Courage: Overcoming Fear and Igniting Self-Confidence (5 page)

From the ball, we went on to the after-party and danced into the wee hours of the morning, arriving back at the hotel at around 6:00
a.m.
That was Paris in those days. As I got into bed, I realized that the Count had moved too close for comfort. I told him kindly that I was very tired and that I needed to go to sleep. I thanked him for making this magical night and this trip possible. As I rolled over, I thought I heard a snort of disgust, but I decided it would be best to just ignore it.

When we awoke later that day, there was definitely tension between us, and I was starting to feel very uncomfortable. My fairy-princess confidence was beginning to erode—or at least my confidence that this man had any intention of keeping his word. Since we had slept most of the day away, all we had time to do was get dressed for our second event. I put on my favorite of the lot of new dresses—a red satin gown with black velvet inlays that was short in the front and long in the back. (I think I finally gave it away when I was in my forties and admitted to myself that I didn’t have anywhere to wear it.) If I thought that the night before was picture-perfect, this night far surpassed it. With tensions between us softened by the celebratory atmosphere, I realized that the Count was quite a good dancer.

Again, we partied into the wee hours and got back to the hotel very late—as the clock struck 4:00
a.m.
While I was in the bathroom taking off my dress, he knocked on the door, saying that he needed to come in for a second. I wrapped a towel around myself, and as I opened the door, he said in a strong, harsh voice, “I must have you tonight!” As compassionately as I could, I said I wasn’t ready to have sex with him, that we had discussed it and that was our arrangement. I wasn’t at all ready for his response.

This sophisticated and almost demure man turned into an angry, hostile, raging maniac. He quickly rattled off everything he had done for me and tallied every dollar he had spent. Over and over, he said, “Who do you think you are?” That’s all he could think to say. “Who do you think you are? You’re a nobody.” My shock quickly became terror. What was I going to do? I was in Paris. I didn’t know anyone. I couldn’t bring myself to sleep with him. If there had been even a remote chance of romance, he had wiped it away in one outburst. In a few seconds, I went from feeling like a powerful, secure, and confident woman to feeling like a petrified, powerless little girl. All the self-confidence that had me walking into these parties as the “It Girl” from America drained from my body. Now I felt like a small little whore from Miami Beach.

As we got into bed, I couldn’t imagine how I was going to sleep that night. On the inside, I was rigid with fear—and with good reason. The Count made a second attempt, demanding sex from me, and after he failed again, he went ballistic. He screamed out at me: “I could throw you out this window and nobody would care! Nobody would know!” I silently cried into my pillow and started thinking about my options. I didn’t have a lot of money with me, and I had no idea where my plane ticket and my passport were. I lay very still until I was certain he was asleep, trying to muster up the courage to get the hell out of there. I knew I had to sneak out or something bad was going to happen. I could feel it. This was not a man with a conscience, someone who would be embarrassed or shamed. I had now seen his dark side, and I didn’t want anything to do with it.

As I lay in bed petrified, I prayed feverishly for help, for safety, even though I didn’t know to whom I was praying. I prayed for courage, for strength, and for protection. I was so terrified that he was going to hurt me. Then I found myself remembering parts of a famous quote by Eleanor Roosevelt. Even though the exact words were not there, their meaning circulated in my mind: “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” My fear tried bargaining with me, saying, “He will wake up. It’s just one more day. Have sex with him and get it over with.” But then I would hear the words again: “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” I didn’t think I could leave, so I knew I must.

Sometime around 6:00
a.m.
, I crept out of bed, opened up one piece of the new luggage, and crammed in the few belongings I’d brought with me, along with my favorite new dress and jacket. He could do what he wanted with the rest. I went in search of my passport, fearful that he had locked it in the safe, which I had no access to. Luckily for me, it was in his attaché case. But the plane tickets were nowhere to be seen. I took a couple of hundred francs from his money clip, not even knowing what the money was worth but clear that I needed enough to get to the airport. And not long after I gathered my things, I found the courage to run out the door. I went as fast as I could through the hotel, knowing that if he realized I was missing he would call downstairs to have me stopped. God knows what would happen. He’d already told me he could throw me out the window with a threatening seriousness I had rarely heard in my life. So the idea that he could accuse me of theft or some other crime wasn’t a far stretch of the imagination.

