What Is Courage?

This week on Pretty Spiritual Podcast, we're talking about how to be courageous. So, what is courage? It's not the absence of fear. Courage means we do what we need to do despite the fear. Join the fun as we talk about how to have courage to face the life that's right in front of us one moment at a time. We'll share about where courage is alive in each of our lives. This includes courage required to live our fullest lives, to be present with our own experience, and to love ourselves as we are.

Transcript

Thanks for joining us here on Pretty Spiritual where we're attempting the unthinkable about how to navigate this messy,

Beautiful,

Imperfect life with spiritual tools,

What,

Principles,

And our own personal stories.

So we're not experts,

We're not religious,

We're definitely silly.

We're honest,

Real,

And willing to share.

So join us as we connect,

Bond,

And grow together.

Hey everybody,

Welcome to Pretty Spiritual.

Hello.

This is Annie.

Hi Annie.

Hi,

And we have Ella.

Hi,

I'm Ella.

And Lindsey Poney.

Ooh,

I'm waiting so patiently to say hi.

We are so glad that you're all here with us today.

We're still all quarantined and recording on a remote platform,

So please be patient with any sound variances.

Get to loving it.

Get to loving it.

That's what Poney always says about things that we don't like.

Seems true.

You better get to loving it.

Today's topic is courage and the courage to grow.

And it's interesting because we usually start our recording episodes with a prayer.

And today we started it with the We version of the Serenity prayer,

And there's a line,

The courage to change the things we can.

And it's as we talk more in this episode,

We'll share about kind of what courage is and what it isn't.

And so it's interesting for me to think of that line of that prayer in the context of what I've been learning in preparation for today's podcast.

So let's dig into what courage is.

I read a great piece by Dr.

Ben Dean for the University of Pennsylvania's website,

Authentic Happiness.

Who doesn't want to go there,

Right?

So it's a really cool free resource for the school's Positive Psychology Center.

So pop over there and check it out.

But Dr.

Dean breaks down how courage isn't being fearless because if we weren't scared,

Then courage isn't needed to overcome the thing that scares us,

Essentially.

So courage is being scared in some way and then walking forward regardless.

So to break it down a bit further,

I want to share how the ways that we can be scared.

Psychologist S.

J.

Rockman shared the definition of courage takes into account three components of fear.

So the first is the subjective feeling of apprehension.

The second is the physiological reaction to fear.

Maybe it's increased heart rate.

For me,

It's clenching.

And then three,

The behavioral response to fear.

So avoidance,

Running away,

Whatever the behavior is.

That's great.

That all makes sense.

We have fear and we have to act regardless.

Dr.

Dean in this article states there are two main types of courage.

There's physical courage and moral courage.

So physical courage is facing threats to our physical safety.

And then moral courage is the one that probably most of us struggle with more often.

And I'm just going to quote directly from his essay.

The fear that can summon moral courage takes many forms.

Fear of job loss,

Fear of poverty,

Fear of losing friends,

Fear of criticism,

Fear of ostracism,

Fear of embarrassment,

Fear of making enemies,

Fear of losing status,

To name just a few potential human fears.

So I think I can relate to a lot of those.

So on a grand scale,

This could be Rosa Parks sitting in the front of the bus,

Right?

She's facing this social courage.

Or it can be a small scale like us telling another individual,

Hey,

I don't like how you're treating me.

So all this amounts to us just trying stuff.

To be courageous,

We don't have not to be scared.

We just have to try.

So where is the courage in each of our own lives right now?

I want to hear what's happening for you ladies.

Where are you having the courage to grow?

And what are you facing right now?

Pony?

Oh,

Thank you.

For me,

The places that I really need courage and how I wanted to address this,

Because there's just as you were talking about in the introduction,

There's so many ways we're really putting,

I really think we're trying to combat fear with courage.

How do I become courageous in the face of fear?

And I was when I was thinking about all of this,

I think about in the ways that I need courage in my life today.

And the places where I really need courage and where I apply courage on the daily is I want to look,

I want to have the courage to look.

I want to have the courage to show up and the courage that's required for self-awareness.

