1. Courage isn’t about not having fear, it is about having and feeling that fear but still going ahead and finding our way through it.
2. Courage is about hearing the negative thoughts, the red zone story reel that we have running, and not letting that rule, not letting that take over our life. It is acknowledging that the changes that we are embarking on or the steps we are taking may not feel safe, they may well feel unfamiliar because they are new, but having the determination to make them, however, small those steps have to be…
3. By being courageous we gain evidence that we are capable, we can do whatever it is, and each piece of courageous evidence from the green zone helps us to break down that red zone story reel of b*llshit that we have running.
The best bit about this is that we can gain evidence that we are capable, that we are deserving, through the smallest of steps, smallest of actions, and the more of those steps and actions we can take, the more evidence we are gaining to disprove the beliefs, to break down that story reel.
Those actions can ‘simply’ be about doing something different, and we have so many opportunities to do that during the day.
It could be choosing a different drink/type of coffee when going out, it could be going a different way to work, it could be trying a recipe of something you have cooked so many times over.
The best bit? We might hate the turmeric latte, we may believe our recipe is actually better, the end result doesn’t matter half as much as the decision to do something different! That is where the healing is.
4. What has stopped us before? Fear, others’ beliefs and values that we have taken on, society’s expectations, cultural say-so, previous experiences related to it or not; not even our own experiences, stories we have been told. We don’t want to dwell here, but recognising what some of those barriers have been in the past, can help us be aware of them when they do pop up again…
5. Change takes courage and courage takes energy. When we are in a place of making a choice, the choice that will lead us closer to where we want to be can often feel the harder thing, the option that requires us to be vulnerable, it requires more patience, more resilience, more capacity, and therefore more courage.
It is much easier to carry on doing the same thing we have always done, we know what it looks like and feels like, we know how others react to us in that space. For us to have the energy to be courageous to make the changes we want we need to be filling up the tanks and doing self-care. Navigating change from an empty tank can make the journey much harder, so when setting goals or making plans please factor in how you are going to look after yourself along the way….
6. Courage can enable us to meet others with empathy. When we have faced situations, when we have walked through our fears, when we have approached heartache or whatever it might be and navigated our way through, then we can sit alongside someone and say “I may not have been through the same thing, but I get it.”
7. I have read in a few places that one of the biggest regrets of the dying is not about what they have done, it is about what they hadn’t. What if you were able to reduce some of those regrets by taking some courageous steps in this chapter of your life.
8. Being connected to our true self can help make life different in so many ways. I describe our core values as the backbone of our soul. When we know who we are we can find that we have resources we can draw on, as well as being sure that what we are working towards, the changes that we are wanting to make, are actually ours. Our true essence is always there, it never leaves us. Sometimes it takes courage to find our way home.
9. As mentioned before change involves us being vulnerable, not only is this made easier when we have energy but also when we have that connection to our true self, when we have those foundations in place, it can help us to feel safer, to find and create the safe spaces that we need to enable us to get back up the next day and do what is required of us.
10. If we are not open to change if we are not willing to be vulnerable, if we are not able to sit with pain and loss, then we do miss out on the good stuff too. We miss out on joy, love, connection, wholesomeness.
The courage to feel it all, the red and the green, the dark and the light. The courage to stay with what we are feeling, the experience we are growing through and whatever it is bringing us. All the things that keep us in our box.
When we have the courage to feel it all, to be open to what life brings, life can go from feeling very bland and beige, to having more colour and vibrance once more.
Written by our Lead Coach, Liz – liz-fry.com