The Path to Personal Courage

What do you think about cultivating courage in your personal actions? How necessary is a high level of confidence to the task?

An element that is extremely useful for understanding concepts that are life-transforming comes from Thomas Leonard’s idea of coaching distinctions. Here we are looking at a post by Tom Morris using the famous analogy of Plato’s Cave to explore the difference between confidence and courage.

The only way out of the cave was well known to Plato, and was highly regarded by his student, Aristotle. It is the path of personal courage. Aristotle understood courage as a primary virtue, or strength, in human life. He saw it as a midway point between the extremes and vices of timidity and temerity – or the overly cautious capitulation to fear, on the one hand, and the irrational disregard of danger, on the other. Courage recognizes challenge, understands risk, and while fully cognizant of danger, moves forward with the insight that the best path to the future demands positive action now.

We’ve heard a lot of talk recently about the absence of confidence to be found throughout America, and our pressing need for much more. Confidence is an attitude expectant of success and is a universal facilitator of achievement in situations of uncertainty, as many of the great philosophers have understood. We do indeed need more of this quality than we’re demonstrating right now across the culture. But the virtue of courage can be even more important in a situation of dark threats and daunting anxieties. Deep within the cave, our first need is to be brave.

A courageous person does what’s right rather than what’s easy. He does what’s needed rather than what’s expected. He’s willing to take a chance to make a positive difference. He’s not rash in his actions, or careless in his commitments. And yet he’s not so cautious as to remain trapped in chains of fear. A confident person believes that his actions will succeed. A courageous person may start out only hoping that they will. He does what he thinks he should do, regardless of his degree of confidence. And then, quite often and wonderfully, the actions arising from that courage help to build up and justify the confidence that then works to support him as he goes on.

I love the distinction regarding how a courageous person may not have the confidence to act, yet still does; that courage compels one to move forward in the face of anxiety and fear; that the same courage then can increase our confidence when one is on the other side of the fear by stepping through inertia and moving forward.

What is one way that you acted courageously recently?

How do you instill this courage in your children?

Please share your comments below.

Have a courageous day!

It’s one of those days: You’re sleep deprived, recovering from a cold, over-worked, having to deal with the most hated parts of your profession (What is it for you?), and you’re PMS-y (sorry men).

Sounds like melt-down,

shut down material to me.

How can you pull yourself out of the pit before

all out emotional catastrophe hits?

1. BE AWARE – Without this there is no hope. You know you are in trouble when your co-workers ask “Why are you so irritable today?” Or “What’s wrong with you?” and you are SURPRISED by the question! Take a few minutes and let yourself quiet before entering your work environment. Notice any feelings or sensations that are nipping at the edges of your consciousness. Take your noticing a step further and ask yourself questions, “Hmm, I’m feeling cranky, what’s up?” or “I’m not wanting to deal with ______ now. What is that telling me?”Look for information, not judgment. Now’s not the time to whack yourself in the head.

2. Take a time-out — you need to stop what you are doing, get off the merry-go-round, and re-assess your options. What activities can be put-off, rescheduled or deleted all together? Tone down to only the absolutely ESSENTIAL tasks while you are not at your optimal levels. For example, one Monday I had something scheduled every hour for 10 hours straight. Then PMS hit hard. I dropped ¾ of the activities and only kept the most necessary, unavoidable ones. I took time out for a “rest” in the afternoon between appointments so I could focus on the next step.

3. Use your “self-talk” arsenal. I’m an auditory learner so I take this advice very literally – I talk to myself out loud. If you don’t already use anti-catastrophizing tactics start now. These are borrowed from cognitive behavioral therapy and work wonder for changing your perspective and attitude.

a. Say the thought/feeling (i.e. “I can’t handle this! I hate this.”)

b. Question it (“Is this true?”)

c. Come up with proof for the doubt. (Well, I’ve handled this before and I can do it again.)

d. Turn the language around (I can handle this even if I do hate it!)

e. Find support to give yourself – find a lifeboat.. Ask “who or what can help me feel more capable (in control, aware, competent, etc.) in this situation?” ex: oh, so and so is an expert at this, I’ll call her and pick her brain before the meeting so I feel confident.

f. Identify the feeling behind the thought/lie (i.e. I’m scared of looking like a fool and this has me wanting to run and hide…)

g. Congratulate and reward yourself for being PRO-Active and not giving in to the mood gremlins that thrive on your stress.