Outside the hotel, with my head held high, I stepped into a cab and asked to be taken to Charles de Gaulle Airport. Because there were no cell phones in those days, I would have to wait until I got to the airport to make my plans. Luckily, I had one credit card and hoped it would be enough to get me home that day. I waited in the airport for almost twenty-four hours until I could take the most affordable flight home. When they finally found a ticket I could afford, I happily went to the back of the plane and awaited my long journey home, which would include four stops. I was humbled but felt stronger than ever before, because—maybe for the first time—I had my dignity and the confidence to stand up for my truth.

This was the day I found a depth of courage I didn’t know I had. I tapped into a deep reservoir in order to make it through a terrible situation. Two years before, being the people pleaser that I was, I probably would have given the Count exactly what he wanted. That’s how desperate for love and approval I was. But my courage pulled me out of the hotel bed and sent me tiptoeing around in search of my passport. And even today, when I’m frightened and having a hard time finding my courage, I go back into this experience to remember and access a certain kind of power within me. I may not always be able to see it or feel it, but it’s always there.

Divine confidence is a different kind of confidence: it can never be stripped away. It’s strange that we go endlessly searching for it—trying to find it through our accomplishments and capabilities—because it doesn’t come from being good at something or possessing vast amounts of information or having a big bank account. It can never be found “out there,” because it is within you—a part of your sacred DNA. So when you know yourself, when you know at the core of your being that you’re here for a greater purpose, divine confidence is present and palpable. And when your cord of connection with the infinite is acknowledged, honored, and nurtured, the fearlessness and faith-filled trust that make up divine confidence run coursing through your veins.

Truth is the key to unlocking the door to divine confidence. This truth is not a concept that you can understand with your mind. It is not something that can be grasped when filtered through the human ego structure. No, it’s a truth that is more humble than that, a truth that can be felt only when you get out of your head and into your heart. When you’re blind to this truth, you’re left to the limited power of your human will, which—as we all can attest—will not come through for you when you most need it.

This truth has been spoken about since the beginning of time. It has been the secret superpower for those who stand tall in the certainty and faith that they have a divine purpose on this planet. Most of our great leaders and sages have come to this truth, rising above the great cover-up of the human ego.

So what is this truth? What will give us access to this profound and all-powerful force? Why are we here? The answer to this question may be the very cornerstone of this book and the pulsing heart of my work. We are here for one reason and one reason only:
to get closer to the divine force that governs the universe, whether you call that force God, Spirit, Love, or Higher Power.

All experiences, positive and negative, can help us connect with and remember who we are and why we have come to this beautiful and vulnerable planet. All of our challenges are ultimately opportunities for us to reconnect ourselves with our mission here, and they come to us in different ways. For some of us the catalysts for remembering the truth of why we are here will come as personal issues related to family, intimate relationships, health, weight, finances, loss of a job or career, or addictions—whether our own or of someone close to us. Or the catalysts may come on a larger scale—as a tornado, earthquake, tsunami, flood, or war that leaves us homeless. Each of us will have challenges that appear as problems to be solved rather than as opportunities for us to evolve. For the most part, we have been programmed by our families and our culture to view our difficult and painful experiences as bad and unfortunate events—things we simply need to get over. We try to forget them rather than recognizing them as the holy grail for restoring our innate purpose for being alive on this planet.

True confidence—divine confidence—comes from the deep knowing that we are spiritual beings, whole beings, human beings who are mysteriously and magnificently part of the One, and not separate at all. Until we understand that our value is indisputable, that every single one of us matters, that we each have a unique imprint, a distinct gift, an irreplaceable piece of the divine puzzle and a one-of-a-kind way of expressing ourselves, real confidence eludes us. Divine confidence seems painfully scarce when we don’t know our higher self. Until we understand and accept our intimate place of belonging in the family of soul and spirit, we won’t make the fundamental paradigm shift by which we are willing and able to take ownership and responsibility for ourselves at the deepest level.

The profound understanding that we are both human and divine has the power to revolutionize our lives. From this perspective, it is easy to see that we are all connected, that we matter—that everything we say matters, everything we do matters, and every interaction we have matters. Instead of putting up with petty behaviors from ourselves, we can choose behaviors and perceptions that are of a much higher caliber. We can live in the awareness that we have been blessed with great love. We can live in the knowledge that every struggle in our lives is happening not only to aid us in the evolution of our own soul but to serve others as well.

