And we all run into that brick wall of not wanting to.
You know the feeling—when you’ve been pursuing some goal, chasing a dream, and it just seems as though doors keep closing in your face. Or, you keep failing at whatever task you’re trying to master. Or your competition, foe, antagonist, whatever lies before you just looms like a monster in your path.
Those days when life seems, well, just bigger than you are.
We all have those times.
We also know that when they show up, we have two choices—to forge ahead, or quit.
Because life is never stagnant, and when you do nothing, the tides sweep you swiftly and surely out to sea.
So what to do when the obstacle seems insurmountable, but you know you have to face it anyway?
5 Keys for how to be Brave and Confident in any Situation:
- Stop and breathe.
Get to the stillness of your core, where wisdom and strength and courage lie. Because they are there, in all of us. Buried, perhaps, under all the muck accrued through the living of life, but there nevertheless. Some have greater measures of these virtues than others, but that’s almost always due to having fought more battles in the first place.
- Remember when you’ve faced similar foes (even though those might have been in different circumstances or endeavors).
Because you’ve fought some good fights, no? Everyone has succeeded somewhere in life, so take the time to draw on those victories. Feel how that felt. Go back to the time when you mastered that task, and really feel it. Smell it, taste it, hear what happened around you.
Re-experiencing the emotions surrounding previous success is key. Not only does doing so flood you with feel-good hormones, but you remember into the cells of your body that yep, by god, you have succeeded before.
- Remember that to “fail,” to “be afraid,” to want to run at times is part and parcel of being human. Very few (if any) people are born being brave. It’s a learned trait. And you learn it by being afraid in the first place. If nothing ever scared you, you wouldn’t have had to learn to be brave.
As Morihei Ueshiba, a martial artist and founder of the Japanese martial art of Aikido said, “Iron is full of impurities that weaken it; through forging, it becomes steel and is transformed into a razor-sharp sword. Human beings develop in the same fashion.”
- Marshall your forces.
What traits do you already have that serve you well in this circumstance? What are the ones that you still need to learn/master?
Just the act of breaking this down into parts brings courage. Because you already have learned much on this path of life, no? You bring to the table the tools and weapons forged through the experiences that have made you who you are today.
And if you’ve learned before, you can again now. So identify what’s missing on your quest, and make a plan to master the skills still needed.
- Redirect and reframe.
Take all of that fearful energy (which is powerful indeed) and redirect it to the task at hand. Reframe your thoughts of “I may fail. This is scary,” etc., to “You know what? I just may succeed here.”
Because until you try, you can’t possibly know that you’ll fail.
As author and publisher of The Daily Motivator Ralph Marston said, “You’ve done it before and you can do it now. See the positive possibilities. Redirect the substantial energy of your frustration and turn it into positive, effective, unstoppable determination. ”
How do you face the tiger at the gate?
