“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are”
EE Cummings
On a daily basis we are invited time and again to show up in the world as our authentic self, and time and again we don’t. The risk feels too great. Our fears arise to try and protect us from anticipated rejection, humiliation, not-enoughness, disappointment, aloneness, or some other emotional state that we are, often without our conscious knowledge, trying to protect ourselves from.
Of course, our fears can also save us. There are times in our life it is unsafe to show up. However, for many of us our fears can, at times, become overly officious and frustrating.
I watch countless times as strong, brave, resilient people dismiss their daily acts of bravery; who focus on what they aren’t doing rather than what they are; who have stopped believing in their own possibilities.
Living with low energy, stress, depression or anxiety means that getting out of bed, facing the day, can be a huge act of bravery, taking an insurmountable amount of will-power
It takes courage to risk showing up in the world.
Courage is often seen as something we do alone. But my take is that those of us who manage to leave our nest of safety have, or had somewhere in our life, Encouragers.
None of us can do it alone. It takes a village. Success, however you define that, requires a level of support and encouragement. Some validation somewhere in our experience that has supported an inner voice that believes in us.
We need encouragement so we feel we can take risk, to have life not go according to plan, to show up, to try again. We need encouragers to remind us why we can believe in ourselves. We need encouragers to accept and allow space for our dreams and ideas, to give us space to work out what we need to do, to be in our corner no matter what the outcome.
Some of us were lucky enough to have some of that in our growing up years. And some of us have to find it and learn to receive it in our adult years.
My message, then, is please know that you are already full of courage. You face every day with braveness. If fears are getting in the way maybe it is time to look for or remember the encouragers in your life.
Questions to help you delve into your Courage:
Think of people in your life who have believed in you – who have noticed parts of you that need to be seen? Who are those people? What did they do that allowed you to believe in yourself?
How do you provide encouragement to yourself and to others?
What can you do to bring more encouragement into your life?
