Courage: Overcoming Fear and Igniting Self-Confidence (10 page)

For every one of us, the practice of forgiveness is vital for the healing of our hearts so that we become willing to open up to an even greater level of divine connection. This sacred source is the very wellspring of our love, our courage, and our confidence. It is the love that transports us to a place where our hearts are pure, where we’re not holding anything against anyone because we know that the universe has brought us the perfect people and experiences for our soul’s evolution, allowing us to reconnect and live as divine messengers.

Although we “know” that all of our experiences are ultimately trying to lead us to open up and love, this is a conclusion we must finally reach with our hearts, not our heads. When we are holding on to any grudge, any resentment, any anger, any blame, any guilt, any regret, any judgment, any bitterness, any disappointment, any self-righteousness, any hate, or any revenge, it becomes a barrier between us and our loving hearts. When we are blocked from heartful compassion, we are unable to be the divine messenger that we are here to be, because our resentments are keeping us stuck with one foot in the past. If we are going to move forward as warriors of love—as women of courage, strength, and power—we cannot let incidents from our past bring us down for too long. We must release others—and, most important, ourselves—from the prison of the past.

As renowned medium James Van Praagh says, “We see these things as horrific experiences, terrible experiences, dark experiences, when in truth they are really enlightened experiences, because they help us to be who we are.”

When we’re going through continuous pain and harboring resentments, it’s because we have attached negative interpretations and feelings to the experiences we’ve had and are unwilling to give them up. It is our interpretations of events that continue to either hurt us or empower us. The meanings we choose to assign to the painful events of our lives have the power to either ground us in the past or support us in charging forward into our future.

When we comprehend the real cost of holding on to any kind of grudge or resentment, we can begin to make the more powerful choice to forgive. The costs are steep, but the results literally change the entire direction of our lives. It’s crucial to take inventory of what our resentments are robbing us of and how they’re depleting our power and light.

Holding on to resentments and grudges does the following:

Lowers our self-esteem

Separates us from ourselves

Keeps us disempowered and living in the past

Prevents us from healing underlying wounds

Keeps us a victim

Undermines our confidence

Makes us guarded instead of open

Drains our energy

Hardens us

Makes us old, angry, and tired

Causes stress

Diminishes our courage

Robs us of fulfilling relationships

Blinds us to new opportunities

Compromises our health

And the list goes on and on.

Our grudges and resentments can literally rob us of our greatest desires. One of my longtime students, Angie—a beautiful, sweet thirty-eight-year-old woman—brings a smile to everyone’s face but was always complaining that she couldn’t find a man to be in a relationship with. It made no logical sense to me. I had known her for a long time and had seen that everyone who met her fell in love with her. After hearing her complain one more time, I suggested that this had to be tied to an earlier event in her life, because there was no way that there weren’t thousands of men who would want to scoop her up. I asked Angie to look into her past and find the first negative experience she could remember having with a man. She told me this story.

“When I was fifteen, I got my first job—working at a golf and tennis store. I loved sports and was thrilled about working and being able to make my own money. After a few weeks, my boss, Rob, who was about twenty-five years older than me, started making comments about how pretty I was, how special I was, and how glad he was that I was there by his side. Even though these were words I loved to hear because they made me feel confident and strong for a minute or two, the way he looked at me made me feel uncomfortable. Rob started sharing with me some very intimate stories about his relationship with his wife and how unhappy he was about being married to her. He would get himself all worked up, saying she was a bitch and a bulldog. I just listened, wondering why he kept telling me the details of his marriage.

“As time went on, Rob gave me more and more responsibility. He would leave the store, telling me he was going to give a private tennis lesson and that if his wife called, I was to say he had gone out on store business. Of course I knew he was out with other women. And then one day he started to tell me about these other women that he was sleeping with. I just tried to ignore the information, because I wanted to keep my job. Every time Rob crossed my boundaries, he would buy me a gift—a bicycle, clothes, more money on my paycheck, and other random presents. Then, an unpredictable thing happened. One day Rob called me into the back of the store.

