Start Where You Are

What is courage? Courage is doing something that you are afraid of. We will be exploring how to build it over the next three weeks. But before that happens, clarity around your fears must be achieved. You need to start with where you are.

Most of us tend to be risk averse. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. There are issues of safety, comfort, societal rules, and more to consider. If it is keeping you from stepping up your leadership, however, it needs to be examined.

To understand what is holding you back, you must think about what you actually want. Let go of what others want of you or for you. Focus on what you want – what lifts your heart (see This Week below).

Once you’ve determined what you desire, you can then examine what fears are holding you back and resolve to take action to overcome them. This is where courage comes in.

In most cases, courage doesn’t require heroic action, although our minds may have built a larger-than-life fear. Reframe: Instead of looking at the action as “what’s at risk if I do this” consider “what’s at risk if I don’t.” Allow yourself to see the possibilities if you take the step forward from where you are.

We all carry courage within us. Allow yourself to access yours.

This Week: Access your internal wisdom. Consider: What do you long for? My favorite way to capture my thoughts is through mind mapping, a free association exercise. When you mind map, you take the topic you want to think about and place it in the middle of a page. You then let words associated with the topic flow onto the page, building upon and connecting related items. As ideas come, write them down. Related ideas are connected to each other. New ideas generate new branches. There are no right or wrong entries, so don’t edit your thoughts. You can make it as neat or as messy as you like. The point is to build on ideas and to keep at it until you feel like you know what you long for and where you might want to build your courage.