Courage: Overcoming Fear and Igniting Self-Confidence (13 page)

3.
Your divine resources:
Make a list of the actions you would take, the people you would surround yourself with, and the resources you would need to move forward with your divine vision.

4.
Acknowledging your fear:
Make a list of the fears you have about living your divine vision. Give voice to the fear, and as you make the list, send love to this part of yourself.

5.
Being in the presence of your vision:
Put in place a simple practice or activity that keeps you in the presence of your divine vision every day.

Courage Activator

Take a risk by doing something that you’ve been scared to do or about which you’ve said, “I will never do that” because you’re so fearful. Color your hair, take a balloon ride, jump out of a plane (please don’t get hurt), sing karaoke. Allow your fearless self to come out this week and support you in activating all of your inner courage.

Confidence Builder

Make a list of why the world needs you as a courageous warrior and how you will use your divine strength and power in the future. Share your list with five people you feel safe and comfortable with.

Courage and Confidence Bonus

Make a list of five times when you helped somebody or were of service to the world.

It was December 1972. After flashing my fake ID, I slid into the hippest club in New York City. The music was blasting as my friends and I stepped onto the dance floor to revel in the number one hit:

I am woman, hear me roar

In numbers too big to ignore

And I know too much to go back an’ pretend

’cause I’ve heard it all before

And I’ve been down there on the floor

No one’s ever gonna keep me down again

Oh yes I am wise

But it’s wisdom born of pain

Yes, I’ve paid the price

But look how much I gained

If I have to

I can do anything

I am strong (strong)

I am invincible (invincible)

I am woman

I could feel my body filling up with power, strength, and excitement. The thrill of each word vibrated through my body. All around, hundreds of people were dancing, and women were singing at the top of their lungs, “I am woman, hear me roar.” I was thinking, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” I felt so great that night. I was wearing one of my favorite outfits—purple spandex pants, a strapless sequined multicolored top, and strapless sandals covered in rhinestones. (I promise you, that was in style back then.) I had spent hours that day in a salon turning my long straight hair into the latest style of permed hair. My skin was dark brown from the sun, and I was a Diana Ross lookalike. Now singing along with Helen Reddy—“I can do anything! I am strong. I am invincible. I am woman!”—I felt absolutely on top of the world.

I knew this could be true for every other woman, but I still had hesitation about myself. It scared me to think that I could do anything, because so many times I had tried and failed. But the idea of feeling that courageous power inside me each day was thrilling beyond measure. There was nothing I wanted more than to be confident in who I was. Even back then, I knew that I would have to give up playing small and dwelling in any internal conversations that made me feel “less than.” I went back to my friend’s apartment that night thinking about some of the girls I went to school with and women I had met along the way whom I was drawn to, who emanated their own kind of power and light. As I was dozing off, I could picture my high school friend Mary.

When Mary and I would come home from school, she would put on her ballet shoes, rise up on her toes, and do the most graceful and elegant pirouettes. She walked with elegance. Her posture was perfect. Her attitude was fun. She was always laughing, smiling, and twirling around. Although I never told her, I was very jealous about how good she seemed to feel about herself. She was a master at making light of her mistakes and moving on after any rejection. I wanted that kind of confidence and inner peace, and I went to sleep that night (after an evening of disco bliss) completely committed to finding out how to get it.

I woke up the next day wondering what kind of person felt confident, courageous, and strong enough to get up every morning and jump for joy, knowing they can do anything. While making myself breakfast, I started thinking back to something that happened one day at my fourth drug treatment center. I walked into a room for one of the regular group meetings and there was an overly made-up woman standing there who perkily introduced herself as Sandy. She said she wanted us to get to know her, although I couldn’t imagine why, and she began rattling off details about herself I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know: “I grew up in a small town with a really loving family. I worked hard in school so I would get a full scholarship to the best college in the state. I graduated from college with honors.” “Uh-oh,” I thought.

