What is courage?
I am not talking about the external courage of firemen as they run into a burning building to save lives, or our front-line workers who are working tirelessly to help keep us safe. I am talking about the invisible courage – the things that most of us don’t acknowledge as courage because it is internal and private. Its effects are not seen or noticed by anyone, and generally, the person does not see it as courage either.
I am talking about the courage of everyday people to get out of bed in the morning and face yet another day – which might not sound like anything spectacular to you, but it definitely takes courage if you have to face that day, yet another day, of intense pain, anxiety, fear or depression, without knowing when or if it will end. Groundhog Day, feeling the most intense negative emotions that you can image.
Waking up and then remembering that your loved one dying was not a horrible dream but a reality, when that feeling of loss hits you each morning on waking and then you carry that feeling all through the day, with constant reminders of that person not being around.
Facing another day where your physical pain and limitations affect your functioning and reminds you that you are no longer the person you once were and that you are now dependent on others to help you function or do daily activities like showering and dressing.
Waking up after a night of intense nightmares of being threatened and hurt, and knowing that it will be yet another day of intense anxiety and fear, so bad that you can’t open the curtains or leave your home.
Or waking up and not wanting to face the day, so staying in bed because it is just too hard to get out, and motivate yourself to shower or forcing yourself to at least eat a piece of toast, if nothing else.
This is the courage I am talking about. The courage to keep going as painful as it might be, but still keep going. This is the courage I see in my clients, and I am in awe of their strength and courage.
Some keep going because they feel that they have to for the sake of others – their children, parents or loved ones. Some see it as their punishment in life, so that they have to suffer until they die. Others feel that they have no option but to keep going. Many survive by numbing their pain so that they can stay alive.
And ALL keep going because they have hope… hope that maybe today, something will happen that might start them feeling better, that today will be the day that they turn that corner and start a new direction in their lives.
What is hope?
As the quote goes “hope is stronger than fear.” Hope is the belief that circumstances will get better. It's not a wish for things to get better - it's the actual belief. The knowledge that things will get better, no matter how big or small.Research dating back decades, has shown that hopelessness is even more strongly associated with suicide than is depression. Hope is the bedrock of getting out of suicidal states.
Hope is action
Hope makes these courageous people connect with others online, to find some sort of community, to read something, connect with online podcasts, talks, YouTube videos. Hope supports them to do that one thing today that will make them feel like they have achieved something. Hope enables them to reach out to mental health professionals and keep attending appointments, especially when therapy is touching their very painful parts, and all they want to do is avoid it. Instead with hope they face it with courage and determination.
This is the real power of human beings - even in the face of such adversity, we hold on to hope and take tiny actions to bring about changes in our lives.
How to build on the courage and hope
If you are still reading, then you are still alive and that means you have all the tools to build on your own courage and hope. That’s all that is needed. As long as we have breath, there is hope. Like with anything else on this journey in life, we need to start where we are and start with what is easy. Often we try to start at another point other than where you are right now. This is physically and practically impossible. Often we will say I will start when I feel better or when this or that happens, it won’t happen, you can only start now.
The second point is to start with what is easy for you. Below are various suggestions, start with what is easy for you. Because that is the best way to build confidence and to start any new skill. When learning to play a musical instrument, we don’t start with Beethoven. No, we start with nursey rhymes – twinkle twinkle little star… and slowly progress to more complicated pieces. Same with this - you already have all you need to turn hope into a new reality. You just need patience with yourself.
1) Recognise your courage
Most people living with this courage don’t see themselves as being courageous. Instead they see themselves as weak because they can’t get over it, move on or get better. They have tried but keep failing, so how can that be courageous. Courage is not giving up. Courage is trying, even when you have failed so many times. Courage is trying when all you want to do is stop and quit.
Often, when we do something, we don’t see it as big or amazing or courageous. It’s just what I had to do or chose to do. I remember when my cousin moved to New Zealand a few years ago. I looked at her in awe and amazement because she moved, with her family to a new country and started their lives all over again. I saw her as courageous and determined. Then I realised I too had moved to NZ on my own 12 years ago - and all of the sudden, I could see my courage. Until then, when I told people my story of coming to NZ, they would often say ‘wow that took courage’ but I could not see what they were talking about. Now, I can it was courageous.
How to see your courage
I have learnt how to externalise as a test to whether I am being courageous or not. I think; if this was a movie, what would I think of the person playing my life or that story of my life. Would I see their strength in being able to face another day and keep going? Would my heart go out to them, knowing how hard the simple everyday things are for them, and yet, they still keep going? Would I feel compassion and kindness towards them?
And in this way, I change how I see myself. I change how I see my story and experience. Because once we externalise it becomes someone else’s story, we can see it more clearly, because our personal judgments and criticisms are not clouding our experience.
We generally have more compassion for the suffering of others than ourselves. So, seeing us in others, we are able to bring more compassion to ourselves.
2) How have you kept yourself going
If you are still alive, this means that you are doing something to keep yourself alive. What are your coping or survival tools? What is the one thing you are doing to keep yourself sane, functional and going?
This can be something as simple as having a coffee every day, gardening, holding your children or pets, praying, or chatting in a Facebook group with people who are going through the same thing as you. Whatever you are doing, this is about noticing you are doing something protective. Something that is enabling you to keep going. Something that gives you the strength and courage to face another day.
Often we minimise and ignore these small ways in which we care for ourselves, or soothe our wounds. They are essential to helping us to change our lives.
