5 Steps to Living More Courageously

“What do you think about before you go to sleep at night? What are the first thoughts that come to you in the morning when you wake up? What keeps you sleepless in the wee hours?”

It was questions similar to these that my pastor recenty posed to our congregation in an attempt to uncover the things that matter to each one of us. You see, the things we think are really valuable are actually often hard to pinpoint but a clue to finding them is to zone in on what makes us anxious. The two are inextricably linked. If there is any kind of threat to what we value, we will become anxious.

Yesterday, I tried this myself and it helped me uncover the reason behind some of my fear-driven behaviour. I’ve realised recently that a good deal of my actions are driven by various fears I hold. I Definitely don’t want to live a life that is defined by fear so these questions came at a helpful time. I’m using them to work on first articulating (yes, it takes a bit of thinking) and then letting go of these fears. Let me describe the process I went through.

I started by thinking about the questions I’ve included at the beginning of the article. I tried to be honest. I took 5 – 10 minutes to remember a couple of times recently when I have been kept awake at night by worrying, and I noted down what I had been thinking about. This was a very interesting process and I didn’t find it hard to recall the things that were on my mind. By making a list, I started to see some threads of similarlity. What I found underneath it all surprised me.

Here are some of the things that have kept me awake at night:

• Going over and over a conversation that I’ve had with a co-worker, or my boss, about a new task I need to do at work
• Reliving an embarrassing moment or awkward situation and reinventing my response or reaction
• Imagining a conversation with someone I have to phone the following day
• Creating a response to a question I think I might be asked by my boss, a friend, or a family member
• Preparing a defence for why I’ve done a task a certain way

(Any of these can typically keep me awake for an endless hour or two … or three.)

My next step was to notice any patterns in my thoughts and anxieties. I noticed:

• I worry about what to say in a conversation, especially if it’s over the phone
• I worry about explaining myself to other people
• I worry about making mistakes

It became clear to me that the thing I value is being competent in the eyes of other people. So it followed that my big fear is that of incompetency.

I traced this fear of incompetency through my day-to-day and I could see it play out in way I interact with people: I talk slowly and am careful to say the right thing at the right time, I won’t speak if I can’t think of something important to say, I become easily embarrassed in simple conversations, I won’t question people if I don’t know what they’re talking about, I will even actively pretend that I know what someone is talking about, by nodding, when I don’t understand! I feel the pressure to cover up my ignorance about a topic or a person because of my fear of being “found out”.

My fear means I’m not being myself in any given situation. It actually leads me to be dishonest with myself and others. It means that I’m not comfortable just being who I am and resting in that. This fear controls my thoughts and actions and it hampers my growth as a person. It stops me being who I am and being happy in who I am. It also impacts everyone I meet – they are not getting to know the person I really am. What a massive discovery!

So this is where I am at right now in the process – imagining what my life would look like without this fear: knowing I have inherant value and do not need to be ashamed of who I am; being honest in my relationships with other people and living with integrity, even if I feel vulnerable.

Here’s some steps, drawn from my experience, that you can take to live from a position of courage and not of fear:

1. Make a list of the things that make you worried
2. Look for patterns in this list that tell you what it is you really value
3. Find the opposite of this value to discover what it is you fear
4. Imagine what your daily life would look like without this fear
5. Create your own small steps to practice courageous behaviour rather than fear-driven behaviour

Can you see any patterns in the things you worry about? What small steps could you take to build courage in this area of your life?