Courage

A while back I started reading the book: “When Is Enough, Enough? What You Can Do If You Never Feel Satisfied” by Ashner and Meyerson. I had borrowed it from the library. I loved what I was reading and found it very hard not to make notes in the margin.

I love half.com. I got the book and I am devouring it! My yellow marker and red pen are keeping busy—but so is my google internet search engine. I’m finding all kinds of fodder for the classes I teach.

This morning I spent two hours teaching class. Here’s my outline:
1. Understanding your strengths and weaknesses, and how one can become the other.
I draw a continuum on the board and ask them to make a list of their strengths and weaknesses. I have them share some of their strengths and show how when pushed to the limit they can become a weakness. Conversely, I ask them to share a weakness and I show how when reeled back in, these reveal a strength. I tell them it’s time to reclaim their strengths and live in balance.

2. Stress Response: Flight or Fight.
We are wired to survive and protect ourselves from the prowling saber tooth tigers. We identify the tigers (or giants) in our lives that threaten us and how we respond with flight or fight. I lead them in a discussion of how futile flight really is: running gets you nowhere and wherever you go, there you are! We begin to consider the mature ways to fight.

3. Coping through Defense Mechanisms.
I take them through a list of defense mechanisms which may have been helpful at one point, but could be hindering their growth and development.

It was a good class and the attendees told me that they got a lot out the lesson. That feels good, but I really hope that there was something that they could come away with that will help them break the cycle of self-defeating behavior.

So, I’m reading and marking in my book and I get to an emboldened heading that stops in my tracks: Do you have the courage to be you? Hmmmm.

Just a little later I found this: “A history of self-sabotage is almost always a key that we have some central conflict with our identity—a problem accepting our personality, our real needs and goals, and working with them, not against them. Our work must begin with building self-esteem. There is no shortcut.” (page 43)

“…we’ve lost the only thing that can possibly make us feel secure—a real connection with ourselves.”

“Recently a woman at one of our workshops confided, ‘I’d like to own a bed and breakfast place, but reality is I have two children and a husband who is about to lose his job. Am I supposed to make the whole family starve while I follow some fantasy?’ What makes us so sure that we’d fail if we pursue a dream? Surely it’s not experience.” (page 44)

Maybe this only speaks to me. Honestly though, I want to believe that I’m not alone in this. I want to succeed, but I’m really afraid. I’m afraid to try because it means I could fail. And even though I know in my head that in reality there’s a process to coming to success that involves a weeding out that is often deemed as failure, the only real and true failure is not trying so by not trying the only thing I get is failure. How convoluted is all that?

So I guess the courage comes at being willing to live with the clicking tongues and head shakes that infer the judgment of others. Who would have thought that at nearly 50 I would still be struggling with this adolescent foolishness? Not me, that’s for sure. But perhaps it’s better to finally get to the struggle than to never face it at all. Perhaps, the struggle indicates that growth is still possible and the years to come can hold amazing adventure as I live courageously, adventurously, and expectantly.

Maybe the courage can come now because I don’t have to impress anyone. Maybe the gift of being about to turn 50 is that I’m finally free to be. Now this is a perspective I can wrap my brain—heck, I can wrap my whole being around this!