So the self-awareness to be able to look and see the areas,

My liabilities of where I'm falling short so that I can show up in those areas and attempt or try again the following day.

And the main area of where I apply this courage and where courage is needed in my life is in my healing journey.

Being rigorously honest to myself,

That really helps me and takes so much courage for me to see where I'm falling short or where I need help or the areas that could use attention.

I really need courage there.

Instead of just distracting myself with all of the many outside things,

How easy and how desirable,

How enticing it is to just be distracted by outside drama or outside things.

So to muster the courage and to be able to bring this back to me and look at like what my goals are,

What I'm trying to do here,

Mainly the courage for me to see myself as human when I thought I was supposed to be a perfect producer.

Now I really need the courage to compromise and to accept this one human life that I have.

Other areas are the courage to look at my old habitual behaviors and dynamics in relationships and how I impact people.

That takes a lot of courage for me.

The list goes on and on.

And most days I really just need the courage to ask for help and to share about my experience and what's going on in my life and to try to not do this alone.

So just to give like a couple examples of some of my habitual behaviors right now that I even needed to muster up courage yesterday for is how invested I am in caretaking others,

How this is just a habitual behavior of mine that I really need the awareness.

I need that peace to see where I'm falling short.

I need to be able to be rigorously honest with myself to see where this is hurting me and not helping me,

Even though it's my old way of being if I help you and if I don't have boundaries and if I just let this go the way that it's going to go,

Then that's going to be easier for me.

But I know in the work that I'm doing because I'm on this spiritual journey and seeing where things are really hurting me that I can muster up courage.

I can share with my growth group,

My spiritual sisters.

I can talk about what is going on,

Being honest with myself and voicing that to others.

And then I even said a little prayer yesterday,

Which I know we talk about in here all the time,

But that was just,

It just showed like how willing I am to even have the courage to be like,

I can't do this alone.

I can't do this myself.

I need some extra help.

So enjoy that.

I am.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I already am.

I've been enjoying it this whole time.

I need the courage to enjoy myself and my experience because that's what I'm going to talk about.

Okay,

Good.

Just to wrap up,

I think what I really wanted to say is that the courage to grow is really important to me right now.

And I remind myself that that's what I'm doing.

Like I want to grow.

I want to work towards my goals and my ideals and it's going to take courage.

And another thing just that you were kind of talking about in the beginning of this is that courage doesn't come before.

It's actually the courage comes either during or after the event.

So it's good to use that fear or anxiety as the energy,

The activation energy required for you to get the courage and to get the courage is essentially you starting to do the thing that you need the courage to do,

Which seems very confusing.

So I'll talk more about that in the tool section.

Thank you,

Pony.

How about you,

Miss Ella?

It's such a good topic.

Thank you both.

One thing that really has helped me with courage is reminding myself that when I'm being courageous,

It rarely feels like that.

You know,

I'm a writer and so I really like words and I like knowing where words come from and what they meant before.

You know,

We had this idea of what they meant in our society and courage basically means heart full.

And when I think of courage in that sense,

It's like when I'm being courageous,

I do feel that I do feel heart full.

And for me,

Where courage is showing up is the courage to love my whole self without holding back.

And I have had this stomach bug discomfort thing going on.

And in addition to being like really physically uncomfortable,

I've had a flare up in my eating disorder thinking.

And where the first place courage comes into play for me is like I notice those old patterns of thinking and relating to myself,

Which are like,

Just hating my body,

Shame,

Self-loathing,

Punishment,

Trying to control,

Shutting down emotionally.

And so I see myself kind of like reaching for those old patterns of thinking and relating.

And when I noticed that I just kind of stopped everything.

And if there's like a track running in my mind,

Like if you're thin,

Then you'll be safe.

Sometimes out loud,

I say liar.

What I was saying to myself this week,

I was like,

Put my hand on my belly,

Which is so uncomfortable.

It's less uncomfortable than it used to be,

But it was uncomfortable.

And I would say,

I refuse to cause you more suffering than you're already experiencing.

It was like,

This is enough by itself.

And I don't want to add more to this.

Like,

I don't want to add second and third and fourth arrows,

Because the first one is plenty right now.

