In this article, part 2 of a 3 part series, you’ll learn why courage is important in creating your unstoppable life. In fact, it’s a crucial ingredient! Read on for 4 ways to cultivate courage so you can create and live a life you’re excited about.
“You can choose courage or you can choose comfort. You cannot have both.”
What is courage?
Well, if you look it up in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, courage is defined as the mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty.
That definition, which obviously has merit since it’s in the dictionary, doesn’t really do it for me. It feels sterile and soulless. To me, courage is more of a “heart word”.
And wouldn’t you know it, I’m not the only one who thinks so. It turns out, in The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown says the following:
“`The root of the word courage is “cor” – the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage had a very different definition than it does today. Courage originally meant ‘to speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.’
Over time, this definition has changed and today, courage is more synonymous with being heroic. Heroics are important and we certainly need heroes, but I think we’ve lost touch with the idea that speaking honestly and openly about who we are, about what we’re feeling, and about our experiences (good and bad) is the definition of courage. Heroics is often about putting our life on the line. Ordinary courage is about putting our vulnerability on the line. In today’s world, that’s pretty extraordinary.”
Courage is such a beautiful topic, and this really came to the surface for me last week as I co-hosted an online “summit” called Unapologetically YOU. The summit featured speakers talking about why it’s so important to pause and get intentional about connecting to who you really are and what you really want, without apologizing for any of it.
Our speakers covered a range of topics from defining what wealth means to you, cultivating beautiful relationships, trusting your intuition to help you in your career, ending burnout and exhaustion, rebuilding your life after a setback, and more. Interestingly enough, as diverse as all of these topics are, there was one common thread that ran through all of them.
That thread is that we have to take a moment to pause and turn inward to ask ourselves who we are, what’s important to us, and what is it that we truly want in our lives.
It takes so much courage to get honest about what you really want. It takes courage to step outside your comfort zone to claim the life that YOU want – not the one that you, or others, think you should have.
Having the courage to claim who you really are and the life you really want brings us right back to what courage originally meant: to speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.”
What happens to us that we end up settling for a life that’s not in integrity with our hearts and souls?
Why do so many people settle?
This really boils down to the thoughts, stories, and limiting beliefs that are running on autopilot in our heads. Like a computer program, these narratives were installed in our brains over time, and since our brains really like to be efficient, we don’t end up putting much thought into whether or not these “programs” are helpful.
So many of them are not.
The “program” that tells you to breathe? Helpful. The program that tells you not to ask for what you need for fear you’ll be an imposition? Not helpful.
The unhelpful programs keep us in performance mode. They keep us pretending to be someone we’re not. They keep us playing it safe– from failure, judgment, and getting hurt, among other things. They keep us in perfectionism, pessimism, people-pleasing and self-sabotage. They keep us living the version of our life that we think is the “right one”, or the one that we, or others, think we should live.
The unhelpful programs keep us living out of integrity with who we really are in our hearts and our souls.
Why is that a bad thing?
Because when you’re living someone else’s version of your life, you’re not really living.
So many people talk about wanting to find their purpose. Well, guess what? Your purpose can be found when you live life as the person you came here to be on this planet. When you live the life you’re meant to live, your purpose naturally falls into place. When you start listening to your heart and soul, it becomes so much easier and in flow.
So back to courage and why living YOUR life takes courage.
Being fully you, without apology, is living your purpose. Living your purpose makes you feel alive and, well, purposeful. This is the place of being where you feel most in flow, grounded and content.
But being fully you is vulnerable.
Showing up and letting yourself be truly seen is vulnerable because you risk things like failure, judgment, making mistakes and having to admit to them, speaking up for what you believe in, and getting hurt.
Here’s an example of what it’s like to practice this and open yourself to vulnerability:
When I got divorced, I had been out of my aerospace engineering career for 12 years. I left the industry to be a mom.
While I later started a part-time photography business, It wasn’t going to be sustainable as my main source of income so I started to explore my options. I knew one thing–I didn’t want to go back to a corporate cubicle job where I stared at a computer all day.
I knew that I needed meaningful connection in my work, and engineering wasn’t going to provide that for me.
I may not have known exactly what I wanted at that point in my life, but I knew what I didn’t want. But, do you know how many people thought I was crazy for not going back into my engineering career? A lot. And for the handful of people who expressed that I may be making a poor decision, I’m sure there were many others who were judging my decision silently.
If I had cared more about being judged than being happy, I may have gone back to my corporate soul-sucking job.
But I cared more about living a life that felt good. I chose a way more difficult route when I decided to pursue building a coaching practice, but my heart and soul were leading me away from the check-the-box, “should” path and I made the choice to trust that even though it was freaking scary.
There’s an example of courage. And, personally, I practice courage every day because being an entrepreneur is hard, and scary, and things don’t always go your way. There are months when money doesn’t flow as easily and there are challenges that wouldn’t come up if I were working for someone else.
Staying sane requires an incredible amount of mindset work to stay on the heart-soul path. Making it work takes courage.
For me, building this heart-centered business is speaking my mind by telling what’s on my heart. Every day I am telling my heart story. I share it in my social media posts, articles like this, my podcast, my work with clients, and basically everywhere I show up.
For me, it’s incredibly important to share my story because the people I help are going through their own difficult times. The fact that I survived my challenges and am better because of them serves as hope that they too can make it through their own challenges.
Being transparent takes courage.
I once wrote a really vulnerable article for an online publication for parents and there were a few people who totally hated on it. They were not very kind to me!