“I had a bad feeling, like something strange was going on. I started to feel sick and hesitant but went back anyway. When I stepped into the back office, I found Rob with his shorts down around his ankles, fondling himself. I couldn’t believe what he was doing as he turned to me and said, ‘Come on over here. Do you want to touch me?’ Appalled, I said, ‘No!’ Rob could see the disgust on my face and quickly said, ‘Don’t worry about it. You don’t have to touch me. Just watch me.’ So I did. I kept my mouth shut, feeling slimy and sick. I was so ashamed and humiliated. I didn’t have anybody to tell. I decided I would just wear bigger clothes so men wouldn’t look at me like a sexual object. I started drinking to cover the pain of feeling disgusting and unlovable.”

As Angie shared her story and became fully present to this burden she had carried and the grudge that was buried deep inside her, she was flooded with emotion. She realized that this one incident had affected all of her intimate relationships with men for the past twenty-three years. Angie admitted that this experience, which had stolen her youthful innocence, made her feel dirty with men to this day. Without a doubt, this was Angie’s underlying issue. It was clear that she needed to find closure so that she could move on, create new relationships, and attract men who would respect and honor her. So I asked Angie to write a letter to Rob and not to hold anything back because she wouldn’t be mailing it. I asked her to write down what the Voice of Blame had to say, because it was now time to let go, drop her rock, and move on. When Angie read me her letter, I could hear the protective venom and power in her voice. She was finally dealing with a resentment she didn’t even know she harbored.

Rob,

You have taken the deepest part of my soul and violated me with your sick and twisted, sexually deviant behavior. You made me feel so worthless, disgusting, and dirty. And since those sick and perverted moments when you made me watch you masturbate, I have believed that no man would ever want to come near me. You took advantage of me with your sick mind, making me think that I was so special and important, when all along you just wanted me for your pleasure and satisfaction. You are a predator, and I wish I would have turned you in. I feel so much hate for you. I hate you for controlling me and making me feel like your prostitute, only good for your sick and twisted pleasure. How could you rob me of feeling like a normal teenager? I hate you for this. You’re a SICK, FUCKED UP MAN. I HOPE YOU ROT IN HELL.

Angie

After she read her letter, I asked Angie if she was ready to cut the cord and let her resentment go. To do this, she would need to accept that Rob was a sick man and that she had unfortunately gotten caught up in his sickness. She would need to see that although what he did was wrong, if she was ever going to find the true intimate love she was looking for, she would have to be present to the Voice of Heartful Compassion. This would be the healing balm that would allow her heart to receive the gifts that this experience had the potential to give her. As Angie took some slow, deep breaths, I asked her to tell me what the Voice of Heartful Compassion wanted to say to her. Tuning in, Angie heard:

Forgive so that your heart can grow bigger and softer.

You will be taken care of by the Divine.

You don’t need to be afraid to open your heart and surrender.

You can let go of this incident.

Find the love within your heart. It is there calling to you.

Let go and let God’s love fill your heart and guide you.

All your stories and pain have made you the woman that you are today.

Be grateful for every second of your past.

Be a beacon of light in the dark.

Believe in me.

You are safe with the Divine.

Listening to the Voice of Heartful Compassion changed Angie’s view of this incident, and her life as a whole. She felt lighter, happier, more spontaneous, and in the presence of her compassionate heart.

Now it was time for her to claim the gifts—the lessons and the wisdom—of this experience. She had learned to respect herself and trust her instincts. She became committed to teaching and training young teenage girls about how to take care of themselves. She had a deep compassion for people who had been sexually abused or inappropriately touched. As she claimed one gift after another, I heard an undeniable confidence in her voice and the love song that emanated from her heart.

When we let compassion change us the way Angie let it change her, we experience deep and unlimited peace. Our perceptions are refined, and we are given the ability to see people differently. We become attuned to the Divine and aligned with a newfound source of happiness, joy, love, courage, and confidence.

Basking in the humility of our soul’s mission here on earth, we are released from the unchanging story line of the wounded ego and are able to see new possibilities for the contributions we are here to make. Holding grudges and blaming are acts of the ego, while surrender and forgiveness are acts of the Divine. In each moment, this is the choice we make: to align either with our ego or with the divine love that brought us to the world. As our hearts open, we step into the grace and flow of the miracles that life is offering us never-endingly.

THE HEARTFUL COMPASSION PROCESS

Set aside your projects and to-do list for a few minutes, pull out your journal, and settle in for a life-transforming period of inner reflection.