So I see that I've been turned on myself,

And I put down the arrows,

And then I take a step beyond that and try to pick up new behaviors of relating to myself.

And it usually feels dangerous.

It usually feels gross.

It feels kind of unsafe,

Like I'm putting down the means of control and like,

Who knows what's going to happen now,

Like,

It's scary.

And I think it's so great that Annie pointed out that when we're acting courageously,

It's not acting away from fear,

It's acting in spite of fear.

And so I put down the arrows,

And then I say things to myself,

Like,

I put my hand on my belly and I say,

Thank you for making me a safe woman.

And I'm trying to get to love in my forehead vein,

Because it is here to party,

Apparently.

It's not going anywhere.

I really try to soothe and nurture the parts that are activated rather than punishing them for existing or hating myself because they're happening.

Or you know,

Being terrified of like,

What are the larger implications of like me not controlling this,

Which,

You know,

Like,

There's a lot of fear.

Underneath all of this,

What I'm seeing is that on some really deep level,

I don't trust myself.

And so that at like,

At the very bottom of this,

That's where the courage is coming from.

It's like,

Can I have the courage to love myself so much in all conditions that I can trust my motives,

My intentions,

Where I'm coming from,

Where I can just really,

I can take refuge in love so deeply that I can practice this kind of courageous and unconditional trust and acceptance of myself.

And then that is the groundwork that lets me show up with that same kind of like very fierce,

Courageous,

Wholehearted love for other people.

So I'm going to talk more about what that looks like in real time when we get to the tool section,

But yeah,

For me,

The courage stuff is all about how can I love myself,

Reality,

Other people without holding back.

Thank you,

Ella,

So much.

I this topic is very up for me.

And I'm speaking about courage in the context of creative growth.

And I've been thinking about this podcast,

And the arc that we've had of over a year and 50 plus episodes and how it's very much this gift that we want to give to the community and a way to be of service.

But it also feels like this very personal self exploration that has happened in a very public way.

So yeah,

Clearly.

So the podcast for me hasn't just been about spiritual growth.

But for people who've been listening on this journey with us,

They also know that for me,

It's been very much about mental health recovery.

So they've heard me ebb and flow through anxiety,

Fear,

Recovery from PTSD and grapple with these ideas that I have since learned and likely many listeners and my two podcasts co hosts can relate to that can be planted into our systems with trauma of this sneaky underneath belief that I'm not of value,

That my value lies in what others think of me and that somehow it's dangerous to take up space.

So in the context of creativity,

Risking approval or risking being seen felt really dangerous,

And it felt dangerous in my nervous system.

And it was that danger that are like that fear that I quoted from the psychologist Rockman at the start.

So that subjective,

When I would think of doing something creative,

The subjective feeling of apprehension,

Then there'd be a physiological reaction to fear.

For me,

It's like a clenched jaw,

A tight throat,

A fuzzy brain,

And then the behavioral response to fear,

Which for me is avoid,

Freeze,

And or run,

And or throw your computer out the window.

That's good options.

They're really good.

It's a great strategy.

It's smooth.

So what if a lot often the fear looks like this?

What if people like collective people,

My collective codependence on the internet?

Hello,

Hello.

Here I am.

Here I am internet codeminency.

What if people don't like what I make?

What if they ridicule me?

What if I somehow accidentally make something that's wildly tone deaf or accidentally cruel,

And then I get mocked on Twitter and then go viral on BuzzFeed is like the most embarrassing thing to happen in this decade.

What if I like those are lofty goals,

Annie?

I actually sounds great.

So what if I did write this book and then it's panned by reviewers or worse read by no one but obligated friends and family who pity me.

So of course,

I have to recognize all this thinking lacks perspective and absolutely lacks humility.

But it was also very debilitating in real.

And I think this is part of the PTSD and trauma when I did have the courage to sit down and write,

I felt like I wasn't able to quite put my finger on my thinking.

It was like my ideas kind of always slipped one step away from me.

And there was this fuzzy brain that felt soupy and foggy.

And that also made me scared and also kind of worthless.

So these last couple months,

The combo of healing that's happened,

And also the intense stillness of quarantine,

There's been this magic that has happened inside of me.

