Building Courage so I can be Brave Enough to Push to the Other Side of Fear
Today I received this great article in my inbox, from Christine Kane, publisher of “LiveCreative” ezine, musician and creativity consultant. I just had to share it.
I’d been avoiding writing a post for a little while, because every time I sat down to write, all I could think about was FEAR. You’ve heard me talk about my fears a lot…too much lately, I think.
And you’ve been introduced to my pal, “Fearsome Freddie”, so that’s old news…
But courage…courage is a concept that I haven’t talked or written much about. And yet, developing courage has been so much a part of my personal growth and spiritual development.
I have been empowered to develop “the courage to change the things I can” as one of the pillars of my self-improvement inspiration.
This article made me smile. I hope it will do the same for you.
Please comment below, and let me know which one/s of the 52 ways you’re going to try.
52 Ways to Build Your Courage
by Christine Kane
“Excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.” – Aristotle
Courage is a muscle. Just as you wouldn’t go into the gym for the first time and lift a 100-pound dumbbell – you don’t have to begin building courage by running for President.
People often think that courage has to be big. Like sky-diving. Or giving a speech to a stadium.
Those things do require courage, yes. But in some ways, that’s baby courage. It’s obvious courage. I call it Bungee-Jumping Courage.
Bungee-Jumping Courage is convenient because it lets us define ourselves as “not courageous.” When you set the stakes that high, then you never have to approach it. You simply get to say, “Hmm, I must not have courage.”
I’m not letting you get off that easy.
Why?
Because there’s a deeper level of courage. It makes you strong. It makes you fall in love with yourself. It makes you fall in love with your life.
At its core, courage is about strengthening your relationship with yourself.
Here are 52 ways – little and big – to build your courage. Some of them seem completely foolish. But they’re not. They’re just uncomfortable. And that’s the whole point! Success in life is directly related to how uncomfortable you’re willing get. Now, get uncomfortable and go be courageous!
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1 – Paint your nails green. (Guys get extra credit for this one!)
2 – Begin to live your life as an “experiment.”
3 – If you’re always spontaneous, plan something in advance and stick with it. If you’re a meticulous planner, do something spontaneous.
4 – Quit your job.
5 – Start a blog.
6 – Take a drawing class.
7 – Learn a new language.
8 – Begin yoga.
9 – Do something tourist-y in your own town.
10 – Get up in the morning after having a bad day yesterday. Encourage yourself to begin again.
11 – Give money away.
12 – Look into people’s eyes when you’re in public – on the street, buying groceries, etc.
13 – Hire someone to do a regular task you can’t stand doing. (i.e., mowing the lawn.)
14 – Play music more. Watch TV less.
15 – Get rid of everything in your home that’s not an Absolute Yes.
16 – Put on a goofy smile and look at other drivers when you stop at lights.
17 – Go vegan.
18 – If you never host parties or dinners – invite friends over for dinner.
19 – Teach a workshop.
20 – Start a mastermind group.
21 – Be bad at something. Do it anyway.
22 – Make requests. Don’t complain.
23 – Join a writer’s group.
24 – Hire a life coach.
25 – In social situations, allow people to talk with you instead of running around the room “networking.”
26 – Worry less. Act more.
27 – Enter a writing contest.
28 – Start your own business.
29 – Ask someone out on a date.
30 – Make a business card for yourself.
31 – Eat at an ethnic restaurant you’ve never considered.
32 – Respond. Don’t react.
33 – Get some music from another culture. Sit down and really listen.
34 – Listen more. Talk less. Especially to your kids.
35 – Take a swing dance class.
36 – Hire a physical trainer.
37 – Start a book club.
38 – Test-drive a luxury car.
39 – End a relationship that drains you or hurts you.
40 – Pray.
41 – Quit smoking.
42 – Take different routes to work each day.
43 – Drive around and get lost on purpose.
44 – Wake up at 5am and write.
45 – Assumptions are the enemy of success. Question them often.
46 – Excuses are the enemy of action. Stop making them.
47 – Admit when you are wrong.
48 – Write a fan letter to someone who’s not famous – a teacher, a grocery store clerk – anyone who delights you or touches you.