My initial reaction was shame. You know the feeling. Face gets warm, red and you feel the wave wash over you. You wish you could hide. You say I’ll never do THAT again.
But you can’t let haters get to you. You have to keep doing YOU. And THAT takes courage.
What are some other things we need courage for?
Speaking up, asserting boundaries, standing up for your values, saying no to what doesn’t serve you, saying YES to what does, admitting mistakes, dealing with divorce or relationship breakdowns, moving to a new place, job interviews, and working toward our visions in unsupportive environments, to name a few.
And what happens when we don’t practice courage?
We lie to ourselves and others to avoid responsibility for our decisions. We don’t honor who we are and what we value. We numb out with food, alcohol, shopping, and other things. We keep ourselves busy instead of feeling our feelings and trying to understand why we’re feeling crappy.
When we practice courage, we stop running away. We don’t try to escape our fear by doing the things above. We stop lying to ourselves and start relating truthfully and with awareness. We get willing to make hard decisions and face the outcomes. We move forward instead of stagnating, staying in the same old comfortable place.
But how do you do it? How do you do the hard things in the face of fear?
Also, as Glennon Doyle says, we can do HARD THINGS.
Yes. Yes, we can do hard things.
But how do we do the hard things even when we’re afraid?
Work on building your courage muscle and start with the small stuff.
Courage is like a muscle that can be built and strengthened. It just takes putting in the reps. And just like with real muscle-building, you start small and work your way up.
Brené Brown says that courage is like a habit, a virtue; you get it by courageous acts. It’s like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by encouraging.
You get more courage by being courageous. You do the little acts of courage and being courageous gets easier and easier.
Get clear on what really scares you.
Fear is a habit, really. Most of the time, our fears are engrained very deeply within us and that “program” is running subconsciously on repeat without us ever really stopping to question it. So what happens is, often times we freak out at things out of habit.
To get clear on what you’re really afraid of, it can be helpful to look at where in your life you aren’t showing up totally authentically. Where are you shifting who you are to fit in, or avoid something uncomfortable?
For example, on some level most people are afraid of being judged or criticized. Let’s say you’re in a group of gossipy people and the conversation is full of judgment and criticism of someone else. Participating in the gossip isn’t in alignment with who you really are, but you’re afraid to stand up and go against what the rest of the group is saying, so you just go along with the conversation.
You’re afraid of not being accepted by the group. You might be afraid they’ll say the same things about you. So, instead of owning what you believe in and just saying it, you go along with the “ringleaders”.
But once you know your patterns, you have something to work with. You can work on showing up and being seen as the REAL you, and the more you practice that, the easier it will be.
Be willing to accept the uncomfortable feelings that come with being courageous.
Courage isn’t comfortable!
Brene Brown says: You can have courage or you can have comfort. You cannot have both.
Being courageous will always come with some emotions that don’t feel “good”. But being willing to show up and be seen changes us. It makes us a little braver each time.
The worst thing you’ll ever have to deal with is a difficult emotion, And sometimes, that can feel unbearable. But if you can learn to be with your uncomfortable emotions and let them move through you, you’ll be ahead of the game.
Also, your feelings are caused by your thoughts. And your thoughts are based on years of conditioning–your limiting beliefs, stories and patterns. So, when you feel a something like shame, for example, and you can look at the thoughts behind the shame, you can work on creating better thoughts that help you manage the emotions that come from the discomfort of stepping into courage.
Seek out other courageous people.
Inspiration can be so helpful, and there are stories of courage everwhere. Spend time with these people or read their stories.
Many years ago, when I did my first longer-distance triathlon, I happened to run alongside amputee triathlete, Paralympian, author and motivational speaker Sarah Reinertsen. She lost her leg at a young age, but she didn’t let it stop her from becoming a badass athlete. She began running at the age of eleven and has competed in the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii (a grueling race!), numerous other distance races, and she’s even competed on the TV show the Amazing Race.
She could have let fear stop her, but she didn’t. Today, she shares her story by way of her book, In a Single Bound, as well as motivational speaking all over the world. Such a great example of courage.
There are thousands more stories that are inspiring too. Seek them out!
Just show up. But own your story.
Either we own our story, or it owns us. – Brene Brown
The willingness to show up takes courage, but it changes us. Every time we show up with courage to own our story makes us a little braver. We build a little bit of confidence each time and showing up gets a little easier each time.
We all want to hear your story. Your authentic story. So show up and tell it!
Build a courageous community.
Doing hard things is way more fun and also easier with other courageous people.
Not everyone is primed to do this work, and showing up with courage in unsupportive environments just makes this work so much harder. Find your tribe and build community with them. Stick with them and reach out when you are in fear. You can create your unstoppable lives together.
Way more fun, right?
Courage is such an important ingredient in building a life you’re excited to wake up to – one that’s bigger and better than the one you had before. And because you’re still reading this, I know that you want a big life.
A question for you to ponder:
If your life stayed exactly the same as it is right now – every single bit of it…the good things and the bad things, when you get to the end of your life will you regret anything?
If the answer is, yes! I would be ecstatic. No regrets. I wouldn’t change a thing, that is AMAZING. Keep doing what you’re doing.
But most people say no to the question. They feel like if they don’t change something, they will have regrets.
The number one regret of the dying is that they wish they would have lived a life that was true to who they are, not the life others thought they should live.
You live the life that’s true to who you are by practicing courage.
It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.
Prefer to listen? Click HERE to listen to the accompanying podcast episode on Real, Brave, & Unstoppable!
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