When we are rooted in divine confidence, the events and circumstances of our lives make perfect sense. I see how this affects my own life. If I am willing, I can use every experience to serve people. I can experience the peace and joy of knowing that I matter and all is well. I can, in this place of deep and abiding confidence, just be and allow my particular expression, contribution, and gifts to flow from a place of authenticity.

I love it when people say to me, “I just want to do what you’re doing.” They have no idea. If they did have an idea, they’d probably run for the hills and put their head in a hole somewhere. I know that I have been blessed with and have taken on a particular life. There are a million blessings that come with my life, but there are also a million curses. Whether it’s been the path of addiction, breakup, or disease, I go through these periods and see them as opportunities for growth rather than seeing myself as a victim of what could look like a bad joke, because I know what I’m doing here.

The truth at the center of divine confidence puts us right in the present—and the present is no place for a victim. When we’ve made the connection between our humanity and our divinity, the past and the future aren’t the objects of so much drama and neurosis. We don’t live in the “What if” mind-set of the victim. There is no “Why me?” or “Poor me” or “I can’t.” There is no “I’m worse” or “I’m better.”

When we know that we are here as part of a divine plan, divine confidence directs our every move. When we live in the certainty that the Divine is our partner, waiting to use us as a messenger of hope, love, and service, we choose to contribute rather than hold back. When we decide to allow our lives to be used, we are released from the torture of our individual dramas, flaws, and stories.

To claim your purpose is the great journey of your lifetime. It is the journey that takes you from remembering to knowing, that leads you from your head to your heart. The courageous warrior within you—the one who has fought the gravitational pull of shame, hurt, hopelessness, and despair—is the keeper of your divine confidence. And she will help you to claim your most holy reason for being.

Courage is a holy gift that exists within you. It’s yours when you are ready to reunite with it. When you awaken to courage, it becomes an exciting, life-enhancing force that will lift you back into your power and guide you home to your authentic nature. The greatest act of courage is to be and to own all of who you are—without apology, without excuses, without masks to cover the truth of who you are. True courage comes not just from feeling confident and strong, but from being the honest, authentic expression of yourself. Think about how audacious it is to really believe in yourself. It takes a warrior’s courage to acknowledge that your point of view matters, that your truth matters, that your gifts matter, and that your presence on this earth matters. You don’t have to earn this right; it’s yours as part of your birthright.

A warrior’s courage is your lifeline to freedom. Can you imagine being so confident that you feel free to just be who you are? Free to be authentic and straight and to show yourself completely in every moment? Free to be vulnerable and free to be bold? Free to expose all aspects of yourself, even the not-so-charming parts? Freedom reigns when you don’t have to put on airs or hide your true thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. Freedom reigns when you can speak your gifts out loud and stand up for your greatness and your greatest truth. Freedom reigns when you embrace the courageous warrior that lives inside of you.

A warrior’s courage is sourced from faith. It’s a powerful force inside of you, an innate impulse that compels you to take risks and face your fears instead of playing it safe inside a smaller self. A warrior’s courage allows you to let yourself be seen as raw, vulnerable, and real. A warrior’s courage inspires the greatest acts of authenticity. A warrior’s courage is the willingness to be radically honest with yourself and others. A warrior’s courage listens to the higher voice of her divine self and trusts her instincts. And when in the presence of what’s stopping her, a warrior is able to let go of what she believes she knows and take responsibility for her past, willing to go to battle against her fears, regrets, and past mistakes. A warrior’s courage is the ultimate freedom, the greatest gift you can allow yourself to experience.

Most of us think about courage as something we do, something we think, or a decision we make. But a warrior’s courage is a gift that we receive at birth. It is a level of consciousness that, whether we have experienced it or not, must be held close, developed, and savored. It is a state of being. When you are standing in and
being
courageous, you don’t have to “
do
” courage. When you are
doing
courage, you tend to muscle through a situation or decision, which you have probably done before. This muscling through is not the kind of courage that transcends the moment, because it is more often than not sourced from fear, from “I have to” or “I should.” Instead, a warrior’s courage is poignant, purposeful, and directed toward where change needs to be made. And, as you will see throughout this book, when you experience a warrior’s courage, being and standing in the presence of it, you are clear that the rewards for letting it lead you are infinitely greater than the risks. You were born with this courageous warrior inside of you. She is sacred and holy, beautiful and empowered. She is filled with strength, clarity, and confidence, born ready to participate in the world, to face and conquer her fears, and to reunite with all the other powerful, playful warriors out there.

