#324: Waiting For Courage

Waiting For Courage

Here's a transcription of this episode:

One of the biggest problems that I see lawyers having is really sitting in the passenger seat of their life.

They aren't taking action in a way that will create something new for themselves, and it's because they are waiting for the courage to do the new thing, to create the new life. In today's episode, I wanna share with you what waiting for courage is and what you truly need to be doing in order to create change. 

Hello, how are you doing today?

I want you to think about something.

 want you to think about what it is you really want and what you might have been putting off for a really long time. Maybe it's something as big as writing a book, starting a new business, or maybe it's something like starting a workout routine or hiring a coach or having a conversation with somebody, or looking at the money coming in and out of your finances.

I want you to really answer this question.

Think of something that you've been putting off and that you are not taking action on, and I want you to ask yourself this question. Why have you been putting it off? Has it been because it sounds really hard to do? Does your brain tell you that you simply don't have the time to do it, or that it costs a lot of money, or that you're not sure if you'll do the work, or that you're not sure if it's worth it, or that you're not sure that you're gonna see the result that you want? Ask yourself, is there a reason why you're not taking action? And what is that reason?

Because our brain will always have some obstacle to what we want to create in our life. It is always going to come up with something. And remember, our brain is governed by the motivational triad.

It wants our thing, our life to be easy. It wants us to pursue pleasure, and it wants to conserve energy.

So anytime we wanna do something new, our subconscious belief, our primal brain is going to say, Nope, can't do it. But I also see that even when lawyers understand that that's just how the brain works, they're still sitting back, they're still waiting for courage.

And what does waiting for courage mean? Waiting for courage means that you're waiting for things to just kind of align that things are just gonna happen naturally.

That if it's the right thing, it'll just feel really good. But that is not what courage is.

Courage is deciding what you want, even when you know the actions that you're going to take to create it maybe aren't gonna be fun. I think about this in terms of when I first decided I wanted to start a business, and I was working for the DA's office, and I was thinking about all of the excuses my brain would put up for me.

Like, you don't have time. You can't do this. What are people going to think? And I decided, no, I'm going to take action.

I'm gonna just take one step at a time. And that was me building courage, creating courage internally, because courage was never just gonna show up and say, Hey, I'm ready. It was always going to take me getting in the driver's seat and saying, I know you don't wanna do this thing, but you're gonna do it anyway.

Here's one way to know that you're stuck in wanting comfort, that you're letting the subconscious really drive the car. At this point, answer this question. If you were 100% certain that what you wanted to create in your life was a hundred percent possible, that it was absolutely gonna come to pass, would you take action? If you answered yes, that tells me that your brain just wants comfort.

That it wants that certainty to know that yes, this is going to happen, that I'm not gonna fail, that this is something that is doable, that I'm capable of doing this. It's not a bad thing if you, if you answered yes, nothing has gone wrong.

It's just that right now the subconscious, the primal brain is running the car, it's driving the car, and you don't want the subconscious driving the car. You wanna create an intentional life that feels expansive. So when you think about this, when you think about being comfortable, would you rather have the comfort of living the life you have now or the discomfort of doing the things that will create a more expansive life for yourself and feel amazing?

That's how I look at my choices, because I could be comfortable, but at the same time, there's still like this discomfort, this discomfort that I know I'm not living into the fullest version of myself.

And that means if I don't take action, that I'm gonna stay stuck there and I'm never gonna live into the fullest version of myself. And that hurts more for me. That feels less alive for me. And if you are noticing that feeling within yourself, it's because you're not taking action towards what you wanna create.

And I also want to share with you that your brain is always gonna say, what if it doesn't work?

What if I can't change?

What if it's a waste of time or money?

What?

You know, I want you to then counter those questions.

So what if it won't work? I want you to ask yourself, what if it does work? What could happen in my life if it does work? What could be different? How amazing could that be? And if your brain is saying, what if I can't change? Well, let me ask you this.

