We are born in a state of purity, I believe. There are some of the Christian faith who would argue with that saying that we are born in sin. I suppose that depends on your definition of sin.
In my thinking we are born dependent, and the movement from dependency to independence takes time and is most often a rocky path. We need teaching, we need examples, and we need life experience to move us to a state of harmonious interdependence with family, community, business, and friends.
But then we never stop learning and growing, as life never stops serving us with experiences that challenge. The thing that makes the difference between meeting life’s lessons with grumbling resistance or embracing them with ease and grace is our strength and courage.
We are not born with it.
There is no lesson plan with ten steps to being strong and courageous.
No parent, teacher, college professor, supervisor, CEO, shareholder, therapist, religious mystic or politician can coax us into it.
There are lots of book written about it … but do they change us?
There is just one way to become strong and courageous … through practice.
We practice being strong and courageous by starting with the little things, nagging decisions we’d rather not have to make but know we need to, words we need to share with loved ones that are not easy to say but need to be said, helping a person in need, or admitting when we’re wrong.
It’s through a steady practice of being strong and courageous that we build our ability to apply it to life’s big decisions, like who we marry, which career path to take, whether we’re going to go along with a business practice that may be legal but certainly not moral, launching a new business in uncharted territories, or owning our failures.
We only have to start somewhere … start with the small stuff and work our way up from there.
Tip of the Week
Practice noticing what you are afraid of. We all have little fears that we tend not to pay attention to. Search for just one little fear by asking the question, “What am I afraid of today that I have not previously given voice to?” Then see what immediately pops into your mind. Then ask, “How can I overcome this fear today?” Then follow your intuition, like speaking difficult words, taking a risk on a new idea or doing that which you are afraid of. When we practice this on a daily basis we will soon find ourselves living a life of strength and courage.