I'm writing a romance novel that for years I've had the seed of,

But that just scared me to write.

I'm writing creative short stories that are just bubbling up out of me.

I'm reading literary fiction and actually feel like I can think about it critically,

Like think,

Do I like this or not like this?

And kind of before I'd read it and be like,

I don't even know what I think about this.

You know,

It's like I couldn't process ideas.

So it's almost as though all this extra noise has quieted down internally and externally.

And at the same time,

This courage has kind of started to well up inside me and I'm able to face some of these fears and face the creative risks and grow.

You know,

I know that there's so many fears we all face in our lives.

So how,

How can we cultivate courage besides just giving it lip service basically?

So what spiritual tools can we use?

What's working for you,

Pony?

Okay.

The courage to believe that I have tools and I'm worthwhile right now.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for your shares.

It really just,

The courage to love myself exactly where I am and the courage to do this growth work.

Yeah.

The courage to like be creative and believe in myself.

It's just such a big part of this path and I'm so glad to hear about it from you all.

And you know,

Of course I do a bunch of writing and then we get here in this space and I don't know about any of my,

What I'm saying and I don't think any of this is useful and this is all information for me to see how I operate on a daily basis.

So I'm just so grateful that we even have the courage to show up and do what we do in this very intimate manner and just believe that it's helpful to other people.

For what I wanted to write about for tools,

Courage comes after or during you're doing the thing.

So to start,

Just like we've been talking about trying stuff,

Our attempts make up our life.

Like this is where the courage comes from,

Right?

And in spite of the fear,

We show up and we do little,

Just what I've been taught is little digestible chunks.

Like I can't show up to my growth work in this healing journey and these attempts to become my ideals of a human and experience this life on a real day to day basis if I'm trying to fix myself or fix this moment all at once.

Like it has to be small digestible chunks and I love that as a tool.

And some of the ways that you can do that is what I started doing is keeping one small promise to myself a day.

Even if it's one small promise a week,

Because sometimes it's like if I can wake up and go to work,

I mean,

Shoot,

That's a promise to my boss.

Forget it.

Good enough.

Some promises that I've kept to myself that really helped me is like printing a reparenting pamphlet for myself.

I remember the day that I finally did that because it was like I kept wanting to do it and the day that I kept that promise to myself,

How much that helped me was I was like,

Wow.

And so I fixed a chair that I broke during one of my home workouts.

I wish I could say that.

I mean,

The chair breaking.

This is out of control.

And then,

Yeah,

So the keeping one small promise to yourself the day and just as we've been talking about also is getting to know what fear feels like in your body because it's a very intimate affair.

We can talk about what it's like for us and it may not even resonate for you.

And so I offer you to become really curious when you're in a fearful situation,

No matter what type of fear it is,

To really,

What's this feel like in my body?

Just as we've been explaining here for your own personal experience,

Because once we get to know what that fear feels like,

Then we really can have a place to start.

The courage to have that active experience of this life right here,

Right now,

Oftentimes what I say is like,

This is happening.

This is happening.

You know,

Like really what came up for me today when I was like really thinking about just how much courage I need to grow and to be on this growth work journey.

I also thought about how I really,

What's really been helping me is the bringing in the compassion,

Praying for awareness,

And then having acceptance of all that is here right now and asking for help and then sharing what's going on with me.

Not only how important it is,

How much I really believe we grow so much better together and hearing each other's experiences and stories,

But also me hearing myself sharing it out loud.

There's really some spiritual alchemy,

Some things that happen when I hear myself say some of the things that I'm saying.

And so I just want to shout out to our Facebook group.

It's at Pretty Spiritual Podcast.

It's a group on Facebook.

It's private.

You can come there and maybe you just want to voice some of the things that are going on,

Some areas that you're hopeful to work on courage.

It's a really sweet group.

People show up and share little tools.

And I,

It's,

You know,

When we talk about having like a spiritual community,

Which I think is,

It is required for me to gain courage and grow.

That's a really simple way to get on there and start practicing.

And I,

We'd love to have you there.

So thank you so much.

Yay.

Thanks,

Tony.

What fabulous tools.

What about you,

Ella?

I am so excited to be talking tools right now.

