Consider with me now the ways you have walked through being scared and then into courage.
Consider how this has made a difference in your life, drastic or small – and how you are getting more and more ready to step into increased courage now.
I can’t remember specific times but I can remember the specific feeling.
I do know I am grateful for the way simple questions manage to lead me into deeper transformation and how that transformation leads me into passionate action.
Let’s talk about that for a moment.
My therapist asked me a question, “What were you the most afraid of” or “When did you feel the worst” or something like that and I was immediately, viscerally catapulted into a state of panic so deep I couldn’t speak.
It got so bad, I thought I would suffocate.
Then I thought it was quite possible I might die.
The fear and panic was so visceral there were no tears attached. Tears, after all, were human, and this experience was different-than-human and definitely not divine.
Now, months later and quite removed, this whole episode seems ridiculous and I am embarrassed to talk about it except for how the memory of choking coupled with loss of voice and breath leads to lack of follow through, lack of success and my deep seated fear of asking for help.
I feel piles of shame for being in this condition.
I certainly have never seen anyone else fall into such a pitiful, downright ridiculous place.
To shift from the judgment, critical, self-loathing voice I turn to the strongest energy there is: the life force of love and gratitude.
Gratitude invites me to say, “I am open to courage now.”
I am open to look at this moment of what felt like imminent suffocation from a space of love and in this space of love, I am open to courage now.
I am grateful for the time I spent with this therapist, even though I don’t see her any more, and I am open to courage now.
I am grateful for the passion that flows through me and ignites my creative fire and at times, throws me into rather deep vats of fear and anxiousness.
In love, I am open to courage now.
In this week to come, I am grateful for the strengthening of my courage muscle. I am grateful for the actions I’ve taken and the even more bold actions I will continue to take as I step into the life I am creating for now and the future.
I am open to courage now, in love. <– note to self: use as often as necessary. This is an affirmative lifeline.
I was reminded of choking: how my fear of dying (or if not actual death, feeling like I am about to die) and take away my voice.
Literally, my breath, my spirit.
I have been afraid of success – long story I am bored of telling, tired of hearing.
Trauma. Even writing about it – pain in my chest.
What am I willing, ready and able to do, to be to transform this fear? This is the question I am beginning to live.
I have made some false starts in getting to the outside of the “fear boundaries” and I’m continuing to move forward. It feels powerful. I feel powerful. Yes, there is still the thought….
Now I’ve done the unthinkable. I have been completely vulnerable and open about an exceptionally tender part of me. Now? I’ll continue to move, mindfully. I know there are people in many places similar to this who know.
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