1.
Admitting to your grudges:
Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and let any grudges or resentments you’re holding on to come into your awareness. Make a list. What are the hurts or betrayals that you haven’t gotten over?

2.
Dampening your courage and confidence:
Make a list of what it costs you to hold on to resentments and grudges. How does it affect your health, energy, time, creativity, and joy? More specifically, how does it diminish your courage and your confidence?

3.
The one big resentment:
Pick the one resentment or grudge that most stands in the way of your being a confident, courageous warrior of love.

4.
The uncensored story:
Write out the story of this experience in all its dramatic and gory detail.

5.
Getting it off your chest:
Write a blame letter to the person who wronged you, venting all of your anger and resentment toward him or her. No holding back. (Don’t worry, you won’t send it.)

6.
The Voice of Heartful Compassion:
Tune in to the Voice of Heartful Compassion and write down what it wants to say to you about this situation. Listen to what it has to tell you about the wisdom and the gifts you have gained from this experience.

7.
Forgive:
Take an action this week that will support you in releasing the burden of this resentment and in opening yourself up to life in a bigger way.

Courage Activator

Communicate to someone something that you have been scared to express . . . and with no attachment to whether or not they like it. Share your blame letter with a compassionate friend.

Confidence Builder

Make a list of all of the blessings, gifts, and grace in your life. Write down at least ten things you’re grateful for, and then add one each day.

Courage and Confidence Bonus

List five times in your life when you admitted you were wrong.

Self-love is the warrior’s code. It is the source of her courage and her confidence. When she is present and awake to all that she is, she is able to take on any challenge, any project, or any future that she desires. Her heart wants to serve, protect, love, and heal all those who come onto her path. She is smart enough to know that anything that is holding her back will only slow her down or send her off in a direction that doesn’t lead to the fulfillment of her dreams. Her daily prayer is to have the strength to love all of herself, the courage to listen to what she is guided to do, and the confidence to go out, stand tall, and deliver her gifts to the world. The present moment is her source of great inspiration. Because her intention and focus are clear, she can open up to who she is and who she desires to be.

When you are not complete with the past, you drag it around with you wherever you go, using it as a reference point for who you are, for what you think, for what you believe, and for the choices you make. Unknowingly, you dip into your past experiences, which are usually telling you what you can or cannot do. Instead of standing in the present moment and looking to a future that you’re thrilled and excited about, you sit there and listen to the same conversations whirling around in your mind. So, knowing this, how could you expect your future to be much different from your past when you are actually going to the past (without even realizing it) to decide who you are and what you’re capable of? In these defining moments—when you need all your courage, strength, and the highest vision of who you are—you bring your limitations from the past into the present and then project them into the future.

For example, you decide to finally speak your truth to a friend who is always sapping your energy. The first thing you might think is “I’ve said this before. I’ve tried to say it. I’ll hurt her feelings. It’s not a nice thing to do. Just keep your mouth shut. You’ll be better off.” And then, like a coward, you give your power away. You don’t say the thing you know you need to say, thinking it’s safer that way, since that’s what you learned in the past. You project the feelings of the self that you were in the past onto this moment and make your decision from there, which then, of course, affects your future, your self-esteem, and your confidence. The ripple effect is set in motion. You allow your fearful self to make your choices instead of having the courage and confidence to make a new, fresh choice based on who you are today and who you want to be in the future. This course of action is predictable when you are incomplete with your past.

Completion is an important part of learning to love yourself at a whole new level. To me, completion is so exciting because you are literally making a choice to leave the past behind. You are drawing a line in the sand. There may be letters to write, conversations to be had, and closure to experience. And you are fiercely directed in your actions. Your commitment to the Code of a Loving Heart guides you as you decide what to do next and how to do it. You’ll know you are getting complete when you start to feel a sense of liberation and when you feel your strength returning because you have made the courageous choice to live as a strong, confident warrior of love.

Just remember a moment when you had finished a difficult project or achieved a milestone that you worked on for a long time—a time when you were bursting with excitement, enthusiasm, and pride. In these holy moments, you’re loving yourself; you’re looking through the eyes of your divine heart. You’ve forgotten about the past, and you’re not focusing on the future. You are in the moment, standing in pure acknowledgment and filled with awe.