49 – Pick one incomplete in your life. (A cluttered garage, for instance.) Tackle it for 15 minutes a day.
50 – Do an open-mic night.
51 – Pay the toll of the person behind you.
52 – Run for President.
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Performer, songwriter, and creativity consultant Christine Kane publishes her ‘LiveCreative’ weekly ezine with more than 11,000 subscribers. If you want to be the artist of your life and create authentic and lasting success, you can sign up for a FRE*E subscription to LiveCreative at http://www.christinekane.com/.
Creating Art from Trash – Trash2Art Exhibit Intake May 2010
Meet Daisy Distraction. Creating Characters for Self Growth.
Why is it that when I get these HUGE bursts of creative energy I am so easily pulled away from finishing the task?
Just when I’ve got the plan laid out, the design outlined, all the pieces in place, I’m drifting off to other unimportant things.
Meet “Daisy Distraction”!
I’ve written about my friend “Fearsome Freddie” before. Freddie is my FEAR gremlin. Whenever I get paralyzed by fear, visualizing the cartoon character I created helps me realize how silly most of my fears really are. He’s become part of my tools for success.
Well, Freddie has a pal now, and her name is Daisy Distraction. Now I’m sending Daisy off to play with Freddie so she will leave me alone!
The good news is, I’m getting better and better at short circuiting my old self-sabotaging patterns and if creating and “playing” with these characters is what it takes, so be it!
Of course, I just wasted a few days of my precious time following Daisy and playing my favorite game of information gathering.
Translated in self growth language that means when I started to doubt myself (and that flurry of creative energy I had earlier in the week) I went looking for validation outside of myself.
I didn’t trust that what I was creating was good enough. So I went on a comparison binge!
And I got lost, literally for days, in the millions of resources available on the internet.
YUK!
The good news is, I met Daisy along the way. And now I can send her into that abyss instead of me. And I’m back on track to finish creating the “12 Baby Steps” self-coaching program.
Watch for that coming soon, OK? The outline and quick tips are already available as a free download on my site. So, if you don’t see the finished program in 30 days, call me on it, please!
So what are you’re favorite distraction techniques?
How many different ones do you think we can come up with? Share them with me in the comments below.
And, “Daisy” doesn’t have a face on paper yet. What do you think she should look like?
How Can I…?
Funny how the universe works…when I’m paying attention, listening and opening myself up to the messages and lessons I’m meant to hear.
Even if it is over and over again!
You see, even though I’ve spent many years making personal development a priority in my life and I’ve developed a self-care practice that I know keeps me grounded, AND supports me to live a life I love, I have to admit that sometimes I allow myself to wallow in my old bad habits and tune into noise and distraction rather than to inspiration.
Negative messaging has been a part of my life forever.
I have fun saying that it is “hard coded in my DNA”, and that’s not just an expression of mine, I believe it to be true.
Some patterns die hard… and my personal replay button is stuck when it comes to negative messaging.
What do I mean, negative messaging?
I mean that wallow around in the muck s%#t that drags me down. I mean that “I’m having a lousy day” stuff that sounds like:
It’s too hard
I can’t figure this out
Life sucks
No one will help me
I’ll never make it
I just can’t
I’d do it but…
If only I had…then…
I”ll never get there
It’s just not right
But it’s not exactly the way I wanted it
They don’t care anyway
I’m too ___________!
It’s all because of _______________.
I GIVE UP!
Maybe I’m not saying “I’m not good enough” verbatum, but these messages have just as much stopping power as any other. And stop me they do!
And before I know it, I’m sinking in the quicksand of stuck-ness!
Sinking…sinking…sinking…
Then, almost miraculously, the hand of universal energy reaches out for me, extending a life line that I grab to pull myself out. And this week, the lifeline looked like this:
Living Your Truth, w/ Elizabeth Potts Weinstein
For the past few weeks I’ve been part of a group program called “Live Your Truth”. I joined the group because I feel a real connection. I’m reminded that I founded Wise Well Women based on the tenet of living authentically, speaking my voice, and encouraging others to do the same. So, through this program I practice defining and declaring “my truth” each day.