Recognise your self-care acts
My encouragement to you is for you to become aware of how many acts of self-care and nurturing you give yourself. Until now, you have done it unconsciously. Bring awareness into it. Notice the small, seemingly insignificant moments of self-care.
These are the little moments in a day that make you feel less distressed, only slightly, less distressed. Once you have one, you can start to build on them and have a few more moments of feeling slightly less distressed.
3) Become aware of your judgment and critical mind
For almost everyone, the root cause of our distress are messages that we have internalised that tell us that we are not good enough, we are not worthy, we don’t belong and we don’t matter. Some have most of these messages, others have one of them. For some people, these beliefs are deeply ingrained. For others, they are there, but don’t affect them obviously on a daily basis.
These beliefs stem from a variety of factors: our culture, society, trauma, childhood homes, schools, family… really almost anywhere. Trauma and early negative childhood experiences resulted in deeper beliefs of being ‘less than’.
It is recognising the universal nature of these thoughts; for whatever reason many people have them and live their lives with this shadow over them, questioning their worth at every turn and ensuring they keep themselves in the mud of life.
For me, it was learning that my inner critical world did not have to be a battle ground with me fighting myself all of the time. At the moment of my birth and at the moment of your birth, you were born with love, peace, happiness and well-being in every cell of your being. Then life happened that told you that you could not have that. Maybe your moment of breaking came soon after birth, when you were separated from your mother, or maybe for you it came later, as you saw how the world worked, and judged yourself to be less than. Perhaps it was someone taking that peace, love, happiness from you when they abuse or hurt or rejected you.
Reconnecting with your original nature
The trick is learning how to re-connect with my original nature or your Warrior Goddess/God. That is the part of you that is courageous, that is still fighting you to live, the part of you that still has hope. It is not a lost part of yourself, it is very much still alive and kicking in you.
Learning to recognise that part of myself helped me to stop listening to the critical mind, to stop believing the cultural messages of my worth, to stop seeing my worth in others or things I have done, or not seeing any worth in myself.
4) Tapping into the Warrior Goddess
I first became aware of this concept when I was gifted the book - Warrior Goddess Training: becoming the woman you are meant to be. Even though this book focuses on the feminine, many of the principles of how we lost our joy, peace and happiness apply to men as well, and so do the solutions. These are universal concepts applicable to all humans. Warrior Goddess refers to that part of us that is fighting to be seen, to be heard, to live a fuller, happier, more fulfilling life. In the spiritual traditions, this is called our lifeforce or God essence. It doesn’t matter what you call it, so long as you can have a sense and feeling connection to it.
The Warrior Goddess or Life Essence is the part of us that has never been tainted by anything that has happened in your life. It remains as pure, whole, and perfect as it was at the moment of your birth. And it remain that way, as you take your last breath.
Learning to tap into your Life Essence starts by recognising the stories you tell yourself about yourself. Having told them so many times you see them as true and real.
The externalisation that I spoke about earlier, is one way to change your relationship to your story. To do this, we need courage to face ourselves, openly and honestly. This is the scariest thing in the world for most people. They would rather face a battle or war, than face themselves with brutal honesty, love and compassion.
With the changed relationship, you can see your story from a different angle, a different understanding. This is where therapy can be helpful – it helps to reframe experiences and give a different focus.
For many clients, this is about naming their past as abusive and seeing their post-abusive behaviours in the context of a traumatised person, rather than as a naughty child. The naming and the understanding helps to give us a fuller picture of our lives at that time and the effects that it has had on our present life.
For others, it is touching into the grief and pain – really feeling it and expressing it in a way in which it feels validated and held and nurtured. In a safe, contained way, so they can explode or implode with the grief, pain, sadness, anger and everything else, and still emerge whole and alive. More vibrant and connected than before the explosion or implosion. This is a gift of touching our hearts and letting the suffering go. We can only do this if we trust our God Essence, Warrior Goddess, Life Essence, or trust our hearts. This self-trust gives us the safety net to jump and fly, knowing that if we make a mistake, we will still be okay.
5) Connecting with your inner loving parent
The flip side of the Warrior Goddess is what I call the Loving Parent. This is the softer, caring, nurturing side of ourselves. Still equally as strong as the Warrior part of ourselves, but from the other side.
The externalisation that I spoke about earlier also helps to soften your response to yourself. A lot of what I teach in the self-love practices is to start treating yourself as you would a loved one who is in pain. Learning how to hold yourself in love and compassion as you would your young child, who is suffering.
Parents are capable of an amazing level of compassion. I remember reading somewhere where the Dali Lama stated that the amount of compassion that a parent has for his or her young child suffering during a long-haul flight is what he can only achieve through decades of practice.
This practice calls for learning how to turn our love and care that we give so generously to others, to myself. And this really challenges our deeply held beliefs of not being worthy or good enough to receive the kindness, care, love and support. So in this way, you are coming up against yourself.
Turning your love and care for others to yourself
One of the ways that I like doing this is by putting a sense of worth on what I am already doing. So as I shower, I do it as a loving parent bathing their baby. Or when I eat, I feed myself with care. Or I give myself permission to do the things that I already do as self-care – making it feel like a special treat. I give myself permission to smile, laugh and cry. I give myself permission to have tantrum when I feel overwhelmed, and then loving support myself during and after the tantrum.
Coming home
In this way, we are able to build on the hope and courage that has got us this far. To support and care about ourselves enough so that we can take one more step towards our inner peace and happiness and freedom. It might feel like a million steps away, but every journey starts with the first step, and then the next one… and eventually, you have taken a million steps. And it might not take as long as you think it will.
If you would like to explore your courage and hope more, please get in touch with Bhavna today.