The Keys to Courage

What is courage, exactly? Is it a feeling? A superpower? A myth? Courage is not something that you’re born with or a genetic quality that you can inherit. Courage can’t be bought and it’s not something that your parents can gift you for your birthday or graduation. Courage is something that you find. Just listen to our culture’s vernacular… Where did she find the courage to (fill in the blank).

So where the hell do you find courage? I don’t have any magic tricks or definitive answers. I can only tell you where and how I found some much needed courage the morning of my third and most fierce chemotherapy treatment. The first two chemo treatments were really challenging and cumulative. By the third treatment, I was completely bald, weak, and perpetually freaked out. To make matters worse, I had just heard about a woman from my hometown who was also battling breast cancer and died suddenly of a heart attack post-chemo, possibly from the fierce, potential side-effects. I was so consumed with the fear that I was going to die and thought I could prevent my imminent death by staying under the covers. My husband at the time was a physician and insisted that if I didn’t go to chemotherapy, that I would (eventually) die from the breast cancer, which had already spread to a lymph node and possibly beyond. This was truly a dilemma, and I wasn’t up for the task.

I took some time alone and sat quietly, eyes closed, and convinced myself that I had the courage somewhere inside of me, but just needed to find it. Maybe courage is a place, like a room you enter that can fill you up with a sense of your own power, I mused and imagined a series of doors in my psyches, all closed, some locked. I didn’t need to be fearless, just strong enough to face my fears. I approached each door with curiosity and acceptance. One of the doors opened, but instead of a plush library, which I had initially envisioned, I found myself outside in a field at my grandfather’s farm, riding a horse named, Big Dan. I was ten years old and terrified of horseback riding because I had fallen off the previous time we went riding. My grandfather encouraged me to take it slowly, to ‘warm up’ the horse so his muscles would be ready for a longer ride, but knew that he was really telling me to take it slowly as I warmed up to the idea of riding atop this enormous animal.

The older version of me who opened the door sort of merged with the memory of my ten-year-old self. After a while, I let up on the reins and had the confidence to trot and then eventually canter across the field. I took that feeling of that powerful horse underneath me and let it wash over my psyche. I didn’t conquer my fear completely, I just faced it enough to catapult me through all of my remaining chemo treatments. That was more than a decade ago. Sometimes, I still sometimes conjure my ten-year-old, horseback riding self and feel that spark of courage.

I honestly don’t know where courage lives in you, but I believe you can find it somewhere in your psyche. Maybe it’s a memory, or an idea, or a piece of music, or a poem, or just a vision of yourself being braver than you actually feel. Just get quiet with yourself and start opening those doors.

Put it in Neutral

There have been times in my life when I’ve found myself having a hard time directing my thoughts from hurling backward in time, stuck in a loop of memory and trauma replay. This was not healthy or fun, and punctuated the several years after the divorce from my disastrous marriage to my second husband. Some small thing (or nothing at all) could trigger me and catapult me back in time. It was exhausting. I started repeating the phrase, ‘put it in neutral’ as a way to stop the backward motion. This came to me in a terrifying dream where I was driving backward through my life at full speed and could hardly control the car, knowing I would be destroyed if I didn’t stop it. My dream showed me the metaphor for my inner journey.

This little mindfulness snack is super easy and tremendously effective. Whenever you find yourself stuck somewhere in the past, tell yourself to ‘put it in neutral’ and take a deep breath. You can’t zoom forward until you stop moving backward. Neutral is sometimes the most powerful place to be, planning your next move, and free from the confines of the past. You can use it as a mantra to help you notice if you’re stuck somewhere other than the present moment.

Poised for Power and Possibility

This mindfulness snack comes right out of the inspiring book by Amy Cuddy called, Presence: Bringing your BOLDEST Self to your BIGGEST CHALLENGES in which she shares the neuroscience behind the way our own body language sends messages and endorphins to our brain and impact our sense of calm, power, and well-being. I highly recommend this book!

Here are some of the postures that talks about in her book, along with a couple of my own favorites thrown in for fun.

• Strike a Wonder Woman pose with your hands on your hips, feet slightly more apart than should width, and head tilted up just smidge. Your brain will register that you’re powerful and a Superhero.

• Smile at yourself in the mirror or when you’re by yourself or when you’re out in public. A smile on your face tells your brain that you’re happier than you may feel. It may also alert someone in public that you’re a tad insane.

• Hug yourself and feel the warm, loving embrace of your own arms. If you ever need to feel loved, turn to yourself first.

