This, is a Challenge, and any Challenge in life requires Courage. To have Courage, one must face their Fears, and to face our Fears, we must practice Personal Honesty.
Much has been said on the topic of Courage, by many of the greatest minds ever to have graced humanity with their thoughts:
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear” -Mark Twain
“Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose.” - Tom Krause“Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow.” - Mary Ann Radmacher
Almost every quote you’ll find about the definition of Courage references one or both of two things; Fear and Change (the Unknown). The relationship between Courage, Fear and Change (the Unknown) can be summed up thus; “It takes Courage to overcome one’s Fear of Change (the Unknown).” It’s an unholy trinity, the Bermuda Triangle of Life. Either you find Courage, or you’re forever stuck Fearing Change (the Unknown).
I spent most of my life completely believing I’m a coward. I spent 31 years doing everything and anything I could to avoid any kind of personal pain or discomfort. I learned quite a few things in those 31 years, and I’d like to share them with you:
1. Avoiding making a choice, because you’re afraid, is still a choice. You’re choosing to let life choose FOR you, and that is a choice in and of itself. Making a choice cannot be avoided, in life; act, or the world will act for you, and you’ll still have no one to blame but yourself.
2. Trying to avoid personal discomfort by procrastinating change is like paying a ridiculously high interest rate on your credit card and maintaining a constant balance…when you have the money to pay off the card right now. Every month you pay a little bit of discomfort to avoid just paying it all off at once, biting the bullet, and moving on. Choosing to experience constant low-voltage pain to avoid one big dose of pain and then experience permanent, exhilarating, liberating freedom from pain is one definition of insanity.3. The strongest, most courageous people you know, are scared to death. But they know what I told you last week; the brave die but once, a coward dies a thousand times. Courageous people stare themselves in the face, force themselves to be honest about what it is they want, and what it is they fear they will lose in the attempt to get it, they acknowledge their fear, and they master it. They know they must and may fail to succeed, and though they fear it, they risk it.
Probably ¾ of the way through my 10 months of personal training, when my trainer was commenting about the clients she had, that she’d had for years, that never made any progress, I had sort of a mini-epiphany. I asked her, “Isn’t that discouraging to you? That you are working so hard with them, that they have everything they need to reach their goals, that you’re putting all this time and effort into them, and that they’re failing themselves?” Her eyes widened and she threw her hands up in the air and she exclaimed, “YES! You have no idea! It’s the *worst* part of my job!”
I completely get how she feels. I’ve spent the last couple of years trying so hard to get the word out to people that the life they want is completely within their reach; that the body they want, the health they want, the happiness they seek or even the relationship they desire is right in front of them, waiting for them to reach out and take it. Of all the people I’ve taken with me to the gym or recommended a book to or sent in the direction of my Trainers or my blog, I know of two who have wholeheartedly embraced it and made the change and reclaimed their lives. The rest remain in their own personal Bermuda Triangle, in Limbo, waiting for someone to make the choice for them, paying interest in pain, letting Fear stand in their way.
We all have choices to make, my friends. And Fear is the one factor in any choice that you should never factor in. August Wilson said, “Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.” Sit down with your fear and acknowledge it; don’t try to brush it under the rug or discount it, or put another face on it and pretend that it’s “prudence” or “realism” or “practicality” or “being responsible”. Those are all rationalizations for not reaching for your own happiness. Sit down. Write down what it is you want from your life. Ask yourself whether or not you’re getting those things from your life right now. Then, anywhere the answer is “no”, ask yourself WHY. What is standing in your way? When your answer involves things like, “I just haven’t tried hard enough (at this lost cause)” or “I don’t have the time (to devote to something important)” or “I don’t have the money right now” or “My kids need me (and my goals will cut into time with them)” or “I just can’t take the stress right now”, call bullshit on yourself. Those aren’t legitimate reasons, they are excuses. If you thought in terms of possibilities rather than impossibilities, you’d see that all of those answers are code for “I’m afraid”. And most likely, you’re afraid of the Unknown.
At the end of the Personal Honesty line of questioning for most of us, is the Fear of what the Other Side will look like. Who will you be, after you make these changes? Who will be there with you? Will your friends and family still be your friends and family? Still love you? What else will change? If you strip away so many of the things you are today, and rebuild, will that person even be YOU any more? What will your life BE LIKE?
The answers are complicated; yes, you will be you, but not the you that you are today. But I promise you, if you could see the You of your future after making the necessary changes, you’d trade in your current model RIGHT NOW, and pay any price. I promise. What about friends and family? That depends on what you change. Some of them are contributing to your unhappiness; you may shed them along the way. You will find new ones, ones that value what you value.
You won’t be alone. You won’t be a stranger to yourself in a bad, scary way. Your life will and can only IMPROVE. You must have COURAGE, friends…it takes Courage to fail, in order to succeed.
“The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.” - Sven Goran Eriksson
“If we're growing, we're always going to be out of our comfort zone.” and “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” - John Maxwell“The key to change... is to let go of fear.”- Rosanne Cash
“If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything.” - Win Borden
“A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for.” - William Shedd
“What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Today I Challenge you all; Confront the dark parts of yourself; Gift yourself with Personal Honesty; Refuse to Factor in Fear; Embrace the Unknown.
There is a Turkish proverb that goes like this: “No matter how far you have gone on a wrong road, turn back.” It’s never too late to be who you might have been, people.
Wishing you all great Strength and Courage. Go Without Fear!
Leaning Into It-
Lisa
Oh, how I needed this!!! A million thanks for something that is now printed out and hanging on my wall....I may have made the easy changes, now its time for the scary hard ones!!!
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