Courage: Overcoming Fear and Igniting Self-Confidence (6 page)

When Jane showed up at one of my workshops, she was easy to spot. A tall woman with long, unkempt dirty-blond hair, she sat in the back row with her arms folded, trying to hide herself in a public place. When she spoke, she was eloquent, intelligent, and dynamic—nothing like her appearance indicated she would be. When we began to explore this disconnect, Jane originally bragged about not caring about her appearance, not wearing makeup or bras like most women, being free from the shackles of feminine care. But as she boasted of her independence and uniqueness, she blushed in shame. When I asked her to look into her past for experiences that may have set up her self-image, she told me about an experience she had when she was eight years old.

One morning, curious and exploring, she wandered into her mother’s bathroom while her mother was getting ready for the day. Jane reached out in wonder to touch the powder, the blush, and the lipstick laid out on the counter. Her mother swatted her hand away, saying, “Those aren’t for you.” While her mother carefully applied her lipstick in the mirror, she looked down at Jane and said, “You’re so lucky. Most women have to try. But you don’t have to. There’s no hope that you’ll be beautiful, so you’re off the hook, unlike the rest of us.” Tears stung her eyes as Jane left the bathroom and went back to her bedroom to read. At the time Jane was too young to understand the hurt she felt inside.

Jane buried her mother’s message deep in her subconscious. As she got older and moved into adolescence, all the other girls started playing with makeup and clothes. But Jane wasn’t like other girls. She hardly bathed, and she showed up to school in unwashed, manly clothes. She even forgot to brush her teeth or wash her face every day. She learned to avoid looking at herself in the mirror. Her disheveled appearance attracted teasing and derision from her classmates, so she started to will herself to be invisible, isolating herself socially and escaping into books and the life of the mind. She knew she was different from everyone else. And although she told herself she was lucky not to be like them, that she was free in a way they weren’t, she wasn’t really convinced. Instead of her differences being her badge of honor, they were really her badge of shame.

Looking back, Jane could see that this one incident and the belief she formed as a result of it molded her self-image and set the patterns in her life. She had given up on herself before she even started, and profound self-neglect ruled her life. She avoided romantic relationships at all costs, and to further isolate herself, as she got older she chose jobs she could do from home. At my urging, Jane decided to allow someone to give her an extreme makeover. With a new haircut, new hair color, waxed eyebrows, some cute clothes, and makeup on her face for the first time in thirty-eight years—all a possibility beyond who she ever thought she could be—she was radically transformed. A whole new reality opened up for her as she found herself walking taller, maintaining eye contact—out in the world engaging with people. Because her outside finally matched her inside, she was free to speak out without embarrassment and contribute to the world on a whole new level. Jane’s courageous warrior allowed her to open up this one aspect of her life, which then spread to other areas.

Courage takes risk and, most specifically, the willingness to let go of the oxygen mask of our past and to trust that there will be air to breathe in the here and now. We must risk the journey to a higher ground where there is freedom from the gravitational pull of our stories, the pull that comes from years of trying to prove that the stories we tell ourselves, the ones we’ve made up, are the truth.

In order to make the best choices, we must make a fundamental and radical shift. Rather than relating to courage as a resource that we tap into from time to time, we need to allow courage to
source
our choices and infuse our lives. The choice is ours to make. When we’re standing in courage, we make powerful choices for ourselves. We’re no longer standing on the shaky ground of a false self-image and a story from the past that requires that struggle. We tell ourselves the truth about whether our choices make us feel weak, anxious, and insecure, or strong and powerful; whether our choices are coming from fear or faith; whether our choices separate us from the Divine or move us closer. We can observe ourselves and know whether we are coming from our story, our fear, our ego, or whether we are standing in the peaceful power of our courageous warrior.

Our search for courage is always an indicator that we’re trying to make the connection and access the unlimited power that lies beneath the surface of our conscious mind. In fact, this isn’t a power that can be located in space and time, but it is infinitely real. And this power is in the hands of our inner warrior—the courageous one who is unafraid of failure, setbacks, or the disapproval of others. Rather than continuing to gather new pieces of evidence to support our story—to validate it and convince ourselves that it’s okay to spend one more day living it—we must take the higher road. We must give it all up—give up our old self-image and the entire story about who we are and how we have lived—to allow our new story of unstoppable courage to emerge.