Completion allows you to be present with everything as it exists right now. It gives you superhero vision, because when you are complete you commit to no longer looking through the eyes of your wounded self, through the eyes of your past, through the eyes of fear. Instead, you turn the corner, stand in the present moment, and declare yourself complete. Standing in completion, you declare that you are not going to dip into the past or listen to the familiar voices of fear and limitation that you’ve heard so many times before. When you are complete, you repeatedly discover a moment of pure perfection—the present moment, which is where you will find your courageous warrior and be sourced by your courage and confidence rather than by your fear.

Last year at one of my advanced trainings for coaches, I was talking about completion, and I began to think about what I needed to get complete with. I’d been feeling so drained and exhausted at that time, like I needed chlorophyll shot directly into my veins, because I was completely out of energy, which was rare for me. When I made a list of all the things I was incomplete with, I saw that in order to find my juice again, I needed to let people know that I couldn’t work on their projects and that my schedule wouldn’t allow me to be in regular communication or return their e-mails or calls. The prospect of setting this boundary terrified me.

When I asked myself why I was so scared, I could see that I thought that if I said no to people, I would lose love, or I would miss a big opportunity, or my career would fall apart. I had the evidence to support this fear. When I had disappointed people in the past, they had been mad at me. So I was saying yes to people I didn’t even know and to projects I didn’t even want to do, whether it was writing a foreword for a book, being on yet another person’s teleclass, or doing an Internet radio show with twenty listeners. I would say yes whenever somebody said, “I need you. You’re the only one that can help me,” even though my highly trained staff and coaches are probably better at this than I am by now. And I would say yes after they’d gone to everybody who told them no, because I felt guilty. Even when I was on vacation, I would schedule calls that I would take while lying on beautiful beaches—in the very environments I had picked so that I could “relax and let go” for a while. So vacations became work-cations where I just tricked myself into thinking I was resting and taking time off. I came to realize that I was a people pleaser, even though I never used to believe I was. Clearly, my past was dictating my present, and I was definitely going to become part of the walking dead if something didn’t shift.

What I was doing wasn’t working. I was finally at the point of exhaustion, and I could feel a new day dawning. I began to feel more committed to having a life than to giving all my energy away. Sitting down with my executive assistant, I made a list of the people with whom I’d need to lovingly establish new boundaries so that I would no longer feel so depleted. Saying no forced me to dip into a reservoir of courage that I didn’t even know I had. Gathering my inner forces, I delivered my communications swiftly, clearly, and with love.

The outcome was dramatic. The next day I had more energy and more life inside of me than I had felt in years, because I didn’t look to the past to see how I had handled overwhelm before and who I allowed myself to be. Instead, I looked through the eyes of the future that I wanted. I embraced being a cowardly people pleaser, decided to be complete with her, and stepped into my courageous warrior woman—free at last.

One of the most surprising things I learned in the process of becoming complete with the past was that what I really needed was self-love. Somebody who truly loves herself with her heart wide open would never give all her energy away. I saw that I needed to forgive myself for all the times I’d chosen to have work conversations instead of taking care of myself; the times I’d texted people in the middle of my son’s tennis games; or the times I’d skipped dinner so that I could lead a teleclass. Forgiving myself would require a commitment to loving myself that I had not yet made. Mahatma Gandhi said it best: “The only devils in the world are those running around in our hearts. That is where the battle should be fought.”

In order to open your heart and love yourself completely, you must become aware of the convergence of thoughts and feelings inside of you, especially the inner dialogue that you’re listening to each day. You may not realize that you have thousands of self-criticizing, negative thoughts about yourself until you begin to tune in and listen. I can promise you, it’s not always a pretty picture. If you are going to learn to love all of who you are, which I believe is one of the most difficult lessons for anyone to learn, you will find it in this pure, heartful space where you embrace the person you have been in all her glory and imperfections.

If you don’t open your compassionate heart to yourself, you are guaranteed to be haunted by the cries from within and destined to set yourself up for the next round of self-sabotage. Your critical self-talk is a one-way ticket to a place of loneliness and isolation. People always tell me, “But I love part of myself,” but they miss the point. Part of you isn’t the whole of you. Self-love is about loving the whole, complete person that you are. So you have to discover where you’re not loving yourself, knowing that every word that you say, every thought you think, even if you can’t hear it or you’re not listening, affects the way you feel about yourself and ultimately how much confidence you truly have.