What if you can, what if you just keep getting up and you keep trying and you keep doing the things? What if you absolutely 100% can change? What would your life look like? How would you feel? And if your brain says, what if it's a waste of time or a waste of money? Well, I want you to ask yourself, what if it's not? What if you need that experience in order to grow into the person that you're meant to become, to live a more expansive life? Always have a conversation with your brain, because there's always gonna be a part of your brain that goes negative because we have a negativity bias. It helps our brain stay comfortable, right? Our subconscious wants us to be comfortable and safe. We actually wanna get out of that, and we wanna take uncomfortable action and create the life that we are meant to live.

I truly believe that the uncomfortable action that we need to take in our lives is what leads us to live a bigger life, the life we're actually meant to be living.

So if you're feeling called to this, then I want to encourage you to really dig into the questions you're hearing in this episode and ask them and evaluate them and ask yourself, are you living into the highest, biggest version of yourself? The two sides of our brain, right?

The primal brain, right?

That part of our brain that is always seeking comfort and ease and pleasure, that part of our brain is always gonna be in opposition to our prefrontal cortex, that part of our brain where we're connected with our higher self, with those bigger beliefs in ourself, with that vision that we have, with that desire that we have to do something like write a book, like start a workout routine, like eat more healthfully, all of those things, they're always gonna be an opposition.

But what we must do as humans, if we want to create a life intentionally, is to really activate the prefrontal cortex to engage with it, and not to villainize the subconscious to just say, okay, I see you brain. I know you don't want to do this thing, and we're gonna do it anyway. I know you're scared and we're gonna do it anyway.

That is actively creating courage, actively supporting yourself, because unless you support yourself, you will never do anything differently. So for me, I know that I'm being ruled by my primal brain, my subconscious, because I'm gonna feel feelings like disappointment ahead of time. I'm gonna feel some defeat. I'm gonna feel defeated before I even begin a project. I'll notice these feelings inside of me, and I'll feel my shoulders close up. I'll feel my breath start to be shallow.

And that feeling is my trigger to know, oh wait, my primal brain is in the driver's seat right now, and I can't let that happen.

I need to reconnect with myself.

It's okay that I feel this way right now. I'm never gonna villainize the subconscious.

I'm never gonna villainize the feelings that I'm feeling, but I am going to pause and I'm gonna sit with those feelings. And then I'm gonna ask myself, what do I want to do next from that higher perspective? What's going to get me the results I wanna create? So if you are thinking about writing a book, for instance, it may seem like a huge undertaking because you're thinking about the finished project, the whole thing, right? And the subconscious is immediately gonna shut it down. It's gonna say, Nope, can't do this. You don't have time.

This is not something you can do. There's no point in doing this. It's gonna say all the things. And then what you've gotta do is you've gotta look at, okay, I understand that brain that you're saying those things, and I know I have this desire to write this book.

I have this desire to create something bigger than myself. So what do I need to do in order to honor that desire in order to really take an action that is courageous? Well, it might be breaking it up step by step instead of thinking about the whole book saying, okay, well every Monday I'm gonna sit down for an hour at, you know, 6:00 AM and I'm gonna write a chapter. I'm gonna write for a full hour. Whatever that looks like for you. But you're taking a step. Same thing with a workout routine. You're gonna say, okay, I know you don't wanna go to the gym today, but let's break it down and do its smallest parts. Let's say I just put on my clothes. Let's say I just put on my shoes. Let's say I just step outside and I take this step by step by step, and the brain puts up less opposition to it.

That's one way to do it. One of the things that I really contended with when I was starting my business is this thought that I can't do it. That I'm not capable, that this is just too much, that I'm not going to be able to support myself financially.

So I needed to create support systems for myself. I needed to say, okay, I have money in the bank. Let me see, how long is that going to keep me while I build my business? What will I need to do in order to support myself, meaning support myself emotionally, because I am creating courage. And courage does not feel good. I think we, we get this idea that courage is supposed to feel amazing in our bodies.

No, it actually feels like almost like you wanna throw up a little bit <laugh>, almost like you're, you're facing a tiger.

