How to Have Courage Over Fear
What does it take to have courage over fear? I say in Hustle Believe Receive that; “fear is the enemy of success.” I still believe that to be true, because most people give fear an incredible amount of power, whether they intend to or not.
But I also think fear holds one important role in our lives; it forces us to question ourselves which helps us vet the various possible outcomes before rushing our decisions. I think many people allow fear to take over at this stage, by OVER thinking, and over questioning. But if you use fear to allow you to pause, think about what your doing, ask yourself some tough questions, make sure it's right, then you can move forward knowing you're making the right choice.
The key is to make sure fear knows its place in your world. Don’t give it more power or more credit than it deserves, and definitely don’t allow it to be the guiding force behind making decisions. It is simply a tool, in our box, that can help us make the right decisions.
It takes courage to live the life you really dream of living. It takes immense courage to follow your dream and find success.
Courage comes into play every time fear threatens our dreams. Fear is the devil on our shoulder making us look at all those nasty worst-case scenarios; so look at them! Stare them down. Could you still live with yourself if one of those “worst case” hypothetical situations happened? Then there’s your answer, fear did its job, and now its time to turn the wheel back over to courage.
There’s a HUGE lie that we've all been told, that when you follow your passion, things should; "just flow naturally." I’m not sure who started this dangerous and disgusting rumor, but let me tell you from first-hand experience that it’s NOT true. Things don’t just magically “work out,” even when you’re in “the flow” of following your dream. There is ALWAYS fear. There are always forks in the road that require you to RISK something (or everything), in order to keep pressing forward. And that is why we need to become masters of #CourageOverFear.
There is nothing magical about success. Success is a formula. Successful people get that way, by putting that formula into action, over and over again. They trust it, even in the face of adversity. Even when the shit hits the fan. Even when everything they've been hustling for seems to be falling apart, they still trust the formula and keep believing, keep working.
This process will repeat many, many times on the road to living your dreams. Each time you'll get better at trusting your gut, at listening to your intuition and then acting based on what it tells you. I believe it’s our ultimate guiding force, our compass as we navigate past fear to summon the courage for our next move. If you follow your intuition, you will always make the right decisions and remain on your perfect path (even when it seems less than perfect).
The job of our intuition is to protect us from harm, but most people spend all their time fighting this quiet inner voice. They find a million ways to talk themselves out of whatever direction their gut is telling them to go. They make excuses, give all the reasons why what their gut tells them won't work. Then they chose the path based in fear, ignoring intuition, and that's when shit can hit the fan. If we just took the time to listen to our gut in the first place, it would help us find that balance between fear and courage, and in the end it would strengthen courage enough for us to make the right choices.
If you look back on your life at the moments/choices that really changed you, I bet you'll discover that you were faced with fear then too. But instead of giving in to fear, and not --getting married, or going off to college, or taking that trip, or having kids, or whatever your big moment was-- you applied courage and took a leap of faith. And I bet you're glad you did.
So, if you're facing a big choice in your life; maybe its leaving a job you hate, starting a business, leaving a bad relationship… whatever it is, stop letting fear talk you out of making the choice that your intuition is begging you to make. Listen to your gut. Then put your big girl (or boy!) pants on, and take the leap of faith!
Ready to take your life, career, goals and yourself to the next level? Check out my life coaching options or take my online life coaching courses to get the results you DESERVE!
Sarah Centrella is a #1 best-selling author of several self-help books, a motivational keynote speaker, master life coach, Founder of VIVIAMO and podcast host.