For you to be in this place where you can choose to love, forgive, and be openhearted toward yourself, you must initiate a profound practice of awareness to heal and be complete with the wounded child within you. We have all been unconsciously conditioned to make ourselves wrong, criticize ourselves, beat ourselves up, and take the blame. To make up for all the years of wounding, and the years of love this part of you needed and didn’t get, you need a daily practice that will heal the hurt that has closed your heart.

One of the most transformative practices I know involves ongoing attention to the child within. Self-love will ask you to bring a clear and kind awareness to this vulnerable part of yourself, where you can genuinely say “I’m sorry” for the times you second-guessed yourself, for the things you’ve done that make you feel bad, for the ways you’ve punished or deprived yourself, for the guilt you’ve carried for which you continue to shame yourself. In other words, you must open your heart to yourself over and over again.

Every time you catch yourself thinking something negative about yourself, or saying something that belittles or shames you, you must be humble enough and wise enough to know that it is just as hurtful as it would be if you were doing it to a young child over and over again. Imagine taking out a plastic bat or something that hurts and then, with every negative thought you think, hitting that child. It’s a terrible image, but that’s what you are doing to yourself when you are not complete with the past and refuse to forgive yourself. You must make time each day to apologize to yourself, to let the healing balm of honest remorse soothe your forgotten aches. This high level of respect will expedite your completion process and set the warrior free.

The point is not to beat yourself or make yourself wrong (perpetuating more of the same self-abuse), but to release yourself from the shackles of your own self-loathing.

Are you familiar with the Voice of Self-Loathing? It may sound something like this:

I don’t deserve to be happy.

I’m unworthy.

I feel guilty.

I screwed up again.

They’re going to hate me.

I’m a bitch.

I’m a phony.

I’m a fat slob.

I’m so disorganized.

I’m too sensitive.

I blew it again.

Nobody will ever want me.

And on and on and on . . .

To make yourself feel better and inflate your false confidence, you might have the tendency to highlight everything good about what you’re doing, all the movement you’re experiencing, all the progress you’re making, and how far you’ve come. But the shadow of just looking at what’s right is that everything else gets labeled as wrong or simply denied. You must forgive yourself for not listening to your own intuition, for not making your own choices, for not standing up for yourself. You must forgive yourself for the experiences you most regret. You must forgive yourself for being hard on yourself, making yourself wrong, making the mistakes you’ve made, saying yes when you meant no, allowing your boundaries to be crossed, being jealous, competitive, or envious, or keeping your mouth shut when you needed to speak up. The only antidote is to give yourself the love that you need, not to try to fix the past. You must remain humble enough to know that whatever is going on, your sacred child needs your attention—and not just some of the time but all of the time.

As you go through the process of unleashing enormous amounts of self-love, you may recognize with greater clarity all the things that have been obstructing it—your addictions, your cravings, and the different ways that you numb your emotions so you don’t have to feel the depth of your self-loathing. You may use substances, working, staying busy, or being embroiled in your dramas (or other people’s dramas if you don’t have enough of your own) to avoid addressing what you really need, which is your own love, respect, attention, and deep sense of belonging. Your self-loathing robs you of joy, energy, and confidence, filling your body with tension, anxiety, grief, and an inability to receive—all of which diminish your courage. You may have become an expert at giving away to others the love that you so desperately need for yourself. But when you can be humble enough to take your inner child into your arms—to hold and nurture her, feeling deep in your heart how badly you want to protect her—you can give voice to your apologies for making her wrong, for not listening to her, and for the thousand times you’ve judged her.

One of my students, Lydia, shared that she felt she couldn’t be complete with her past and love herself because she was still forty pounds overweight. She had struggled with her weight for most of her life and had tried everything—food plans, trainers, packaged foods, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, starving herself, fruit diets, meat diets, the Zone, and every other celebrity-endorsed plan. But she could never stick to anything, and nothing worked for long. Every year she would register for a new gym membership, but after just a few days she would crawl back in bed with her bowl of M&Ms, feeling miserable and hopeless. I suggested to her that her weight was really just a symptom of a deeper issue and asked her when she had decided that she hated her body. Lydia couldn’t answer because she couldn’t identify a time when weight hadn’t been an issue. It was as if her body hatred had been evenly distributed over the past thirty-four years, and recalling a specific moment felt next to impossible.