Because that's what our brain is telling us is happening, is that we're in danger by doing something differently. But what we're training ourselves to do is see the, the danger, the tiger, so to speak and say, that's not danger. That's just my brain saying that it's a tiger. How can I support myself by breaking things down in the small parts, by getting really factual? I've talked about the specificity principle in this podcast.

I created that principle because what I've observed is that when we begin to break things down into tiny steps, that we are able to calm our nervous system down, and then are better able to then move forward and take action on what we wanna create in our life. And that is one way to begin creating courage to begin breaking things down and talking to ourself like we want to succeed.

Just step by step by step. We can become really impatient because we tell ourselves it should be happening faster. That's okay. Just remind yourself. No, this is a step-by-step process. This is me retraining my brain to take scary action. And the more scary action you take, the more courage you create to meet that scary action, the bigger, the more expansive your life becomes. I just talked to my client, Nancy, a few episodes back, and one of the things that we've had conversations about is building her podcast, right? Like really her sitting down and thinking about it, and she had similar things to contend with, right? Her brain told her all of the same things, I don't have time, and what's gonna happen when I do this and that, and the other thing. And she really supported herself by calming her nervous system and building up that courage by breaking things down step by step by step.

And then as soon as she started taking steps, it was a domino effect because every step that we take becomes that domino that helps us move everything forward, move the needle forward, and we don't need to feel good to take action. I've gotta tell you, like when I create my calendar every week, I'm not creating my calendar from a place of let me do all the things that feel really good. Why not? Because so many of the actions that I need to take to move my business in the direction that I want it to take, require doing things that are uncomfortable, require things that take energy. So as I'm recording this episode, I actually am am recording it before I am off for a couple weeks. So I know that today I needed to create a couple podcast episodes. I had several client calls going on, and I just said, Nope, we're gonna do this.

We're just gonna boom, boom, boom. I'm gonna take action. I'm gonna get it done. And that required my commitment to myself and to my vision for what I want and my future. It did not require me sitting on the couch eating bon bonds. I would never, I would not enjoy my day that way. I would be feeling horrible that I wasn't getting the work done that I wanted to get done. But so that feeling of commitment, because I know that it is driving my vision forward, that feeling feels amazing, and the courageousness that I create every time I do things that maybe stretch me a little bit, that are putting me out of my comfort zone, those things expand me. Like I went to an event a couple days ago. I came home from the Alabama State Bar. I was doing a speaking event there.

They gave me a table there. I was able to talk to so many people. And that expands you when you put yourself into these situations where you don't know anybody, where you are just doing something for the first time, or you are, you know, in this case, I was doing a speech a speech that I'd created for the first time. So this was a, a brand new speech that I had created. And so, you know, you don't know how people are going to respond. You don't know what the feedback is you're going to get.

And so when you do something like that, you are putting yourself out of your comfort zone and at the same time expanding your abilities, your capabilities.

But that takes building up the courage, deciding you're going to take the step of saying yes to the speaking opportunity, saying yes to designing that speech, saying yes to going to the event, saying yes to doing the uncomfortable things like being at the table and having conversations.

And, you know, once you start doing it though, it becomes second nature.

It feels so good. But we've gotta create enough courage to get ourselves over that initial hurdle so that we can keep taking steps forward and get that domino effect moving.

And when we sit back and we wait for things to feel good, and we wait for things to feel right, we oftentimes shortchange ourselves.

And one thing that I never want to live with is the feeling of regret. I do not want to regret not taking action towards my dreams.

I do not want to regret not doing the things that I know I am meant to do. And honestly, like when I look at the future that I wanna create for myself, it requires me doing things that are uncomfortable. And that's okay, because my vision is important to me. My sense of wellbeing is important to me.

And if I'm not honoring my desires, I'm not honoring my sense of wellbeing because I'm not living in alignment, or I would not be living in alignment with what I know to be true about me and what I'm meant to do.