Some healthy ways to reward yourself:

Cancel a meeting and go for a 20 minute walk on the beach with your shoes off. Feel the sand shifting along with your stress.

Call a friend you miss and have a 15 minute catch-up girl chat. Laugh a lot.

Exchange funny tweets!

Go get a spa treatment

Walk to your favorite “juice” spot and have a yummy smoothie, while standing in the sun for a few minutes.

Run home and play with your cat or your dog on your lunch break.

You’ve got the idea. Recover your smile and realize you successfully avoided over-reaction melt-down mode.

To increase your arsenal of tools to draw upon next time try incorporating some of the following into your life on a regular basis:

• Reflective journaling • Work with a life coach • Exercise regularly • Take up yoga or meditation • Prayer • Surround yourself with funny friends • Start a nurturing hobby like gardening, knitting, marathon racing, or bird-house building! • Express joy and gratitude daily • Join a supportive group situation where you can be vulnerable and safe. This could be an actual support group, an affiliation group, a church small group. Explore your options. Living intentionally in community, although challenging, is well worth the rewards.

What do you choose as your escape pressure valve? How many ideas have you tried? Tell me what has worked for you in the comments.

Part Two

In Part One we looked at whether we were Big Beginners, Magnificent Middlers or Competent Completers. Click here to see which one you are.

As you looked at which type best fits your preferences and experience, you might notice that if you have a strong aversion to a particular stage of the process, a pattern of avoidance was set in place. Once this pattern becomes entrenched it’s very common for fear to kick in, so that next time we encounter the dreaded ending (beginning or middle) anxiety surfaces.

One of my friend’s suggests asking the following questions:

If I’m not beginning, following through, or finishing well…ask

• What am I doing instead? (notice/observe)
• What am I afraid of? (looking bad, messing up, not being perfect?)
• If I were living in faith (or courage), would I choose to do this?

We have a couple of choices in taking courageous action. First, figure out why we have the fear/anxiety so we can be aware of our unconscious motivations. Examine our motivations with complete honesty. Are we actually sabotaging ourselves by settling for “I don’t want to.”? It’s important to explore these areas first before moving on to the next part.

Once you’re sure you’re not sabotaging yourself, holding yourself back in fear, or simply giving up to the deterministic idea of “I’m not good at that part, so why bother?” You’re ready for more courageous action. Be clear about your strengths and preferences and partner with people that complement you. If you’re a great beginner and finisher, have your partners be accountable for a magnificent middler. This is playing to your strengths is a key strategy for all successful and fulfilled people!

Let me know what your pattern is and how it’s working for you!

Part One

So you’ve got your vision, mapped out your plan, took some steps in the right direction, and then…nothing.

What happened?

People get stuck at different parts of their process, either the beginning, middle or end. Simple, right?

Take a few minutes to think of how you go about accomplishing a project, or for your child, how she goes about completing (or not!) school assignments. Once you’ve analyzed your patterns, you’ll see what part needs support for completion to actually happen.

Big (or What?) Beginnings

Do you love to vision, dream big, plan out huge projects? Do you love exploring possibilities? Does the idea of brainstorming for a new project get your energy up and running? Then you are probably blazing through beginnings!

Your child will get excited when you ask her to brainstorm solutions for her school (or personal) problems. She’ll wake up with more energy and start entertaining possibilities. The question for you will be to see if she can translate those ideas to the next stage, or does she become bound by possibilities instead?

Another option is to feel frozen, confused and confounded on how to get started! You may wish that someone would just hand you the plan so you could run with it. The idea of brainstorming make you queasy and you get dizzy when presented with so many choices…ugh. You wonder, What Beginning?

Magnificent (or Muddled) Middle

Some people enjoy implementing a strategy. They may not be into the act of visioning and/or planning, but once the plan is set, they are gifted in making it happen.

You may be a Magnificent Middler if you noticed increased motivation at the thought of diving into ACTION; you can see exactly what is needed to make the plan a reality. You know who to contact and the best people for each part of the plan. You won’t miss an important detail. You’ve got it covered!

