Courage: Overcoming Fear and Igniting Self-Confidence (2 page)

When I trust my intuition, when I tune into the Voice of my Courageous Self, I hear that the most important thing is to take care of myself first, my son second, my family and staff third, and then all else that follows. I will win this battle one day at a time because I choose to. We are all stronger than we can ever imagine being. Every choice matters starting with today. And today, I choose to live.

—Debbie Ford

How many times have you felt yourself shrink?

How many times have you made yourself small enough to fit into some role that you wanted no part of?

How many times have you kept your mouth shut when you wanted to scream loudly, or handed over your power to someone who didn’t have your best interests at heart?

How many times have you succumbed to an impulsive or addictive behavior rather than making a clear-minded choice?

How many times have you told yourself, “I can’t. I’m not strong enough. I’m not courageous or confident enough to be all that I desire to be?”

Every day we are confronted with hundreds of choices that either make us feel confident, strong, and worthy, or rob us of the things we desire the most. Paralyzing fears, repressed self-confidence, and untapped courage are the obstacles that prevent us from making powerful choices—choices that are in concert with our best interests and deepest desires. For too many of us, unworthiness permeates most of our decisions in dealing with our finances, our families, our bodies, our weight, or our self-image.

When we lack confidence, we feel unworthy of having what we want, of speaking our truth, of making radical change that would transform the foundation of our future. When we feel weak, helpless, and powerless, we lack the strength to ward off the thoughts of defeat, negativity, and fear that prevent us from living the lives we want. When we relinquish our own power and deny what we are capable of, we succumb to our addictions, our fears, our unhealthy impulses, and the patterning of the past. We act as if and believe that we are indeed weak and insecure.

Of course, this negative cycle may not be happening in all areas of our lives. We may be thriving at work or in our relationships. But for far too many of us, there are areas where we have lost control, where we can’t gather enough strength to break through our fears and meet our deepest desires. Every time we make a choice that is based in fear, we are sealing in the belief that we are unworthy, that we are not good enough or not strong enough to be in control of our own lives, our thoughts, our beliefs, our choices—and, most important, our future. Every time we make a choice based in fear, we teach our minds to believe that we are helpless, hopeless, and powerless—three emotional states that leave us feeling like the victim.

What do we need to be confident, to stand in all our strength, and to feel great about ourselves? We need to rebuild our confidence. And we must begin by improving our self-esteem. We need to learn to love all of who we are—our history, our flaws, our misgivings, our weaknesses, and our fears. And even more than learning to love ourselves, we need to take love on as a cause. We need to become warriors for love. We need to fight for ourselves and stand up for who we are and what we want to become. We need to be warriors instead of victims, fighters instead of followers.

Why a warrior? Because a warrior lives and acts with great strength, integrity, and commitment. A warrior has ignited the courage within. She can face her toughest emotional challenges and break the old patterns. A warrior takes an aggressive stance toward her opponents—which are, so often, the fearful voices of the enemy within.

Why have we, as women, turned away from our aggressive nature? For too long, we have denied a fundamental part of ourselves. We have chosen weakness over strength. We have chosen others instead of ourselves. Why? Because we’ve come to believe that our aggressive nature is wrong, that it is unacceptable, unwarranted, or unwanted. Maybe in the past it came out in the wrong way, or maybe somebody else’s aggressiveness harmed us. We have relinquished the very quality that can give us the courage to stand up for ourselves. But this is not the same aggressiveness that causes people to harm others for sport, nor is it what drives the warrior gone bad to wield a weapon with the intention to dominate and destroy. Instead, this is the aggressiveness of the feminine warrior that is a part of every woman’s heart—on fire with the justice of Rosa Parks; armed with the truth of divine love, like Joan of Arc; and capable of sourcing wisdom from the deepest well of her being, like Helen Keller.

We are all born with a part of us that is determined and aggressive—an inner strength that we call upon when we fight for our children and protect our families. This can be the healthiest part of us—the part of us that has us go after something, to be ready for combat, to be ready to win, and to engage in the battles life gives us. There are times when we have to battle with the dark thoughts that are filling our minds—the lies, the misinterpretations, and the shame. There are times when we need the strength to say “Stop.” We need the courage to say, “I’m not going to listen to you” or “That’s not true.” We need the backbone of a warrior for love if we are to be willing to go face-to-face with that which has made us feel weak, impotent, and unable to change.