THE TRAGEDY OF THE COURAGEOUS WARRIOR CHILD

The young, courageous warrior wakes up with love in her eyes and compassion in her heart, ready to do her part in the world. She joyfully runs around her room picking out her favorite undergarments, dress, riding boots, and gloves. Then, with grace and awe, she unveils her beloved velvet cape, passed down to her from generations of strong warrior women. Running her hands gently over the worn, soft velvet, she brings it close to her chest, feeling the power and strength imbued in it. Wrapping it over her shoulders, she feels the thrill of the day to come. She steps outside and slides her foot into the stirrup to mount her trusty steed.

As her hair flows in the wind and her horse begins to gallop swiftly, she is on her way to a nearby village that desperately needs her help. Suddenly she sees ahead of her a band of men spread across her path. Her innocent heart worries that there is something wrong, and she wonders whether they need her help. As she slows down, one burly man screams out, “What are you doing here? Where are you going?” The young, courageous warrior proudly replies, “I’m on my way to the next village, where they need my help. My purpose here is to serve.” With a smile still on her face, not understanding why these men are blocking her path, she asks them, “Do you need any help?” And with that, she hears their loud retort. “No! No! Go back!” they scream at her. “Go back! You’re a young girl. This is not a job for you. This is a man’s world and a man’s job.” She replies, “I know I’m not a man, but I have all the power I need to serve alongside you.” Again, they laugh and yell out, “You’re not a warrior of any kind. We are here to send you home!” As the blood drains from her face, she feels the urge to fight back. She is boiling with anger, yet aware that these big men could hurt her.

After more taunting, she pulls back the reins and turns to go home. Slowly riding away, she wonders why it’s a man’s job. She wonders why she can’t express herself and serve others. She never before heard the words “This is a man’s world.” She wonders, “Is this the truth?” As she allows herself to begin to doubt and question her motives, she hears a voice inside her that she can barely recognize. It is nothing like the Voice of Courage that wakes her up each morning saying, “You are an extraordinary gift to the world. There is nothing you can’t do. There is no one in the world like you. We need you.” Instead, she hears an unfamiliar voice warning her, “It’s not safe out here. You’d better be careful. Who do you think you are? You’re nothing special. The world doesn’t need you.” The young warrior, now feeling unstable and unsure of herself, stops near her home, hidden by the trees. She doesn’t understand these feelings that are going on inside of her. She closes her eyes to catch a breath, but when she wakes up from her moment of reflection, although she doesn’t realize it, she’s not the same. She has fallen into a trance.

Instead of remaining mounted on her noble steed, continuing her mission to aid, uplift, and unshackle the hearts of people everywhere, she does as she is told. Instead of offering the world her fullest potential, she believes the story of herself as a helpless, powerless maiden who has to wait endlessly for her prince to arrive, kiss her, take her away to a better place, and save her from a life of drudgery and meaninglessness. In an instant, she changes from a young warrior conquering fear and injustice to a scared child whom nobody can see, who doesn’t matter, and whose voice isn’t heard. Thus comes about the death of the courageous warrior child.

THE BIRTH OF OUR STORY

Maybe you can remember the death of the courageous warrior child in you. The reality you see now may just be part of a fairy tale that you made up about yourself and then believed.

The story we tell ourselves about ourselves and our lives either empowers or disempowers us; it either opens us to new possibilities or shuts us down. Many of us create fairy tales about our lives that become the stories that limit our access to a better life. At its highest, our story exists to teach us, to help us grow, to allow our souls to evolve. But we make the mistake of allowing our story to define us and dictate the course of our lives. The stories we choose to tell ourselves about ourselves and our lives dictate who we are and what we’re capable of. So to reclaim courage, we must look closely at the events that are tucked away in our unconscious. We must revisit the past and bring awareness and closure to it so that we can be released from the stranglehold of insecurity, fear, and regret.

When you were a child, you probably
ran
to try new things, played on monkey bars, picked up unfamiliar objects, climbed trees, watched bugs for hours, or launched spontaneously into song and dance. And then something happened. Most of us have enthusiastically stepped out, hopped onto our proverbial horse, and then, because of something that was said to us, allowed ourselves to get pushed back into the smallness of our fearful human self. We may have responded by becoming a victim, a codependent, or a people pleaser. Or we may have rebelled but at the cost of our uniquely feminine power as we adopted more masculine traits. The power that comes from our intuitive knowing and emotional intelligence was wholly denigrated and dismissed.