Here your child will need you to help him plan out the process and walk him through the initial steps. He’s a slow starter and needs lots of prompting. He may complain that he “doesn’t know how to start!” Once you finally get him going he is able to do the legwork and follow the plan, working with a degree of independence.

On the other hand, you might be a Muddled Middler if your eyes start glazing over “too many details”; you can’t decide who should do what; you lose steam early in the implementation and want to work on a new project instead.

Competent (or Casual) Completer

Others may enjoy the beginning and/or the middle of a project, but really feel their energy rise with the thought of sprinting to the finish. With the end in sight, the creative juices start flowing and the joy of competent completion kicks in. You may not even enjoy the early stages of a project. What you want is to come in at the end and hit a home run. You love the end result out there for all to see.

In the same manner, your child might take forever to get started on a school project, or even homework. She might need you to actually hold her hand and sit her down. You’ll have to hover to get her through the beginning stages, but finally, as the end nears you can tip-toe away and watch her finish with excitement.

Anybody with a modicum of success has at least learned to be a Casual Completer. You had your fun envisioning and/or implementing the project. Your love of the challenge is over now that the end is in sight. If there is a lot of pressure, you’ll respond and the cross the finish line because it is necessary. Or not so successful professionals might be so casual about it that you leave others to finish as you wander over to a new different race.

In the next post, we will look at what is motivating or driving our patterns and explore what we can do to be successful at all the stages!

A friend sent me this Traditional Irish Blessing and thought I would share it with you all:

In the past month, I jumped in with both feet to the “twitterverse,” which is a way of communicating with tons of people via “micro-blogging” (only 140 characters per “tweet”/entry). Imagine going to party and being privy to everyone’s conversations at once! There are a lot of amazing people there that I have met and I’m excited to meet hundreds more.

In reading people’s twitter-names and bios, I’ve noticed some talk about “striving” for a particular goal, task or life-style.

Ahhh. Striving.

I react strongly to that word. I learned many years ago that life is much better if I don’t strive, but rather allow myself to be moved into “inspired action” as my coach calls it. This is true for me especially in a spiritual context. I don’t want to strive here; instead I surrender and yield to God’s Spirit that leads to living a life of LOVE.

Maybe, I’m reacting to semantics, but for me, striving is hard work—going against the natural flow and relying on my soul/mind effort versus letting inspiration flow through me, leading me, pulling me along, into action.

This isn’t to say that we don’t work hard, persevere and live a disciplined life.

Our kids need to learn persistence and discipline for their courageous foundation. Understanding that they don’t need to “try”, but rather CAPTURE the ideas when they flow, RESPOND when inspiration flows, SURRENDER by living in the present moment and not worrying about the future.*

We need to work hard, yes. Develop persistence, yes. But to strive and live in constant tension…NO. I don’t think striving is worth it.

What do you think? Are you happier when you strive? Let me know!

*Thanks to the “Conscious Achievers” in Life Coach Mary’s Success & Inner Peace Bootcamp for these ideas and insights!

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Sometimes it’s really gross to put resilience into practice…

One key of resilience that is foundational to courage is the ability to “just do it anyway”.

Most functioning adults have learned this.

Kate is a mother of three rowdy, vivacious, amazing children. Yet, like most kids today these normally high energy kids can very easily slip into unmotivated lazy couch potato mode. Who hasn’t been there?!

One morning, this hard working mother planned to go for a walk on the beach with a friend to de-stress, exercise and do something positive for herself–All important in any busy mom’s life.

But she also knew her family.

If she didn’t get them moving for the day before she left, they would grumble and complain about being bored…sound familiar?

So, she buckled down into her “just do it anyway” mode.

After asking hubby dear what his plan was she learned that the dog poop was in the way of the boys getting much needed yard work done. The grass was very, very tall. Ah ha.

She set to picking up the poop in the tall grass. Not an easy, clean or pleasant task, but she “did it anyway”.

When the family saw her working they got up and started moving themselves. Soon the yard work started!

Kate enjoyed her walk knowing that she modeled the “just do it anyway” attitude for her kids, so they got motivated for the day.

Sometimes, resilience means courage to get dog poop on your shoes.

As I have been writing about a courageous foundation for our kids, I realized that it is a concept that encircles many important ideas and traits. I want to hear what courage means to you as a parent, or person that works with children.