This past week,

I've been really physically uncomfortable.

I've had a lot of like gas and bloating.

Every time I ate,

My stomach would be really upset,

Like really distended,

Painful,

Crampy belly.

And so I was adding all of this hurt on top of that by feeling like ashamed of how my body looked and feeling scared of,

In my brain tells me that being thin means being safe so that if I lose control of like my,

The size of my body,

Then I'm no longer safe,

Which like,

I know that's a lie,

But it's so emotionally ingrained in me that it takes a lot of work to like intellectually I get behind that pretty fast,

But emotionally it takes a lot of work.

And so I was,

I would notice that I was hurting and I would put my hand on my belly and I would say soothing and comforting things to myself.

And one thing that was actually really helping was I saw this,

I pay attention to wisteria because it's amazing.

And also because Tony loves it.

And so I like to send her pictures and videos and I see a particularly magnificent wisteria and there's this one that's huge and it's the white wisteria,

Which is anyway,

It doesn't matter.

It was amazing.

I sent it to her and then I made this silly Instagram story about how the wisteria is what a Buddhist goddess of mercy would look like if she were a plant.

Cause I was just like,

Wow,

It's so anyway,

So I would,

I was imagining myself like in a bathtub wisteria or just like laying on the softest wisteria and it's a little tendrils were kind of like soothing and massaging my body and like holding me really gently and sweetly.

And I remember the then abbot of Tassajara what got fell sick with cancer and died within a couple of weeks.

But when he was on a lot of pain,

We got word from one of his caretakers that the practice he was doing was imagining the Hindu God Ganesha,

The elephant God with its trunk massaging his internal organs and his belly was.

And I loved that so much because it was like in those moments when I'm really hurting,

The thing I need isn't like the idea of courage.

It's like the actual lived experience of what is it like to put down my habitual ways of interacting with this experience and instead pick up this kind of like unfamiliar and maybe kind of scary but like ultimately emotionally satisfying different way of relating.

And another thing that has really been helping me is that I,

My dog has been hanging out with me a lot downstairs and so I'm meditating and I hear her kind of like gently snoring or making her little puppy noises.

And I feel this like upwelling of love for her inside my body.

And my therapist is suggesting that I let that physical feeling of love kind of like peak.

And then I sort of let it rain down on myself.

So I'm like channeling this very unconditional love I have for the dog and then feeling what it feels like physically to apply that to myself.

And it's so helpful because I do not feel like I could love my distended,

Gassy belly that way without a kind of intermediary.

And I love my dog so much that she just can do that for me.

It's really sweet.

And the last tool I want to mention also has to do with attitude.

But instead of kind of like turning my attitude inward,

I turn it outward.

And so I think about,

I zoom out,

I think about how the work I'm doing to love myself unconditionally,

Courageously,

Without holding back just the way I am is the healing work that so many of us need to do.

And I also think about how other people who struggle with body image and eating disorder and stuff like that will maybe be able to benefit from my experience of just practicing this way.

And if I had to do it for myself,

I would probably run out of steam pretty quickly.

But when I zoom out and I take refuge in service,

Like I take refuge in me doing this work for myself ultimately isn't about me.

It's about the way that the experience of healing can be of service to other people.

Then it's like the courage and perseverance to do the work kind of just materializes because I care so much about loving myself so much that I can get out of the way and love others like having that love overflow.

And one of the main ways that I get to practice doing that is by taking the focus off of me,

Which sounds so counterintuitive,

But it really helps.

So those are my tools.

Thank you,

Ella.

I love that image of the comforting wisteria embrace.

A little flower tentacles.

And it smells so good.

Oh my God,

It smells amazing.

It's the most magical flower there is.

It really is.

And it's so like the root of a strong wisteria plant is so like woody and it's like a tree trunk.

And then it like there are just these very delicate little.

And it's just a very special time of year that comes and goes so quickly and you can't all of a sudden it's here and then all of a sudden it's gone.

And if you,

You know,

It's just such a wonderful time to appreciate and like really be held by it.

Thank you so much for that.

Thank you.

I probably wouldn't have stopped to take a video of it if it weren't for you.

So great.

Anyway,

Tell us about your tools.

