If adult life gave brownie badges

– and all things Rachel Knightley Coaching in July 2025

My clearest memory of Brownies is receiving my Highway Badge. The three Journey badges – Footpath, Roadway, Highway – meant filling each paving stone in the guide’s road-shaped diagram, colouring in each stone to represent things you achieved along the way (I forget what literally any of them were), until you reached the paving stone closest to the horizon.

The memory starts with descending horror. Ahead of my final Brownies meeting, I realised I hadn’t finished my Highway and it was tonight or never. I filled in what was needed (again, zero memory of what that was) and, that night, shook hands with Brown Owl (not an obscure LSD reference: the leaders were named after various woodland animals), giving and receiving the Brownie salute before she gave me the badge I (or probably my mother; I had no interest in the sewing badge) would sew on my Brownie sash.

But the reason I think this memory stuck so clearly is not just because it was my last badge, last meeting or last salute. It was the first time I realised life wasn’t going to be about people reliably reminding, reassuring or telling you what you were supposed to do. Still less rewarding what you did or punishing you didn’t. The rewards and punishments of adult life would be internal, for what we did and – perhaps more unnervingly – what we didn’t do.

This highlights a reason I think coaching answers so much in so many of us. In coaching, the client sets the objectives. There may not be badges to sew on, but there are emotional and practical goals which are chosen as a result of an authentic understanding of who that individual is and how they want to experience being themselves in personal and professional life. It’s accountability and support, from a trusted thinking partner. It keeps you committing to being as you as you can be.

Adult life doesn’t give out badges to recognise achievement (though, as I write this, perhaps I’m explaining to myself clearer than ever before why many of my friends love tattoos so much). That’s probably a good thing. Thought habits are about committing to maintenance, not putting trophies on a shelf. That said, here are two suggestions of adult Brownie badges I’ve recognised and mentally awarded myself recently:

These two are just suggestions – I’d love to know what you’d choose for yours?

The Boundaries Badge
The Brownie/adult recognises that being a good relative/friend/colleague/partner/etc does not mean – and never has meant – being available twenty-four hours a day, or saying yes to everything that’s asked. They acknowledge it is for them and not the world to state (and repeat, and repeat, and repeat without diluting) their boundary, what they will and will not do/be/offer.

The Empowerer Badge
The Brownie/adult commits to replacing jumping in to ‘rescue’ their relative/friend/colleague/partner/etc with how they might empower them. By changing status from rescuer to empowerer, they change the other’s status from helplessness to growth. Both are then in a stronger position next time, plus the rescuer-turned-empowerer’s self-esteem grows through no longer needing to be needed, but knowing they are truly wanted.

The Responder Badge
Instead of firing back a text message, email or remark that relieves their feelings for a moment but heightens the conflict (and, with it, their feelings) in the long-run, the Brownie/adult listens to their instant reaction, asks what fears and wishes it’s based on, and then imagines what the tester/emailer does and doesn’t see about how they perceive the situation. This badge is one for writers in particular – when we know every character is just as real as we are, we can see more clearly beyond what we fear people think of us to what their own fears might be about themselves. Resulting The Compassion Badge…

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This month:

Coffee & Creativity | 1-2.30pm, Wednesday 2 July
Grab a coffee and have a mid-week chat, a write and then another chat with your fellow creatives. Free for members: type your discount code where indicated. Click here.

Creative Confidence at Olympic Studios, 10am-11.30am Friday 4 July
The greatest breakthroughs in our professional and personal lives come not from finding the right answers – but asking the right questions. Explore the joys of creative confidence, and the tools it offers to help us turn apparently insolvable problems into positive, authentic choices. Click here.

Powerful Fiction and Memoir (Week 3 of 4) | Olympic Studios | Saturday 5 July
Truthful, powerful writing goes so much deeper than whether or not a story ‘really happened’. My four sessions at the legendary Olympic Studios explore the tools and techniques of powerful prose. Writers of all levels of experience will build creative confidence, explore and express their unique memory and imagination and create truthful, compelling memoir and fiction. If you are a member of Olympic Studios or the Writers' Gym and do not have your discount code, please email info@rachelknightley.com Book here.

Writing Workout and Feedback | 6-7.30pm, Tuesday 15 July
This friendly group workshop is the perfect place to hone your writing – and how to get the best out of feedback. Click here.

The Writers’ Gym is part of Rachel Knightley Coaching: creative confidence for life, work and art: www.rachelknightley.com