My dearest friend,
How was your week? Did you travel & explore or stayed at home to rest & recover? As for me, it has been an opportunity to reconnect & bond with our families. My parents visited us in our home & we also hosted a slumber party.
Anyway, I wanted to write about something that we have in common. This letter is about courage.
When I think about what courage is – it feels like some sort of positive energy that gives you a boost, some added confidence to go through anything for a certain period. Over time it gets depleted & we need to design our environment carefully & objectively so we don’t have to tap into our courage so often & unnecessarily.
There was a time I was just running on courage alone, day in & day out. It was an odd phase of my life that gave me a boost every single day & motivated to keep me going no matter what. In the end it was like drinking coffee, 4-6 times a day, running on adrenaline to get thru my work schedule instead of actually finding time to make & automate healthy food choices which could sustainably fuel me in the long run. What I’m trying to say is if you become habitual in using courage even when you don’t even need to, it becomes damaging the longer you do it.
So, when do you want to summon courage?!
Whenever you make a decision to tackle a specific task that could benefit you in some sort of way – this is the time you genuinely need courage the most. It could be when starting a new business; sharing an idea with a group of investors; speaking in public; building something; quitting your job to follow what naturally interests you; ending a relationship & starting fresh; joining a tournament; quitting an unhealthy habit; or jogging & working out more. Whenever you want to make a decision that will affect your life & its direction, you need courage to help deactivate some specific beliefs which will then allow you to believe in something new: something more helpful & supportive.
This transition phase is the most exhausting as you consciously accept where you truly are; you’re open to listen to constructive criticisms; you get to see & honestly face yourself without judgment; you figure out why you’re actually doing this & who you’re doing this for; and start to make plans on how you could achieve this goal; support this new decision; or become this new self you are trying to build.
After you have fully accepted & become aware of yourself, the need to summon courage slowly dissipates in the background as you do the work necessary. You take one small step at a time, learn & equip yourself with knowledge & skills needed to achieve your goal. During this phase, you don’t want to take big steps, instead you just need to make the effort of showing up consistently – even on days when you don’t feel like it. It’s just like steppingstones – they have to be easy enough for you that you could show up even on your worst day.
The next phase would probably feel dragging & boring – this is when you keep practicing until it feels easier, familiar & routine. It’s tempting to stop at this point when you feel like you have already earned or achieved a certain goal. But it’s during this practice phase that you need to continue to push on until you reach the next stage: the progress phase where you continuously accept more challenges just a little bit outside your comfort zone. This is when you expand & unleash your true potential, when you totally let go of all of your limiting beliefs, when you express yourself freely & readily face the unknowns to keep growing & rediscovering yourself.
When you feel lost & yearning to just go back to your old beliefs & throw away all of your efforts, you only need to look back & ask yourself why you’re doing this in the first place & who you’re doing this for. You have established this during the transition phase when you had to summon the most courage & this time you just need to remember it.
I feel that courage is not a loud emotion that forces you to accept every single battle you encounter along your journey. I think that courage is like a soft, quiet voice born from your creativity that helps you to keep trying new things again & again until you finally find something worthwhile & when you do, you’ll feel like you have re-discovered your light which has always been with you, just patiently waiting for this moment to re-surface.
So, when was a time you felt a need to have courage the most? If it’s right now, what is stopping you?
coffee soon,
Anne