As I settled deeper into my seat, trying to find something in what she shared that interested me, she continued on: “I’ve been married for thirteen years, and I have a fabulous relationship with my husband. I pride myself now on being a really great wife, mother, sister, daughter, and friend.” I listened to her rattle on about how great she was. I wanted to stand up and yell, “Well, good for you, lady!” I thought I would run out of there screaming if I had to listen for one more minute.
What a conceited bitch!
While my litany of judgments continued, Sandy was looking around the room, trying to make eye contact with as many of us as she could. I was proud of how cold and icy my stare was when her eyes met mine. Then she said something I’ll never forget: “This is a lecture on self-love. This is how we talk about ourselves when we love who we are.”

I swear, my mouth fell to the floor, because I thought the topic of the lecture was “How Full of Myself I Can Be.” But if that was what self-love sounded like, I certainly had never heard it. It was like an entirely new language that I had no idea how to speak. Unknowingly, I was practicing self-hate. I would never say nice things about myself that way because God forbid somebody should find out the truth. I figured people wouldn’t believe me, they’d hate me, they’d be jealous of me, or they would just judge me the way I had judged Sandy. Shame filled my body. People would undoubtedly find out the truth—that I was not such a good person, that I was really a phony.

What I didn’t understand at the time is that we are a constellation of
everything,
that every quality that exists in the universe exists inside of us—the dark and the light, the bad and the good, the selfish and the selfless. When I began to really understand this I was shocked, because I had focused only on the negative qualities that I had, never on the positive. When I realized that I contained all the positive qualities, too, I was filled with hope and optimism. Images of who I could be in the world put a glowing sparkle in my eyes.

Rilke wrote that “perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once, beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is, in its deepest being, something that needs our love.” I already had a lot of evidence that I was selfish, incompetent, and stupid, but now I knew that I was the polar opposite as well. I was also a magnificent and brilliant woman whose heart was as wide as the world.

Tell me, could there be anything as fantastic as that being your truth, too? Breathe this in:
You are a hot, sexy, delicious woman of the world whose job as a courageous warrior is to show all of your extraordinary, goddess-like self and to fill up your reservoir with so much love that you can be rejected by 99 percent of the world and still feel great about yourself.

It is time to recognize your gifts and talents, to appreciate and honor all that you do well. It is time to search out your uniqueness, applaud and acknowledge yourself, and let your own light shine. I know that for many it’s embarrassing to think you’re great, beautiful, kind, loving, or smart. It’s especially embarrassing to say it out loud. Maybe you were told not to be cocky or conceited. Maybe you even believe that downplaying the best parts of yourself literally makes you a better person. But if you are going to be courageous, an example for all those who are ready to step into their power, then you must be willing to show the world all of who you are. You must have the guts to throw off the chains of modesty and mediocrity in order to be the light that the world needs.

The only thing stopping you from being your whole authentic self is fear. Your fear tells you that you can’t fulfill your dreams. Your fear tells you not to take risks. Your fear stops you from enjoying your richest treasures. Your fear keeps you living as the self that you’ve known rather than letting you expand to express the full spectrum of your magnificence. Your fear keeps you numb, blocking you from the exuberance and excitement of life. Anxious and fearful, you inevitably create situations in your life to prove to yourself that your self-imposed limitations are the truth. To overcome your fear, you have to face it and replace it with love.

Charlene came to the Shadow Process Retreat as the kind of person you would just walk by without knowing she was there, invisible. With her shoulders drooping, her head hanging, eyebrows that looked like they had never been tweezed, and a faint mustache on her upper lip, she told us that she was the associate vice president of a large investment firm. She had recently heard that she was about to be passed over for a promotion. A friend had let it slip that the frontrunner for the position was someone much less qualified and with far less seniority than Charlene had. When Charlene pushed her friend for an explanation of why the management team would consider such a candidate, her friend admitted, “Well, she’s twenty years younger and more camera friendly than you are, and this position would be the face of the company.”

Charlene was heartbroken, because she had given so much to the firm. She had stayed late, taken on extra projects, worked on weekends, and said yes to everything in anticipation of this advancement—one that would secure her financial independence for the rest of her life. She came into the workshop fully defeated and simply wanting to make peace with the fact that she was going to lose the promotion. Instead, I suggested that she pull herself up off the floor of failure. I urged her to fight for the position instead of succumbing to a future that was unacceptable to her.

