3 Things that Scare me About Taking a Leap of Faith

It's time. Time for a leap faith.

After dedicating much of my work time over the past few years to Chab Dai projects, I've decided, after a lot of prayer, discernment, conversations with mentors, family, and friends, tears, dreaming, and anxiety...

I have stepped away from contractual work with Chab Dai and am working on building up my skills and experience to work in something I feel a strong passion and calling for. It's hard to know what to call it, because it could take many forms, but basically I am pursuing my calling in economic empowerment. Whether that is community economic development, social enterprise, economic resilience and reintegration programming, or research and model testing, I'm not sure. I'm open to all of it! 

A few weeks in, and I am pretty evenly split between utter excitement and talking myself out of a panic attack. Because it's scary. I'm scared. And this is what scares me most:

1. Financial uncertainty: after writing a research report on the subject, I self-diagnosed: Hello, my name is Julia, and I suffer from financial anxiety. Making the decision this year that I won't take work unless it is in the economic development and research realm has meant we're living really tight. And that's OK (that's Charlie talking). We're able to cover our basic expenses every month. And of course that leads me to feel incredibly guilty that I even feel anxious because we live in a country where many people can't say that. But there you have it: I worry about eeking it out every month.

2. What if I'm not good? What if up until now I've taken the easy road and excelled because I wasn't pushing myself and now that I go after what I really truly want to do, I fall flat? What if I'm all talk and can't deliver? What if I'm a fraud? No matter how much someone (*ahem*Charlie*) can tell me logically why I'm ready for this, that little voice is there, telling me I'm not.

3. What if I can't actually balance work/parent life? Since S was born, I've worked, quite a lot, but never in a full-time, 9:00-5:00 job. I've been able to make my own schedule, which worked great, because I wanted to have the flexibility to take a morning here or a day there to be with my babies. I think I'm ready for full-time work, but I haven't tried it yet, so what if it doesn't work? 

So that's it. My three biggest fears this year. Welcome to my panic attack.

Here's my antidote to fear and anxiety: prayer. I'm 100% serious. When I feel the fear creeping in, the anxiety taking over, I try to sit down and meditate, focus on communing with God, and most often it calms my spirit. It doesn't mean the fear and anxiety go away forever, but sometimes it's just enough to get me through the day. And not only does it calm the anxiety, but I often end meditating being reminded of the excited part of this journey. I'm going after my dream! I'm following a calling! I live in Cambodia and it's pretty awesome!

And I think, "See you later, fear and anxiety!" (And I do.)

The Economics of Freedom

by Julia Smith-Brake

Originally posted at Along the Paths of Justice, Chab Dai's team blog.

Speaking of heroes, I recently got to meet one of mine. At the beginning of March, a few of us from Chab Dai were lucky enough to receive some coveted tickets to a Social Business Hub event to hear Professor Muhammad Yunus speak. Having had the opportunity (and squandered it!) a couple years ago to meet another development hero of mine, Amartya Sen, I was not going to chicken out this time!

The event was wonderful, it began with a panel discussion on the infrastructure of social businesses which included the different definitions of what a social business is, the biggest challenges that can arise and the kind of achievements you can expect in this sector. After a session of workshop presentations, Professor Yunus gave a thorough and superb talk emphasising the concept of freedom within economics. At the end of the event, a Cambodian social business acrobatic group, Phare, gave an amazing performance.

What I love about leaders such as Mohammad Yunus and Amartya Sen is their ability to link, so eloquently and well-thought out, the connections of economics to freedom. Sen’s theoretical model is based on helping individuals and communities achieve freedom. This freedom can be economic freedom, personal freedom, societal freedom and/or the freedom to be who they want to be. Ultimately, all development should be viewed through the lens of freedom. Yunus’ foundational logic for lending money to the poor, which led to the creation of microfinance itself, is essentially, “If I lend money to the poor myself, they won’t have to go to a loan shark, and they will be free!” So many of the poor stay poor or sink even more into a cycle of debt and poverty because of predatory lending practices; and though there is no such thing as a silver bullet in poverty reduction, Yunus saw microfinance as a powerful tool to combat the violence of these practices.

As an aspiring economic sociologist engaged in counter-trafficking, this is music to my soul. It also, in my opinion, promotes the thought that communities have within themselves the potential to end exploitation and trafficking, and the counter-trafficking community’s job is to come alongside them to enable and support their journey to freedom.

Yunus is an inspiring person; after all the challenges he has faced, he remains so positive and hopeful for the future. He truly believes this generation’s youth has the most power and potential in history, and keeps pushing the boundaries of innovative business and economics. At the end of his address, he said (paraphrased), “Poor people are like bonsai trees, there is nothing wrong with the seed, society just didn’t give them room to grow. We need to fundamentally change the system to give them room to grow.”

I am a big believer in “doing with” in development, not “doing for,” and Yunus’ ending words inspire me. Fighting poverty and violence not only requires giving the poor and the oppressed space to grow and achieve their potential, but also working tirelessly to change a system that accepts the status quo and allows a continuous cycle of violence and poverty in the world.