Suzie Lavington - A Girls Guide to Being Fearless: How to Find Your Brave

Suzie Lavington and Andy Cope

This edition first published 2021

2021 by Suzie Lavington and Andy Cope

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lavington, Suzie, author. | Cope, Andrew, 1966- author.

Title: A girls guide to being fearless : how to find your brave / Suzie Lavington and Andy Cope.

Description: Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom : Wiley, 2021. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020033401 (print) | LCCN 2020033402 (ebook) | ISBN 9780857088574 (paperback) | ISBN 9780857088680 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9780857088611 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: GirlsPsychologyJuvenile literature. | CourageJuvenile literature. | Self-esteem in childrenJuvenile literature.

Classification: LCC HQ777 .L378 2021 (print) | LCC HQ777 (ebook) | DDC 155.43/3dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020033401

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020033402

Cover Design: Wiley

Cover Image: Amy Bradley

For Amelie and Remy.

I suspect this book might do a better job of parenting you through your teens than I will in real life. So when I disappoint, try zoning me out and opening these pages instead. x

- Suzie

For Sof.

I've watched you grow from fearless girl to sassy young woman. Thanks for making me so proud. x

- Andy

Tired of trying to cram her sparkly star-shaped self into society's beige square holes, she chose to embrace her ridiculous awesomeness and shine like the freaking supernova she was meant to be.

-Unknown

Congratulations on an excellent choice of book. We hope you enjoy every last page, even the ones you find challenging. Which might include these first few. Sorry.

First up, a small confession: we've misled you with the title. Being Fearless isn't actually a thing. You can't be a properly functioning human being and feel no fear at all. It's a perfectly normal and sometimes useful emotion. Love it or loathe it, fear will keep showing up in your life, to some degree or other, forever.

Our goal with this book isn't to rid you of it. Quite the opposite. We want you to feel fear. Often. We'll explain ourselves in , but basically it's a sure-fire sign that you're pushing yourself to be better. And that's something you should want to do every day. Not better than her off the telly, or her on Instagram, or even her at school. But better than the version of yourself that you were yesterday.

Our goal, instead, is to help you acknowledge fear when it shows up. Shake its hand. Give it a front row ticket to watch you cracking on in spite of it and occasionally glance in its direction to give it a cheeky wink, so it never forgets who's running the frickin show.

So, yeah, we want you to feel fear. And while we're at it, there are a few other things we want for you, too.

From time to time in the years to come, we hope you'll be treated unfairly. Perhaps you'll miss an opportunity through no fault of your own or get blamed for someone else's mess. And we hope these things happen frequently enough that you'll come to know the value of justice. We hope you'll learn a bonus lesson when you're out the other side how to shake it off and move onwards, with a beautiful smile on your beautiful face.

We hope that, at some point, your bestie lets you down. Sure, you'll feel awful but, fingers crossed, it'll teach you the importance of loyalty. And, sorry to say, but we also hope you'll feel lonely now and then. Not big bouts of loneliness, they're plain horrible, but long enough stretches for you to learn never to take friends and family for granted.

We also wish you bad luck again, from time to time so that you'll be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success isn't always deserved and that the failure of others isn't always deserved either. And when you lose, which you will (frequently), we hope some of your opponents gloat over their victory. It'll be during those times that you'll understand the importance of winning with grace.

We hope you'll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others, and we hope you'll feel just enough pain to learn compassion.

We wish you illness, both minor and major. An occasional toothache, migraine or period pain will be enough to remind you to appreciate the fact that most of the time your body does a marvellous job of getting you around town. Please don't take this next sentence the wrong way, but we also wish you something more substantial; a recoverable health scare that truly knocks you for six. Once you've crawled yourself back to wellness, we're confident you'll have a refreshed attitude to the simple miracle of being alive.

Mentally, we wish you an occasional bout of something that robs you of your mojo temporarily, of course. An episode of sadness can have rejuvenating properties. Learning to cope with your thoughts is one of life's biggest challenges, but luckily for you, that's what this book is all about.