“Comfort kills.  Courage is a true super power.  When you can be courageous in the comfort of the uncomfortable that is the path to a great life lived!”~Shirene Hayes

 

The lie of comfort and complacency is alive and well in many of us.  Do you know that comfort is a one way ticket to the grave?  The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.   When you break through the lie of comfort to the truth of courage that is when your sense of self breaks free from the complacency of what is.   When you are able to develop a sense of courage, you are on your way to a great life of self-acceptance and self-love.  

Courage develops when you choose hard over easy.   Courage does not always feel like courage.  It can look impressive and powerful and at times even extremely exciting.  From the inside however, it can feel overwhelming and unpredictable.  Courage includes anxiety and fear.   

Courage includes anxiety and fear and happens inside us to enable us to push through the fear we are facing.  It is magical because it only happens just long enough to enable us to feel a sense of bravery.

The result of courage is not immediate.  It is one of the things in the life that has a compound effect.  Like the little things you do every day to keep yourself healthy.  Eating the right foods, exercising, taking a shower.  Courage may mean trying something new, speaking up in class, or even being kind to the new student in class.  It is one’s own ability to choose hard over easy.  Like with anything, the more you practice what is hard, the easier hard becomes.  The differences these actions make over time will always be there taking shape to create the courage we all need. 

So how do we create a sense of courage? 

1.     Speak it into existence.

 

We all, especially children and teens, step up or down to expectations.  Speak the courage into them and yourself. 

“I know how brave you are to do this……” 

“You are able to do this, you can and you will……….”

“Think about how you will feel about yourself when you push through your fear of……….”

“I got this!”

2.    Give them a permission slip for failure.

 

The biggest sign of courage and bravery is failure and rejection.  Every experience provides new information and new wisdom and builds over time.  It happens when you choose courage over comfort and you end up with the wisdom, knowledge and experience required to live a perfect imperfect life.

3.     It’s ok not to be ready.

 

When opportunities to create courage appear, you may not feel ready.  That is ok.  Just keep moving forward.  The toddler did not just get up and walk across the room.  The toddler had failure after failure until one day, it just happened.  This is how courage happens. 

4.    Try something new.

 

It is often in the newness of and activity that the greatest level of courage happens.  I encourage you to try something new, especially the children in your life.  Try something that will push your physical and emotional self to grow. 

5.    Be the example of courage.

 

Speak to the children about how you felt when you were nervous or scared and what you did to overcome the fear.  Talk about the times you have pushed through fear, sadness, and anger to what was right for you. 

6.     Allow intuition to be a part of their life.

 

Intuition is a lifetime of learning, memories, experiences, and learning that sit somewhere just outside our awareness of what is.  This happens when you receive that inner knowing, the nudge to do something, and a feeling of yes I must do this now. 

According to science, intuition is that vague nerve that runs from the stomach to the brain.  It is the longest of twelve pairs of nerves that leave the brain.  This is the nerve that causes the gut feeling we have all experienced. 

Everything we do depends on the flow of these nerves.  The real bravery happens when we learn to recognize these feelings and step out in faith to act on them. 

It is imperative to develop this with children.  Encourage them to pay attention to when they get the gut feeling about something.  This can be allowing them to let go of the justification of a thing or event.  Teaching them to ask questions of themselves when they experience these feelings from within. 

Questions like:

“What is it that I want from this experience?”

“What are you trying to show me?”

7.    Inner dialogue.

 

Self-talk is our own way to self-sabotage and remain comfortable.  The ability to be brave can be a thought, feeling or action.  This is when the practice of I am, I can, and I will is imperative and showing them how to shift thoughts from negative to positive through self-talk.  The mind does not know the difference between an actual event and an imaginative event. 

8.     It is the process that matters.

This is a case of the how matters more than the what or the why.  Teach them to focus on the process which can be the decisions they make, the actions they take, and how courage is the driver behind the wheel.  Show them fear of failure is good and is part of the process of being courageous and brave.  Fear of failure is why many do not even try.  Let the courage to try be more important than the result. 

Next time you feel you need permission to live your life, remember, no hall pass required!~Shirene