Yes.

So whatever your fears are,

What has been true in my life is what we've all been talking about,

Which is try and stuff.

We have a,

We had a joke for a while that our hashtag was try and stuff and it's so good.

It's really good.

We should bring that back.

Pretty sure it wasn't a joke.

Yeah.

It's the touchstone of our spiritual life.

Perfect.

Hashtag try and stuff.

That's us.

So in the,

That same doctor that I referenced about Dr.

Dean shared Aristotle's guidance.

An individual develops courage by doing courageous acts.

So that's essentially what all of us have been saying is that we don't get the courage first.

We do the thing and then the courage comes and it,

For me,

What happens is I get to build evidence that try and stuff doesn't kill me.

So my first tool,

Which I always love this tool is if you have a deep fear that is really hindering your inability to live,

I suggest professional help.

Sometimes our brain chemistry can hinder how we interact with fear.

Sometimes it's past experiences that have really hurt you.

And so any act of courage might feel like a life or death risk instead of just for example,

Asking your boss to pay you on time instead of that just being a conversation.

Suddenly it becomes this,

Your nervous system thinks that you're in danger.

So I always like to encourage professional help because sometimes there are,

These aren't challenges we can just overcome by ourselves.

My other tool is to encourage and not to bully.

So to encourage,

Ella was talking about the entomology of words is to inspire with courage,

Spirit,

Or hope.

That sounds so beautiful,

Like a wisteria.

Don't berate yourself into having courage.

Don't do it.

Don't take the bait to try to force yourself into trying stuff.

For me,

That just reinforces the kind of hungry fear hippo in my brain and it keeps me stuck in fear.

Baby hippo jaws.

Ooh,

They're so big.

Hashtag.

A tool that is helping me is three part.

And so if I have that bullying voice,

I can just learn,

First is to learn to notice it.

And a way to even notice it for me is having a regular meditation practice.

Cause then these thoughts can come into my brain and it's not just,

There's a thought,

It's a fact,

That's it.

We got no recourse.

Having some meditation practice.

And then for me,

Maybe noticing the voice might notice the bully sounds something like this.

Why can't you just prove yourself once and for all that you can actually do this?

Other people half your age have already accomplished far more,

Like whatever your version of it is,

But like,

It sounds like encouragement,

But it's actually a total bully.

So the first part is notice that the second part is label it.

I can be like,

Oh,

Hey,

Bully voice.

You're not really encouraging me.

You're being a bully.

So it's awareness.

And then the third part is think about what actions you could take that seem manageable today.

And so this is exactly what Pony was talking about with the bite sized pieces.

So in the example of something scary,

Like asking your boss to pay you on time,

If you find your boss scary,

This is a hypothetical.

Instead of saying,

You got to call this person right now and you just got to take a stand.

You got to stand up for yourself.

What are you baby?

Blah.

Instead you can put it into steps like,

Okay,

I'm going to write out a script of what I want to say.

And then the next step could be,

I can share that script with some friends.

And then the next step might be,

I'm going to call and talk to a friend and practice saying it to them.

So it's like my voice has the,

My throat has the muscle memory of those words coming out of my mouth out loud.

So it's like,

I'm building this strength that I don't have to start with and building these ways to get there.

And also I'm getting some teammates to help me,

You know,

And I'm getting courage from them.

And then my last tool is to pray for courage.

Oh,

Such a good one.

Like what if we could get sourced from something greater than ourselves?

What if our path is constantly opening and we aren't going it alone and there is some inner or outer or everywhere resource available to us if we ask for it and listen for it and create room for it.

And if that all sounds confusing,

We have a really sweet episode called How to Pray that talks about how each of us navigates that really personal experience of cultivating a relationship with something that might help us have power when we don't have power.

So those are my tools and that's our episode on courage.

And we are so grateful to everybody who's listening to us wherever you are right now.

Thank you sweet friends on the internet and throughout the lands.

To everyone who's listening,

Thank you so much.

And we're sending you love from our separate homes.

We love you.

We love you.

Bye.

City of Dallas

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The courage to see myself. ❤️

Courage..... we all need it at times and we should definitely ask for help from our spirit guides!!! 💜