In order to access a warrior’s courage, we must explore why we are so committed to our story and what we are afraid will happen if we give it up. There are important and specific answers that need to be acknowledged and understood. Most of us already know about the hurt we carry. We are familiar with the armor we wear to protect ourselves. We know we are blocked in certain areas of our lives. But we need to go all the way and confront our insecurities, fears, and regrets in order to break free from the ghosts of the past. The fantastic news is that once we do this, we will discover the endless well of courage that has always been there, nourishing and feeding the ground of our lives. These messages will deliver us to the doorway marked “Courageous Warrior”—and on the other side of the door is a new self-image, a more enriching story, and a life we can be proud of.

The journey through the pages ahead will enable you to become a messenger for higher love and service, a warrior woman on a great trek to be closer to her spirit. Your vision will expand because you will understand that you’re not here to fulfill your human needs only. You’re not here to make the outer world happy, although you might choose to contribute to it. You’re not here to give up your dreams for another’s, although you might choose to share the inspiration and magic of your dreams. And you certainly are not here to spend a lifetime chasing your cravings for love, approval, and attention and then settling for emotional crumbs. You are here to live as your highest expression. You are here to
be
your beautiful, empowered, sacred, holy self without apology, without explanation, without trepidation. Let us see her. And let us all be changed by the power of her divine confidence and courage.

For the past twenty-five years or so, I believed I was deeply connected to my spiritual self in a profound and holy way. But one overcast morning in a hotel room in San Francisco, I realized that I had refused to listen to what could have been the most important messages of my life. That morning I was leading a class over the telephone, and we were working to strengthen our trust and to know that there is always someone guiding us—a force, a power trying to move us in the direction of our highest life and protect us from taking paths that will ultimately undermine us. I wanted to guide my students through a very important inner dialogue to reclaim their trust and faith. I asked them to close their eyes, take a deep breath, and go inside themselves to find a time when they failed to listen to the brilliance of their inner wisdom, and to look at the consequences and cost of following their will instead of what I called “God’s will.”

As I always do when I guide an inner dialogue, I closed my eyes as well and went inside to keep the pace perfect and move to the same place I was asking them to go. I asked the question again: “When did you fail to listen to the brilliance of your inner wisdom? And what were the consequences and the cost of following your will instead of God’s will?” Unexpectedly, I was drawn into the process inside my own consciousness, and I saw an entire scenario from my own life. I saw how my dream love had become a nightmare of control, lies, and manipulation. I watched inside my consciousness as I saw myself cower beneath my better instincts (my Godly instincts) in situation after situation, turning away from my divine intuition, which was telling me, sometimes almost screaming at me, to run away as fast as possible. I saw that no matter how clear the evidence and my inner knowing were, even when I did find the courage and strength to run away, my partner was able to convince me I was wrong, and I would quickly lose my strength and succumb to his way of thinking. I had done so much work to try to let go of the situation and accept it. I spent months trying to surrender and shake myself of the anger, guilt, and hopelessness that filled my heart and body.

In this moment of silence and reflection, I felt rage fill my body as the ranting in my mind got louder and louder. I was mad, and I wasn’t going to get blamed for this fiasco, this trauma, this deceiver’s actions. I had already suffered enough. As I grew more and more enraged and shut down to my higher guidance, it was time for me to ask the group, “Are you blaming the Divine, God, spirit—whatever you want to call your divine power—for this situation? Are you mad at the part of you that was trying to help you and hold you accountable for the choices you made?” My own immediate response was “Of course not,” but a lower, angrier voice was saying, “Yes, indeed I do.” Feeling righteous, my lower self ranted, “Why weren’t you there to stop me? Why weren’t you there to save me and protect me?” While the group was finding their own answers, I put my phone on mute. The heaving cries came through and shook my body while I sat stunned at what I was feeling and hearing. I began to fight back as I heard a deeper voice saying, “I tried to help you. I sent you many messages through many messengers.”