This is true whether we’ve been battling a craving because we want sugar to make us feel loved, or fighting the impulse to spend when we need to save. Maybe we need the strength of the warrior to set a boundary, to say, “No more!” or to stop enabling someone we love. Or maybe the warrior is there to save our lives when we need to fight a disease of our own or of someone we love. A warrior’s job is to do this. A warrior isn’t thinking, “I’d be such a bad person. What will they think of me? I’ll be all alone and I won’t have any friends if I speak my truth.” Or “I just have to lie down and die because I have a disease.” A warrior will instead fight to be set free.

Most women have given up their true warrior in exchange for approval, for position, for the illusion of safety. And those who may feel that they have access to their warrior might be mistaken, because most of the time that feeling is coming from a place of fear rather than a place of love, a place of control and manipulation rather than a place of compassion and understanding. The warrior who comes forth from the ego is a warrior of weakness and control—intent on its own power, designed to protect some shattered self-image—rather than a warrior for the greater power of love. A courageous warrior is a spiritual warrior, ready to fight for the Divine in all its expressions.

A courageous warrior looks at each person as a divine being and each experience as a divine experience. She leads with her heart, powerfully determined to bring about the best in everyone and everything. A courageous warrior speaks out even when everyone is whispering for her to stay silent. She knows that she is powerfully sourced by something much greater than herself and that she can release the judgments of others. Self-approval becomes secondary to divine approval. A courageous warrior stands armed and ready for anything that life might throw her way—a divorce, the loss of a job, an addiction, a hurricane, an oil spill, a family illness, a deep loss, or a heartbreak—because she is filled and sourced each day by divine love and the knowledge that challenge is part of her journey. She knows that every day she will have a choice of whether to succumb to fear or to overcome fear with love, faith, and courage. She is brave enough to leave behind those who might hinder her success or diminish her value. She is confident enough to reach out to those who can help her win. A courageous warrior doesn’t succumb to the internal demons that would knock her down. Instead she fights for a higher truth—a higher love.

A courageous warrior doesn’t look to her past, her patterns, her family history, or her problems to determine whether she can feel good about who she is. She looks inside herself and to the divine power that created her. She is here to gather the strength to fulfill her potential—which means she will have to face controversy. She will have to break through the limitations of her thoughts and her mind that can trick her into believing she is nothing more than a mere flawed mortal. She will have to be willing to face conflicts that will serve to ignite her strength as she stays focused on her vision of the future rather than on the past. A courageous warrior is a woman who bravely battles with the universal enemy—self-ignorance.

So how does a courageous warrior live? She sees her fears clearly and embraces them with honesty and courage.

When you are a warrior for your flaws, you search out the beauty in them. You make them important. You find kindness and compassion for the very things that make you different. A warrior is able to see the beauty and perfection in every aspect of herself.

When you are a warrior for your body, you search out every good thing there is to fill it with—every nutrient, every vitamin, every thought, every belief. You love your body, and you thank your body in the morning and bless it throughout the day.

When you are a warrior for your finances, you make sure that you have enough resources to take care of your family and yourself now and in the future. You feel the courage, strength, and confidence to go out and pursue work that you are inspired by, or to create a business that you dream about. You save enough money and learn enough about your finances to know what you need to take care of yourself in the future.

When you are a warrior for your family, you don’t take family matters so personally, because you know you are part of a clan in which everyone has their lessons to learn. A warrior looks to see not how her family has harmed her but how she can make them stronger and how she can be stronger by standing for them.

When you are a warrior for your past, you find the gifts in difficult experiences. You know that these challenges have been opportunities for you to overcome. You know that in letting go of them, you have achieved a great goal. With each challenge, you rise to a new height. You are prepared to combat the agonizing voices in your head that tell you it shouldn’t have happened or that you must be stupid or that there is something wrong with you. You ask, “What voice am I listening to? Am I listening to the Voice of Fear, the Voice of Powerlessness, the Voice of Hopelessness, the Voice of Helplessness, the Voice of Insecurity? Or am I listening to the Voice of Acceptance, the Voice of Power, the Voice of Confidence, the Voice of Courage, the Voice of Strength, the Voice of Forgiveness?” A warrior knows she has the power to choose which voices will guide her.