• Walking in the Tall Grass. This is a Qui Gong movement that I love because it encompasses both grounding and fluid motion. Stand on one foot, then bend and raise your other leg up so your knee is above your hip and raise the opposite arm at the same time. Then switch legs. This is a fluid motion and will tell your brain that you can hold still and keep moving at the same time. You’re both grounded and flowing, stable and powerful. This body language sends a message to your psyche that you can remain balanced as you move forward in your life.

Play Your Crescendo

There are times when you need to find your boost, that thing that makes you ramp up your energy and flip the switch on your motivation. I call it the ‘crescendo’ because it can be like a piece of music that gets louder and more engaging.

• Pick a song that you love. When it gets to the part that’s ramping up the energy, turn up the volume and sing along. For example, I still love Springsteen’s Born to Run (“One, two, three, four, Highways strung with broken heroes on a last chance power drive…”). You get the point.

• When you feel that surge in the music, whether you’re singing or listening, notice the impact it has on your body. Music is a vibration and something that you can often feel as a surge of power inside your body. Notice it. Embrace it. Harness it.

• If you don’t have a song that you love, then think of something that you really love to do and really commit to the experience. I also love sculpting and pottery and feel a kind of power when I’m in that creative zone.

• Whatever you use as your ‘crescendo,’ lean into it. Enjoy it. Absorb it. Then use it to fuel your determination and energize your third chakra power.

Inner Critic Summer Camp

We all have an inner critic, that voice that slithered into our psyches when we weren’t looking sometime before adolescence. Everyone’s inner critic shows up from time to time like a bad hair day or a really big pimple, usually without warning and often at the most inopportune times. Not like there’s ever a good time for an inner critic. What we often don’t realize is that sometimes when we’re interacting with someone, we’re really interacting with that person’s inner critic and not that person’s essential self. This experience can trigger your inner critic to react to their inner critic, which can turn into a blood bath or even a divorce. It’s important to take a break from the inner critic to grow your sense of calm and your sense of yourself.

So how do we get rid of our inner critic? I’m reminded of my childhood when my parents shipped me off to summer camp for eight weeks with my little sister. We loved it there! This exercise is a way for you to send your inner critic to summer camp, and who knows if she’ll ever want to come back?

• This is a ceremonial, metaphorical process so don’t take it to seriously.

• First you pack. Ask your inner critic what it needs most for the journey (e.g. attention, acknowledgement, chocolate, etc.), then imagine a duffle bag filled with these items. You can even add little labels with the name of your inner critic on the inside of the clothes or the emotions.

• Imagine putting your inner critic on a bus with all the other noisy, disrespectful, immature inner critics, some of whom your inner critic may already know from middle school. We were all about this age when our consciousness started growing our inner critic. We weren’t born with that critic.

• Then wave goodbye and watch your inner critic drive away.

• Breathe.

Curate Your Life

We’re a determined species. We see something and we charge full steam ahead. Maybe it’s how we’re wired or how we’re trained from an early age to Seek. Conquer. Seek some more. But in this world of ‘shiny objects’ that are in constant competition for our attention, it’s hard to stay focused on whatever it is we’re pursuing at the time. Here’s an exercise that might help you hone in on your determination and ramp up your personal power.

• If you were curating an art show, you wouldn’t include every work by that artist. Instead, you’d either look at the body of work thematically or highlight a period in the artist’s life. You can take a similar approach to what you focus on each day and how you’re going to infuse your determination. You need to be selective so you don’t dilute your power.

• Pick a theme in your life, then structure a day, a week, a month on just that theme. I realize that so many of us have jobs that take our attention, so carve out a certain amount of time on a daily basis, turn off your phone and your email, and just focus on that theme.

• Treat your life like you’re on a vacation. We can’t see (or do) everything in a new place, so we research and curate how we spend our time. If you approach your life like you’re on a vacation, you’ll most likely prioritize with the most desirable things.

• Go in order of importance. You can give yourself an organized chronology based on how essential a task is and how much you’d like to do it. I find that I compartmentalize the tasks that I dislike the most (bills, etc.) and then reward myself after I’ve completed the task.

• Stop writing a ‘To Do’ list and just live your life. You can have your ‘To Do’ days, but make sure that you unchain yourself from a task-oriented life and carve out some time to just enjoy doing whatever you really want to do. If you were curating an art show, you’d pick the most engaging and inspiring pieces. Do the same with your life. Do what makes you feel alive.