In that instant, I remembered a trip to the park with Bob after we’d been dating for about a month. When Bob stepped away from me for a moment to engage in conversation with someone else, a woman I hold the very highest respect for walked up to me. As if she was divulging a piece of highly classified information, she looked me in the eye sternly and intently and said, in a quiet voice, “Get away from that man. He is a horrible person.” I was shocked, because I had never heard Sarah utter a bad word about anyone. My first impulse was to lash out at her. How dare she try to take my joy and my dream love away from me? I wouldn’t have it. I went into my “spiritual teacher mode” and quickly asked her if Bob had done anything to hurt her personally. She said no, but that she knew how many he had hurt and how mean and evil he could be. Again, I ignored her words and asked my next defensive question. How could her opinion be based on hearsay? Without even wanting to hear her answer, I went on to say that people tell only one side of the story and that we can and should share only our own experience, and that since I was the queen of the dark side, I knew that everyone has made mistakes and I was certain Bob was not the person she thought him to be. I encouraged her to reconsider her harsh opinion of him. I gave her a quick peck on the cheek, turned away, and went off to find my new man, whom I had just proudly defended. I felt good inside, like a real woman standing up for my man.

Without question, this was one of the first warning alarms that had come to me. And instead of questioning why this honest and warm woman, who had always been an example of impeccable integrity, would warn me about this man I hardly knew, instead of being curious about why she had stepped out of her comfort zone to alert me that I might be headed for danger, I shut down and immediately began making her wrong. I was shocked at the clarity with which I could see the entire event inside my mind after all this time.

The next memory that came into my awareness was a time only a few weeks after the park incident when my assistant Alice called me sounding scared and hesitant as she began telling me about an e-mail I had received on my public e-mail address. She said she hadn’t wanted to upset me so she had discussed it with another woman who worked for me and that they decided they had to forward it to me. I waited anxiously for the e-mail to arrive in my private mailbox, wondering what could be so troubling that these two women I loved and trusted were scared to show it to me. When I finally clicked a few minutes later, I found a letter from Bob’s last girlfriend, Kim. In the letter, written in great detail, she outlined the events of her relationship and waved one red flag after another, warning me about Bob’s “crazy schemes,” as she called them, and how she wasn’t just worried about my heart but worried about my money.

She seemed sincere, but her letter made no sense to me. I couldn’t relate because I didn’t feel like I had enough money for anyone to take. Yes, I had a great career and made enough money to live a decent lifestyle, but money for someone to go after? It was absurd. Anyway, it wasn’t an issue since Bob had told me he owned a ten-million-dollar company but was a little strapped for cash—a story I wanted to believe. So instead of rereading the letter and giving the content any significance, I focused on my feelings of rage toward Bob. He had three ex-wives that he hated, and now I was finding out about this ex-girlfriend who also harbored horrible feelings toward him. Didn’t he know that I had written a book—
Spiritual Divorce
—that helped people heal their relationships with their exes and their past? Didn’t he understand that he could not be part of my world if he couldn’t take responsibility and heal his past? Did he not care? How could he have so many bad and broken relationships?

Before letting myself cool off, I picked up the phone and dialed his office. With enthusiasm, he said, “Well hello, darling. To what do I owe this middle-of-the-afternoon call?” Without hesitation, I told him about Kim’s letter. I asked him to explain why so many people, especially those in his past relationships, harbored so many negative feelings toward him. He immediately got defensive and said that in the past he had made many bad choices when it came to women. He described those women as liars, drug addicts, and gold diggers, although I had failed to see any signs of the money that he was always bragging about. After our conversation, I felt angry and helpless. I had already fallen deeply in love with this man, a man who had charmed me and my family, who had always shown up with a big smile on his face and a great story, and who always had a reasonable explanation or a believable justification for his behavior—although this time the sharpness and specificity of Kim’s letter would be hard to dismiss.

Another memory sprang into my awareness. On our third date, when we were going to morning brunch, we waited for an older gentleman to pull out of a parking space. Bob flew into a rage, sticking his head out of the window and yelling at the “old geezer” to get going or he would get in his car and move it himself. When Bob realized that I was sitting there in shock, he looked at me with a puppy-dog expression—that look you see when you catch someone with their hand in the cookie jar. I could see it so vividly. He blurted out to me, “Was that my dark side? Maybe you could help me with that.” These words fed right into my need to help people, because I did indeed believe I could help him. At least that’s what I told myself at the time. I didn’t know I was really making a deal with the devil.

My mind filled up with what I could now see as at least twenty clear warning signs that I should slow down, do a background check, and look with open eyes at where I was headed. In the middle of my flood of memories, I asked my staff to take over because I wanted to deepen my own process. As I began to hear my students share what they had seen in the inner process, one of my favorite teaching stories came to mind.