Now, if you don't know what you're meant to do, I don't want you to use that against yourself. I want you to know that you're exactly where you're supposed to be, and it's going to take you courage to step forward and learn what it is you want to do. It will not come to you. You cannot sit back and wait for something to come to you. I learned this the hard way.

I kept trying all of these things to try to figure out what it is I was meant to do. And I, I worried, right? I was like, oh my gosh, I'm never gonna find out what I'm gonna do.

I didn't need to worry. I needed to do exactly what I was doing, which was taking action, trying new things, trying out all of the different avenues that I needed to walk down to see whether or not that was something I wanted to do. But I think that we get in our own way because we overthink things. We're overthinking, is this the right decision? Yes, it's the right decision. I'll just give you that right now. Yes, do that, <laugh>, you don't have like a, there's no right decision. There's nothing that is going to change your life in a way that is irreparable. There's nothing you can do or not do that is going to make or break your life or your career or your friendships. You are simply gonna make a decision and then you're gonna move forward and take action from there. But we tend to spin our wheels in indecision, and we sit back and we wait for courage, and we wait for things to be right.

We tell ourselves, oh, it's just not the right time. I've gotta wait for the right timing. I want to ask you, how long have you been waiting for the right timing for you to take action on what you want to take action on? How long have you been telling yourself that this is something that I need to just wait for it to be right, for this thing to be right, for that thing to be right? You know, it's, I, I spend a lot of time in coaching circles, and one of the things we kind of joke about is how it's always the right time. It's always the right time to take action. And let me tell you why. Because you will tell yourself it's not the right time to take action because my kids are out of school. It's not the right time to take action because my kids are in school.

It's not the right time to take action because there's a holiday. It's not the right time to take action because there's not a holiday, and I've got a lot of work to do, right? Your brain is going to shut you down time after time after time, because it's always seeking comfort. It wants the familiar, it wants you to feel very much the way you always have. You're very safe. It thinks in your little box, and it doesn't want to expand. It doesn't want to go after those higher desires. It wants you to ignore them and to wait and to sit back in the passenger seat and not take action on the things you wanna take action on. But I will tell you that I feel more fulfilled. I feel more expansive when I build up the courage to take those uncomfortable actions and take those actions because my life feels so amazing when I do it.

I feel totally in alignment with what I'm meant to be doing. And if you are feeling like you're in indecision, if you feel like you've been sitting back and you've just been thinking about something over and over and over again, and you, you see this topic come up over and over and over again about what you wanna do, but you're not taking action on it, you are draining your battery, you're draining it to the point where it makes it more difficult for you to create the courage to take action. Waiting for courage is actually, in my opinion, more exhausting than taking action. Because when we sit back and we're waiting for the courage to appear, we're ruminating. We are beating ourselves up. Why? I know all the things. Why am I not taking action? I know that this is something that I wanna take action on.

And then we're telling ourselves all the reasons why we can't take action.

And there's all of this mess happening in our brain, but we can only clear our brain when we start taking action.

Taking action is such a powerful thing to do because it begins to clear the fog and it's, you know, I talk a lot about mindset here, but this one's about taking action. You've gotta take one step and then the other, and then the other in order for you to make your dreams reality. So I wanna return back to that thing that you've been putting off.

What is it?

What have you been putting off?

What is it that you want to do with your life?

What decision have you been hemming and hawing over?

Has it been that you want to write that book, that you want to hire that coach, that you wanna create that workout routine?

What have you been going back and forth over? And what are you gaining from not doing those things? There's always a secondary benefit from our us not taking action. In this case, it's that false sense of safety. It's that false sense of safety that, well, if I do nothing and nothing changes, at least, at least I can say, well, I didn't try. And like, if I had tried, maybe things would've been different. And now I wanna ask you this question, and I want you to answer it. What would be different in your life if you decided to take the scary action? If you decided that you wanted to create that courageousness and take those actions, what do you think would be different? How do you think you would feel about yourself? What do you think you would think about yourself? Would you be proud of yourself for taking those steps forward?