For one writer, courage is closely linked to integrity, achievement and effectiveness:

All good-willed parents want their kids to obtain healthy and honorable achievement, but currently we’re handcuffing them with nice-sounding intentions that dissipate when applied to the real world. Good behavior alone won’t fly; it was never designed to. We need to guide our children to achievement not fulfilled upon the broken backs of others—which leaves in its wake resentment, bitterness, and cynicism—but instead toward achievement that’s nourishing for themselves and others. This is especially relevant in America, a nation awash in ambition, much of which is good, some of which is bad. It takes courage to follow integrity because that often means taking the longer and harder route.

For the whole blog click here.

Enjoy! And please let me know what you think with a short (or long) comment! Thanks!

1. Eat right for your brain

2. Tune-up your brain chemistry with supplements

3. Live the UltraMind lifestyle: Exercise, relax, sleep, and train your brain

4. Live clean and green

from Dr. Mark Hyman

Did you ever have a teacher in High School make the class do the exercise “if so and so were and animal, flower or car what would they be?” I remember my classmates and I doing this once in 10^th grade psychology class. My friend decided that I was a Mercedes convertible (I forgot which one exactly) classy, sporty and fun. It fit me. I loved convertibles especially in sunny southern California.

Of course my convertible was a sporty FIAT spider, which eventually broke down beyond repair. In part because it was a FIAT (fix it again Tony) and in part because I wasn’t the greatest with routine maintenance. Not horrible, mind you, my dad taught me the basics and I cajoled my male friends into changing my oil and other basic tasks. But I definitely pushed the limits, arriving to work on empty and such things.

This is a common phenomenon among high school and college students. They call me to say they are running a “little late” for our appointment, because they “just realized” they need to get gas. I smile every time remembering my own adventures running on fumes, putting the car in neutral down the winding hills, so I would make it to the station! Sometimes I think that angels must have pushed me along because I always “just” made it!

It’s not just teenagers that push the limits and run on fumes. Often we carry these adrenaline driven habits into adulthood just transferring the specific details. We might not ever run out of gas again in the car, but how many times do we run out of patience? Or energy? Kindness? Respect? When our reserves are low – our levels of back up emergency “funds” – it is very easy to lose out in living our ideal self, living out the person God made us to be. Maybe your basic physical needs are met. You have plenty of food, clothing and shelter, but your emotional account is empty from constant giving out and never refilling. I know that when I want to give someone “the bird” for cutting me off in traffic, that my emotional reserves are low! (Someone with “road rage” or anger management issues wouldn’t benefit from the above example.)

How do you keep your tanks full enough so that you can choose to respond to a situation, instead of simply reacting out of habit or desperation? What do we need in our lives so that we are free to choose?

One important element is making sure our needs are met and that our reserve tanks are full. One reason I hardly ever ran out of gas in the car I bought when I was 19 was because I knew I had a 2.2 gallon reserve tank. I drove and drove until the light flashed on. When that light flashed on I knew I had entered the “I better watch it” zone. Many times I used up me reserve tank within that .2 of the gallon, but I was intent on really pushing the limits counting on the accuracy of my readings of the mileage.

Not only do you need that reserve, you need an awareness of it, where you are within it, and the perspective to read it accurately. If you are used to reading the odometer in kilometers but are driving a car with mileage reading only, you will misjudge the distance. How many times have you said “I thought I had more “ (time, money, patience, whatever). We misjudge the reality of a situation when our perspective is out of whack.

What can throw our perspective out?

• Fatigue

• Hunger (low blood sugar)

• Unrealistic expectations

• Illness

• What we are ingesting mentally (movies, TV, books, radio and newspapers)

• Relationships

• Stress

The list continues. The important fact is to know what your triggers are, so that you prepare a “perspective intervention” for yourself! This isn’t as radical as it sounds. Actually a shift in perspective can happen in a moment.

Some things to experiment with:

· Call your “pick me up” person. This could be anyone that can talk you out of your craziness; your friend, mentor, coach.

· Ask your friends how they shift their perspective and borrow or brainstorm techniques.

· Go outside and walk around in nature; take time to notice the colors and sounds around you; get out of your head!

· Off to the gym with you. Stop whining and get moving!

· Do some Brain Gym (www.braingym.org)

What works for you? I want to hear about it!

MLH