There was once a man who had a deep faith in God. He was often heard telling his friends that his chaotic life would work itself out because God would take care of him. One day a huge storm caused serious flooding in the town where this man lived. While other members of the community packed their belongings and fled, the man stayed put, believing that God would take care of him. The water began to seep under his doors and through the windows. A fire truck drove by, and rescue workers yelled to the man, “Come on, you can’t stay here!”

“No!” he said to them, “God will take care of me!”

Soon the water was waist high, the streets turning to rivers. A coast guard boat came past the man’s house. The crew yelled out to him, “Swim out and come on board!”

“No!” the man yelled back, “God will take care of me.”

The rain kept pouring down until the man’s entire house was flooded. Then a helicopter flew over his house, and the pilot spotted the man praying on his roof. Lowering the ladder, the pilot got on the loudspeaker: “You, down there, grab hold of the ladder and we’ll take you to safety!”

Again the man proclaimed his conviction: “God will take care of me.”

Finally, the man drowned. At the pearly gates of heaven, the man had never felt more betrayed. “My God,” he said, “I put my faith in you and prayed to you for my rescue. You told me you would always take care of me, yet when I needed you most, you were not there.”

“What do you mean?” replied God. “I sent you a fire truck, a boat, and a helicopter. What more did you want?”

I had to take some deep breaths as I realized that this was exactly what had happened to me. In just minutes, I grew somber and quiet instead of angry and blaming. I could see all the ways and times when I had been tossed a rope to grab on to so I wouldn’t drown, but I didn’t want to know the truth. I wanted the love, attention, humor, and potential future that Bob offered me. I was so deep into my fantasy story of who I wanted him to be that I never looked at who he really was. After ten or so warnings, the pattern was set in place, and I was the one who had turned my back on my faith, on my divine guidance. I had done whatever I could to bring forth my will instead of seeing the signs the universe was giving me. I even had a therapist who told me this was my stuff to work through and that I needed to stay with Bob because it had little to do with him and everything to do with me—a very bad move.

Before long, my connection to my divine intuition had been quieted to a mere whisper that I could no longer even hear. All I could hear was the voice of my wounded ego with all its fear. It assured me that if I listened to the Divine, I would not get the result I was looking for. I wanted a soul mate, a life partner who was smart, talented, and funny and who loved me beyond measure. Even though I hardly knew him, in my mind I very quickly turned Bob into the fictional character I wanted him to be. Deep down I began to see that my will and fear had taken over this situation and that neither God nor anyone else was going to tell me what to do or what to believe. I had what appeared to be the catch of a lifetime, and my need to control the situation overrode any higher vision that God might have held for me.

The Voice of Control minimized all my impulses and feelings. The Voice of Control told me, “Don’t give up! You will never find anyone else if you let go of him. You’re too different and unique to find love again. You can make this work.” Even though my Grandma Ada had assured me after every one of my teen heartbreaks that there was “a lid for every pot no matter what the shape, size, color, or model,” I had stopped believing this. After one failed marriage, I had unknowingly shut the door to the possibility that there were many lids to match my pot. And if I was mistaken and there really was a lid for my pot, I would have to be very patient to find mine.

When I was finally willing to see this situation through divine eyes, I was able to hear the Voice of Faith. It reassured me: “It’s time to let go and let God. You are a powerful woman who can take care of herself. Everything is as it should be, and all is in divine order. I’ve got your back. You can trust me now. So, just listen.”

This is the promise of the Code of Divine Guidance: “God can do for you what you cannot do for yourself.” Can you imagine what your life would be like if you believed this with 100 percent certainty—believed that you were fully supported and loved more than you ever thought possible? Can you imagine what your life would be like if you believed that you were protected and cared for in all the ways you ever dreamed about?

The Code of Divine Guidance calls on us to know and trust that there is something greater than ourselves as individuals. To live this code fully, we must accept that we are both divine and human. Our human, ego-driven nature drives us to try to control things and act as if we were in charge of the universe. Even though all we want is to feel loved and to belong, often we are left isolated and separate from others. These patterns and the beliefs we have adopted cut us off from the safety, freedom, and possibility that come from knowing there is something greater than ourselves at work in our lives.