When you are a warrior for your future, you wake up in the morning with your vision in your awareness. You are clear about your actions and unshakable in your choices. You are focused on what’s in front of you instead of what’s behind you. You are focused on what you
can
do, not what you didn’t do. A warrior is excited and passionate as she creates the future she most desires.

THE LESSONS

In this book, you will learn that what keeps you stuck and feeling weak and hopeless is nothing more than an illusion of the past, nothing more than the fears (real or imagined) that ruminate in your subconscious. You will understand that everything you’ve come up against is there not to disempower you but to give you an opportunity to be stronger, more courageous, and more in alignment with your higher or true self. You will see that the obstacles you’ve endured actually give you opportunities to overcome them and to evolve. You will see that when you look at your life, what once appeared to be fear, pain, and hopelessness will become hope, courage, and love. As you become a courageous warrior, you will find yourself standing up straighter. You will feel the confidence to move forward powerfully. You will no longer look at yourself as a flawed, imperfect woman but will instead see yourself as you truly are—a woman with boundless confidence and courage.

With that, a new self-image emerges in which you feel so good about who you are and what you are that you have the power to accomplish anything. You are a foot soldier for truth—and it starts with your own truth: listening to your own impulses, your own wisdom, and the voice of your highest self. You are the keeper of your highest aspirations and the seeker of the divine design of your own sacred life. And in this alignment, you transcend your old self-image and step into courage, strength, and confidence.

The discovery of being a warrior will shift the very being that you are right now and give you the power and strength to take on any challenge, any day of the week. Even in the midst of your daily life, instead of cleverly camouflaging your insecurity with a business suit or sweats, you can adorn yourself with the shimmering gown of self-confidence and the radiant crown of courage that you so deeply deserve.

So in the name of love, courage, and confidence, let’s charge ahead!

For over fifteen years, I’ve been traveling around the world teaching people how to make peace with their inner world so they can feel confident and secure as they go about wading through the difficult experiences that arise in life. For the most part, those who come to me are high functioning and successful in most areas of their lives, but somewhere they’re stuck. They just can’t seem to get past whatever obstacles they find on their path. I’ve discovered that most of the obstacles that rob them of their joy and happiness and keep them from moving forward come from their childhood, passed down through generations, and often are just the hands that life dealt them.

So now, after writing eight books and watching people transform miraculously in short periods of time, I’ve come to understand that it’s not the knowing of our intellectual minds that can move us forward and give us more confidence and courage. Rather, it’s the actual process of transformation, of moving from the head to the heart, that changes the way we feel, the way we act, and the way we see and view reality. The process is a journey where we look inside ourselves and reconnect with what’s always been there but often hidden—an enormous power that reconnects us with our confidence and our courage. When I feel insecure, I can feel the fluttering in my belly that now serves as a reminder that I’m disconnected from my source of courage and confidence. Often it takes only five minutes for me to close my eyes, examine my feelings, and reconnect to my source. This shift can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days, depending on the issue.

I promise you that if you’re willing to do the work, you will access the kind of confidence and courage you’ve always dreamed about. You may have this strength in some areas of your life, but the goal is for you to be able to access it in all the areas of your life.

Many of us too often wake up and say something to belittle ourselves, to minimize ourselves, to beat ourselves up. We don’t realize the crippling effect this mind-set has on our lives. We don’t realize that every negative thought undermines our self-confidence and diminishes our ability to stand tall in the face of life’s challenges and our everyday choices.

Let me assure you that the negative thoughts and things you say to yourself are lies. It’s okay to be yourself. You’re not the only one in the world who feels scared, alone, stupid, or unlovable. You’re not the only one who wakes up at times feeling unworthy, not good enough, hopeless, depressed, or stuck. You’re not the only one who feels angry, resentful, or pissed off. These are common feelings, and they provide real opportunities to learn how to be a spiritual being.

Courage
takes you through a life-changing transformational process. I’ve seen it work in thousands of lives. This book is not just motivational, although it will motivate you. It’s not just inspirational, although it will inspire you. It’s not just educational, although you will learn many things from it. It is transformational. At the core, this book will shift how you see yourself, others, and the world.