Would you be telling yourself, wow, look at me. I did it. Like I, I really did it. I tried at least, you know, I tried. And this is another thing that I really, you know, I was thinking about, which is this feeling of trying, and I love the feeling of trying, and I don't think I always did. I think I felt, well, if it wasn't perfect, if it didn't turn out exactly the way I expected it to, then I would be disappointed. But that was the old me when I cleaned up all of that. And I really supported myself and started telling myself, you know, this is good what you're doing, the small step that you're taking. I'm so proud of you every step of the way. Just like I would be supporting a child, just like I would be supporting my best friend.

When I started taking that tact, when I took action, I felt so good. I said, oh my gosh, I, I did it. I tried. I tried something new. And this aspect of failing, it's so demonized in the school system, right? If we get an F, we fail. That means we did something wrong. We're bad, we're not gonna progress. But in real life, we've gotta take action, try and fail in order to progress. That is the secret ingredient, because we've gotta go back and we've gotta evaluate what we're doing. And if we don't take action, we never have any data to evaluate. Very different from the school system. And this was something I learned as I was creating my business from all of these people I was learning from. It's a very different mentality, and it requires self-sustaining your courage, building up that courage so you can take step after step after step and supporting yourself every step of the way, not relying on what other people think, not relying on what you think other people are gonna think.

This requires you to take that action without having certainty of the result. It requires you to take action without feeling comfortable that you're going to get the result.

You are, in essence, putting yourself in harm's way.

You're putting yourself in that discomfort so that you can create what you wanna create.

That is what life is all about.

When you are living full out, when you are living into the fullest version of yourself, and it took me a long time to get there, but it doesn't have to take you a long time. You can decide right now, I'm gonna start building courage.

That book that I wanna write, I'm gonna think, okay, what are, what are the things that I need to do to write a book? Well, one is, I just need to, to play, to write out some topics that I think would be fun, some things that might interest me, and then I'm gonna break it down so that I have, you know, 20 minutes a day to write, an hour a week to write.

I'm just gonna try it. And then when things don't work out exactly the way you want, when there's a family emergency and you can't write, you don't tell yourself, you don't listen to your brain that says, well, you can never do it.

Obviously, you haven't done it before.

You're not gonna be able to do it Now, you don't listen to that. What you do is you say, I hear you, and I'm gonna do this again anyway, I keep getting up and I keep trying. Every time you fail, you get up and you move forward. I use the word fail, but I don't believe in the word failure anymore. I just use that for context because that's a word that so many of us use to describe our experience of not getting the result that we want. So if you're not getting the result that you want, it doesn't mean anything about you or your capabilities.

All it means is, hey, it's time to get up and keep going, to try something different, to try a new tact, and to not listen to your brain saying, no, you should just wait back for courage. It's up to us to sit in the driver's seat and direct our lives. And that's what I wanna encourage you to do with this episode. I don't want you to come back to your life 10 years from now, five years from now, 20 years from now, and say, boy, I really wish I had done this thing. I think that would've been really great. I really felt called to do it. And I just ignored it because I kept telling myself I didn't have time, I didn't have money, I didn't have the resources, I didn't have the energy. I kept telling myself all of these things, but gosh, you know, I could have found a way.

That's what creating courage is. It's finding a way. That's what it is required for you to change your life, to create what you want in your life. You find a way. Alright, my friend, I hope this gave you some food for thought. This was something that I needed to discover on my own, that things weren't just gonna come to me, right? My life wasn't just gonna present itself and say, ha, this is the path. It was going to require me to build the courage to do the things that I knew were difficult and to take those small actions in the direction I wanted to go. You cannot sit back and wait for courage. It's up to you to build the courage to build the life that you want. If you want help with this book a strategy session with me, you can go to dina cataldo.com/strategy session. You and I will talk about where you are right now and what your dreams are, and we'll talk about how you can begin to take those steps to move towards your dreams. So you can book that strategy session at dina cataldo.com/strategy session. I hope you have a beautiful week and I will talk to you next week.