life of Grand Adventure, the kind I had read about in books. So I started to kindly tell the shy and fearful girl to step back, and make way for the adventurous girl that was also there. The girl who really wanted to captain a milk carton pirate ship.
- “Never be limited by other people’s imaginations.” —Mae Jemison, astronaut
- ‘You’re there, but I’m not concentrating on you!’ I told Fear”.
What’s wrong with this picture?” —Barbara Hillary, seventy-five-year-old retired nurse, upon hearing that no African American woman had been to the North Pole. She hired a personal trainer to get in shape, learned to ski, and went.
- “Daring makes a difference.” —Mae Jemison, astronaut
- “Never give up, because that is just the place and time that the tide will change.” —Harriet Beecher Stowe, author, human rights activist
In 1895, Fanny Workman biked 2,800 miles with her husband across Spain—in a skirt. She also biked across North Africa and through India. But in 1898 she fell in love with mountaineering. Still wearing skirts and fashionable hats, she climbed peaks all around the Himalayas.
- “If you’re never scared, or embarrassed, or hurt, it means you aren’t taking any chances.” —Julia Sorel, artist
- “Aidan Campbell was fifteen years old when she began to accompany her dad to the Arctic Circle. She spent one month every season there, for a year. She learned to build a cabin and forage for food. She endured winter temperatures of fifty degrees below zero. She hiked with pepper spray to protect herself from grizzlies”.
Rita Pierson is an educator who tells students who want more confidence to say to themselves, “I am Some-body . . . I am powerful and I am strong . . . I have things to do and people to impress and places to go!” She says of this mantra, ‘If you say it long enough, it starts to be part of you.’
- What’s the sentence you’re going to tell yourself day in and day out?
- “There’s a difference between being careful and living in fear. The former will keep you alive, the latter will make you a bystander in people’s lives.” —Anna Fitzpatrick, writer
- Count the number of times a cricket chirps in fifteen seconds. Add forty. This is the outside temperature!
- “I don’t just want to live the length of my life. I want to lead the breadth of it too.” —Diane Ackerman, wildlife naturalist, author
One day Roz Savage wrote herself two obituaries: the first for the person she actually was and the second for the person she wanted to be. Realizing the two obituaries differed mightily, she gave up her job as a management consultant, sold her house, and embarked on a life of adventure. She is best known for being the first woman to row alone across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans.
- “Get out a globe. Find Croatia. See where it is in relation to the rest of the world. Spin the globe a few times, and find another country you’re curious about. Look up its history. Look up its sights. Now write down your ideal adventure itinerary! What town/mountain/river would you first visit, and what would you do there? Where would you go next?”
- “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.” —First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt
As you embark on a grand journey of leadership, bravery, humor, intermittent failures, repeated successes, serial resilience, sporadic embarassments, exhilaration, connection, and utmost joy, it’s only fitting that I omit the usual words THE END.
Action points
- If you haven’t built anything lately, write down what you want to build, and why.
- Keep an adventure journal (remember, an adventure doesn’t have to be scaling a high mountain). Write down how it makes you feel, be it confident, nervous, or proud.
- List four people who you admire, then write down the qualities in them that are so inspiring. Think about how you can incorporate those qualities into your own life. Look at the list when you need guidance, want inspiration, or just for fun.
- What adventures and goals do you have for the future? Write a Life List. Don’t worry if they seem impossible, just write them down.
- Learn to ask for what you want. Write down four things you want that a person can grant if asked. Now write down the name of the person you would have to ask and the sentence you need to say in order to obtain it.
- Write “I want to gain confidence in . . .” and fill in the blank.