My truth is I am a coach. Specifically, I am a Creativity Coach, and as such I help women entrepreneurs with every aspect of their creative life and business.
Even if I’m not comfortable with the word, coach, it is who I am. Before I even knew the term, mentoring and supporting others was a key part of my personal and management style. It is what I’ve always done. When I worked for someone else we just called it something different. But the deliverables were the same.
Last week I posed a question on my FaceBook Fan page: (on the discussions page)
What do you expect from a coach?
And one of the responses was to “call me on my S#@T!” Boy, did that resonate with me that day!
Obviously, I was deep in the muck then, and just not quite ready to come out.
Then yesterday I pulled out a CD from a business growth coaching program I’d completed last Fall,
EnergyRich Business Boot Camp, and Marketing Mastery with Heather Dominick.
I popped that CD into the player in my car and heard Heather say, (as if she were speaking to me and me alone):
Ask yourself the question, “How Can I…?”
Activate the energy of creating possibilities, not limitations, she said. The message was exactly what I needed to hear. She was absolutely “calling me on my S#@T!”
How can I? How can I use what I have in place, this moment, to step up and do what I know I have to do to be successful?
If I’m stepping up, as I declared I was doing at the beginning of 2010, then I’ve got to take inspired action. No whining and wallowing allowed!
When I’m Living My Truth, I’ve declared I’m stepping up, and I’m deliberately working my self-care routines that I have developed to support me.
When I’m self-coaching, I’m calling myself on my S#@T! And, I stop wallowing around in the muck of stuck.
When I’m effectively managing and marketing my business, I’m asking myself “How Can I?” and taking inspired action to get things done!
Wow! Boy does that feel good-like the weight of the world was just lifted off my shoulders…
Does this mean I’ll never sink into the muck of stuck-ness again?
Certainly not. (Remember, it’s hard coded in my DNA 
)
But what it does mean is that I have affirmed once again, that I have everything I need to pull myself out when it does happen (and you can, too!)
So, ask yourself today…do you have the self development tools in place to support you? If so, do you use them regularly? What kind of support could you use to help avoid wallowing around in that quicksand of stuck-ness forever?
Share your thoughts with me here in the comments section below. Don’t be afraid to reach out.
Your lifeline is ready!
In the spirit of wisdom, wellness and prosperity-
I wish you well-
Nanette
P.S. My biggest breakthroughs toward Living My Truth came when I found my voice. This blog is the evolution of my truth, which began as a simple journal. Sandy Grason, author of Journalution, gently encouraged me to rediscover my identity and my power on the pages of my journal in the early days of my healing. Without her support I never would have had the courage to make my thoughts public on this blog.
Open up your journal and write something in it today. And then do it again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next…
I promise you, amazing things will happen.
P.P.S. - Heather Dominick is starting another EnergyRich Business BootCamp in April, and she’s introducing the program on a f.r.e.e. teleclass March 16th. Don’t worry, this won’t be one of those waste of time, she’s just selling her program, teleclass events. You will come away with some amazing new insights into how to manage your energy to grow your business.
Tell me, please, what do you expect from a coach?
A few weeks ago I began the first in a series of courses I am taking on my quest
to become a Certified Creativity Coach through the Creativity Coaching Association.
Each week we are asked thought provoking questions and required to post our responses
for the group to see.
This week, as I wrote my response, I realized that I was speaking from a perspective that
was entirely my own, assuming that my prospective clients would see things as I do.
As this realization became clearer, that I was envisioning a client’s desired coaching
outcomes as identical to mine, I found myself asking the question:
How do I know what people expect from coaching?
Certainly, I know what I expect from my coaches.
But what do other people want from a coach?
To be the best I can be, I feel the need to know.
So, I’m asking…what do YOU expect from a coach?
Please share your thoughts, leave a comment below, so we can all grow.
Or join the Discussion on my Facebook Fan Page at http://www.facebook.com/WiseWellWomen
I wish you well -
Nanette
P.S. I encourage you to explore the idea that as you record your expectations
for a coach, that these same support systems can easily become part of a
simple self-coaching model, too.
You already have everything you need inside.
Sometimes all you need is someone to help you see it.