The transformational process begins when you look beneath the surface of your thoughts, your beliefs, and your choices, exposing the underbelly of your behavior. In the pages ahead, you will discover the why and the how of your fear-based life—not to make it wrong or to judge it, but to explore, understand, and honor it as the reality that has brought you to where you are today. I promise that your life will alter when you see what has been hidden from your conscious view. When you take the time to explore your behavior without self-deception or illusion, you will be able to clean up the past and glimpse the future you long for.

As you move into the ownership phase, you will begin to take responsibility for all that you’ve been and all that you bring—and don’t bring—to the life you are living. You will learn that you can’t help but repeat the past when you are always carrying it with you. This allows you to see how you have participated in the realities you are living and understand that it is not possible to live in a circumstance, situation, or reality unless you have given it your consent on some level—consciously or unconsciously. When you realize that there is a part of you that is actively participating in your daily drama, you will start to let your authentic self emerge. It is then that your fears become secondary to your power, strength, and confidence.

In the final phase of the transformation process, you will discover how to fully embrace who you are as a human and divine being. You will stand in a new worldview, one that is based on the whole you rather than a small part of you. It is in this final stage—when you are able to see, feel, and embrace your divine, confident, and courageous self—that you will feel lit up from inside. It is here that you will know yourself as the warrior of love that you were born to be and feel the support of the entire universe at your side. And it is here that you will regain your trust in yourself and in humanity.

When you are able to embrace the whole of who you are, you are able to hold yourself and your history in your hands and in your heart without judgment, fear, or condemnation. Then, without hesitation, doubt, guilt, or gripping fears, you will regard your past and what you know about yourself with divine compassion—a heartfelt, soft, but unshakable reality. You will step into something new not because you’ve created it or made it happen, but because your inner warrior will have a home inside you where she can shine and from where she can come forth with ease, grace, and joy. It’s effortless. You won’t have to struggle when you have fully embraced the totality of your nature.

When you embrace instead of reject who you are, when you listen to your true self rather than your ego-driven tyrant, your heart will begin to open to love. When you have committed to being authentically who you were meant to be without shame, guilt, doubt, or any apology, a joy emerges that is rarely seen except in a young child’s face. This shift in your inner world will automatically change what you experience in the outer world. As you alter your relationship with your inner world, as you listen closely and have compassion for your most vulnerable self, the lens with which you view the world changes. Seeing things in this new light, you start to treat yourself and others differently. You look at your patterns not with a harsh hand but with a tender heart, and your external world responds with a vision for your future—your happiness and success—that will propel you toward the woman you always wanted to be.

In part 1 of this book, “A New Paradigm,” I will give you an overview of fear, confidence, and courage, and how they affect your life—your thoughts, your behavior, and your feelings. You will enter a new paradigm of courage and confidence—what they are, how they work, and why we are all so hungry for more.

In part 2, “Moving from Your Head to Your Heart,” I will guide you step-by-step through what I call the codes of the courageous warrior. These codes are designed to reset your inner world, healing old thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors while you begin the exciting and profound journey of becoming a powerful, confident, and courageous warrior of love.

At the conclusion of each code, there will be a transformational process for you to do as well as a courage activator and a confidence builder to strengthen the muscles of courage and confidence within you. Whether you do the process or not, these simple exercises will help you activate your courage, accelerate your confidence, and strengthen your resolve, supporting the rebirth of the warrior within you.

As you approach the final code in this book, you will view the world and your life from an entirely new place. You will become fascinated and awed by the power, courage, and confidence that fill your body with a new kind of strength. Speaking your truth will become a natural expression of your inner warrior. Saying no without guilt when you don’t want or feel like doing something will empower you rather than shame you. You will feel different because you have now accessed the truth of who you were meant to be—
yourself!
Your attitude will shift from a fearful or defensive stance to a heart-opening strength that will guide you to make new, powerful choices and behave in ways that surprise you.

Even if you feel you can’t do it, the journey in and of itself will alter who you are at the deepest level of your being. I can promise you this because I have taken tens of thousands of people through this transformational process for the past fifteen years. It works when you are ready to put both feet into the warm, beautiful sea of transformational bliss. So take a deep breath, and just give yourself permission to embrace “I am whole.” “I am whole and complete with where my life is as of today.” Not “I
want
to be whole,” but “I
am
whole.” “I am whole and complete and I am ready for the next steps.”

I honor you for your commitment to courage. You may not have recognized or acknowledged it yet, but today is the perfect day to begin. So breathe in deeply, and claim this courage as yours.