I asked Charlene whether she felt that the way she looked and dressed was appropriate for such a senior position at her company. She angrily told me how horrible it was that she worked for a company, and lived in a world, that was so superficial and shallow. She argued that it shouldn’t matter whether she looked like a rhinoceros with a pig’s nose as long as she got the job done. She did her job and did it well. But as Charlene continued to vent, she began to experience the sadness underneath her anger. She could see that she showed up to work looking the way she did because it never occurred to her that it mattered. I asked her why she believed it didn’t matter in such a high-level job, and she told me that to compete in a man’s world she had to be taken seriously and not thought of as a woman. But, of course, there was much more to the story. Underneath that belief, she discovered that she didn’t really care about herself. That’s why she put her whole life into her work in the first place.

Then we started having fun. I asked her what she would do if she was going to have her looks not be an issue but, in fact, be an inspiration to the management team. How would she show up to her interview in eleven days if she were being an executive warrior, one who was courageous enough to seize what she deserved and take what was rightfully hers? We made a list. She would get her hair cut and colored at the best salon in Chicago. She would have a facial and have her eyebrows, her lips, and even the parts that you can’t see waxed. She would call her best friend, who had impeccable taste, and have her find her a new style that was younger, more refreshing, and, in her words, “sexier.” I suggested that she find a lace bra and underwear, something that made her feel really good. She would hire a trainer to work out with an hour a day just to help her feel like she was getting strong and toned. She would write out her case for why she was going to have this promotion, why she deserved it, and why nobody was going to take it away from her. She would practice her talk and have three friends hate it and argue with her about why she couldn’t have the job and why somebody younger and better looking deserved it. They would stay with it until the argument held no power over her. It was imperative that she not get upset or hooked by anything the management team might say to her.

She had to become her own source of approval, and she had to believe in herself 100 percent. I told her how essential it was to start to reprogram any negative thoughts or fears into positive, affirmative acts of self-love. To do this, she would have to make a list every night of all the self-loving words she said to herself and all the self-loving things she did for herself that day. As soon as she got back to work, she would need to begin taking whatever steps she could before the big day. Charlene was now excited and turned on about the possibility of blowing all their minds, because now she was standing firmly in her courageous warrior. In my bones, I knew she would prevail.

A few months later, Charlene sent me a clipping from one of the financial magazines announcing her appointment as senior vice president of her firm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “Who you are speaks so loud I can’t hear what you’re saying.” To feel like a confident and courageous warrior, you must look the part. You must take care of yourself as a precious, priceless messenger. You must reflect the value and esteem in which you hold yourself. It is time to take back your power—not for the approval of others, but for how you will feel inside. Self-love is the warrior’s code and the fuel you will need to ride into your future with courage and confidence. There is nothing more beautiful than a warrior woman standing in her power, courage, and confidence. From this place of strength, she is capable of loving the world in a way that transforms pain into promise . . . and hell into heaven.

You may think that if you take the actions or if you say the words, you have done enough. You may think that you don’t need to take responsibility for embodying the message you are sending. But if you think you can just say things without truly owning and embracing that which you already are, you are just putting ice cream on top of poop. If you aren’t fully rooted in authenticity, one person can say something that in an instant can diminish your confidence. You are always communicating something about who you are and your belief in your own value. If you do not find the courage to embody your message on every level of your being, you will not reach the hearts that are waiting to be touched by you.

Everyone has different positive qualities that they have difficulty embracing and that they believe they don’t actually possess. I could argue this for the next thirty pages, but you’ll just have to trust me. There is nothing you can see or desire in the outer world—no quality, characteristic, or trait—that you are not. I asked a group of my students to make a list of the positive qualities that they disowned—the ones that made them squirm, blush, or cringe when they imagined saying them out loud. Then I asked them to write love letters to themselves. I told them that the letters had to include at least five admissions of greatness that made them blush. It was amazing to me to observe how embarrassed they were just to write these things down, let alone say them out loud.