A Moment with Mérida (pt. 2)

Your questions about all things Project Fearless, answered! 

We get asked a load of questions about Project Fearless, so we thought we’d share our founder Mérida’s thoughts on topics that come up regularly. For the second blog in this series, we’re diving into how important it is that we keep on learning from getting stuck in, so we can grow as people, push our own boundaries and build our confidence. That goes for the Project Fearless team just as much as the girls! These mini-interviews with Mérida took place towards the end of 2019.

Q: What were the biggest things that you learned from running the very first Project Fearless programs in 2019?

A: Our team is the greatest thing on Earth - I know I can rely on them for anything! I really learned to trust the process, to have faith that everything would be fine. 

Anytime we were stressed about something, I knew it was so important to remember that the baseline of Project Fearless is about having a good time - showing the girls that they can be themselves, make friends and feel included in a welcoming space. 

Q: Was there anything that surprised you when you were running the courses, or that caught you off guard?

A: In Week 2 in the skateboarding class, all of the girls started competing against each other. It was weird... total strangers all of a sudden started saying “Oh, you haven’t got that trick yet.” Or they’d jump in front of each other to tell the coach “Hey, look at me! I got this!” 

All the coaches were really surprised by that, because it hadn’t happened in the Mind & Movement class. The difference between the dynamics in the two classes was confusing, because technically it was the same thing: the girls were all doing something individual, but within a group that was working on the same activities. 

I realised that what made the difference was that we’d talked about teamwork and supporting each other - and how that’s the best thing you can do to be a role model for yourself and for others - in Week 1 of Mind & Movement. So, we never had an issue with the girls supporting each other. But we hadn’t had that chat in skateboarding, so the following week we talked about teamwork and supporting each other and how there’s room for all of us to succeed. We just said it once and that was that - it changed that attitude for the rest of the program.

What surprised me was how quickly the change happened. Once we’d had that conversation, it was never an issue again. The skateboarding girls were holding each other’s hands and helping each other - to the point that by the end of the course, we were able to blindfold one of the girls and her buddy would lead her around the skatepark! 

It just goes to show that the idea of ‘scarcity at the top’ - that only one of us can be in the limelight, so we have to cut each other down - isn’t engrained, but it can come up at an early age. 

But once we’d had that conversation, the girls totally moved past that way of thinking. We had that one purposeful chat with them about it and in 45 minutes it was as if they were a totally different group of girls. And that was the last we saw of it for the rest of the eight weeks!

Q: Was there anything interesting you noticed from across the courses, or were there learnings you found in one course that you’re now applying in the other courses?

A: It was interesting that I could tell how the girls would be in the Tuesday and Thursday class based on the Monday class, even though they were completely different groups of girls in different classes and they were all total strangers at the beginning.

On Week 3 all of the girls were crazy! That was the week they started to ease up with the Project Fearless team, ease up with the spaces they were in, and also with each other. They became a lot goofier, a lot louder and a lot sillier in all the courses! So that was super interesting. 

I think it was partly that the girls got more used to us and to each other; they got more used to what they were doing in the course and felt more confident and more comfortable. That’s always so great to see.

One thing that we’ve introduced into all our courses is a set ritual so we can all ground ourselves, week in, week out. It worked really well for the Mind & Movement class: at the beginning of every session, we got in a circle, sat down and checked in with each other, whether that was with a Question of the Day, a body scan to see how we were all feeling, or both. We checked out the same way, always starting and ending the session together. 

It really created a beautiful little sharing space. By the end of the six weeks, the girls were really opening up and saying things like “I feel like I can be myself here.” That’s so important, so we’ll be setting those simple rituals across all our courses.  

Have you got a question you’d like to ask Mérida and the Project Fearless team? Send us a message right here!

Written by Project Fearless copywriter, Abi Malins.