However it happens, all of us create a story about our own lives defined by the events we didn’t know how to digest. Unfortunately, many of the incidents buried in our story were painful experiences. Our interpretations of these events and experiences create patterns woven through our beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and especially our fears. Although the patterns were created in the past, they don’t stay there. Transporting these patterns into the present unconsciously, we create self-imposed limitations and unknowingly make decisions that influence the rest of our lives. The effects of our choices are pervasive and often leave us feeling weak, shameful, and cowardly.

If we’ve been weak, scared, and stuck, then we continue to see ourselves as weak, scared, and stuck. When we attempt to step out of the confines of the self we believe ourselves to be, especially anything beyond the women’s roles that we know (those of our mothers, sisters, aunts, friends, and colleagues), we get stopped in our tracks—confined by the limitations that have arisen from our very own story. Scared, wounded, and often traumatized in our earlier lives, we go into hiding, wrapping ourselves in a false self-image for protection. Created in the spook house of our unresolved past, this false self is perfectly at home being defined in simplistic and narrow terms. The old self-image, with its outdated operating manual, continues to get churned out by our subconscious mind and continuously projected onto the outer world. It is only when we wake up inside the shell of the image we have created and find the willingness to step outside of it that a warrior’s courage floods into our lives and we are able to make conscious choices that will further our highest vision for a powerful life.

Amy, a forty-three-year-old executive, came to one of my workshops battling boredom and burnout in her corporate job. Amy had thrived in her career as an administrator in a high-tech firm. Although she had successfully ascended through the ranks of the company, she was concerned that she had lost the passion she once had for her work. Her coworkers told her she was excellent, and she knew that she was masterful at what she did, but when she went home at night she felt bored and empty. She just wasn’t fulfilled. Although she fantasized for more than five years about quitting her job, she was never able to make a plan or take any steps toward moving on, always finding an excuse and listening to the Voice of Doubt that said, “I’m not good at anything else”; “I can’t make it on my own”; “What will people think of me?” As we confronted the fears that lay beneath the surface and examined her lack of courage in this part of her life, Amy remembered one time sitting at the family dinner table as a child. She remembered her beloved grandfather, whom she greatly respected, talking about women as if they were second-class citizens. She recalled him saying, decisively, “Men are the only successful entrepreneurs. Women should be nurses, secretaries, or at home with their children.” Hurt and shocked, she went to bed that night confused and sad.

Although Amy loved her grandfather and didn’t want to blame him for planting the seeds of fear and unworthiness, when I asked her to look at the meaning she chose to assign to this incident, Amy went on to tell me that she decided that night that she could never be one of the great women of the world. She buried her dreams. By sixteen, she had become promiscuous—“the town whore,” as she described herself. By seventeen, after having an abortion that sealed in the belief that she was worthless and useless, Amy decided she had to cover up her shame with a new self-image. She quickly got back into her studies and applied to the best college in the state. Because she had been so bright, she was admitted, and she quickly excelled. It was only a matter of months before Amy concluded that this new life would hide the shame she felt so deeply.

So here we were, twenty years later, looking at all of Amy’s accomplishments, but deep inside she couldn’t access the courage she so desperately wanted and needed. Once she recognized that it was something buried deeply from her past that was blocking her from her courageous warrior, Amy made a plan and left her job six months later. She finally let freedom reign.

We are all born with limitations, challenges, fears, and insecurities. But if we believe that any of these things are the
truth
and the only truth of who we are, we will stay trapped in our stories and the patterns that are now deeply ingrained in our subconscious mind and watch hopelessly as they take over our actions and our choices. We can’t access our warrior’s courage until we remember who we were born to be and why we are here at this time on earth. To get to this place of a warrior’s courage, we must let go of our human drama. We must give up the stories that have ruled our lives and shatter the self-image we created to affirm our story. We must recognize and admit to the ways we have confirmed our story and colluded with our past. We have to distinguish and then let go of the beliefs that have kept us bound to the past instead of bonded to a greater future that is calling to us. We must be willing to give up any version of the self that limits us so that we can become the strong, powerful, courageous warrior we were born to be.

Life is filled with unlimited possibilities for who we can become. But we can’t be our courageous self when we find ourselves fearful or stuck in some area. That’s when we find ourselves frustrated, tired, bored, resigned, or unfulfilled.