This week, I met with Emma, a wonderfully courageous woman. She was a participant in a workshop I delivered called ‘Courage, Leadership and the Big Issues’ in late 2013.
Since that workshop Emma has stepped up to her own ‘courageous action’ – something she thought she would never do – and is building her new career, which is firmly in line with her personal vision and values. She is positively glowing from the changes she has made.
We hear a lot about courage and having the courage to live your life authentically.
This might mean you want to transition to a new career, have better work-life balance, take on a role as a board director, or start a new social enterprise. Or you might want to move house (tree change, anyone?), have children (or not have children) or make more room in your life for creativity. There’s any number of things you might want to do differently to what you do now.
You might have even decided that you are going to make ‘the change’.
Of course, deciding to do something is one thing. Doing it is another. Fear can get in the way of courageous action.
One of the things I do when I work with people is encourage them to ‘make friends with their fear’. Practice the feeling of fear and you’ll be taking courageous action in no time at all.
In fact, fear is an essential element of courage. Some level of anxiety and fear when stepping into change is not only completely normal, it’s essential. Courage is not the absence of fear. It’s knowing fear and doing it anyway.
Fear + action = courage
You can ‘train’ to become more courageous. The more often you face up to you fear, and take that step, the easier it gets.
Ben Dean is a psychologist, coach and a leading expert in psychology. He says to build courage you need to “design your own courage-building exercises by revisiting a life goal that is gathering dust”.
What commitment have you made that needs some action? What part of your life could be better if you made friends with your fear?
If you want to make friends with your fear, my coaching programs can help. Or if you are working with a team, I can deliver a workshop on courage and taking action to your team or organisation.
Get in touch with me today and we can talk about how, like Emma, you can make friends with your fear and be stepping into the life you want to lead.
