How To Become Courageous In Business And Life As A Woman
In business and life we need courage. Courage is the stepping stone and the gateway resource that leads to more and more success. Luckily courage isn’t a one time endowment where you either have it or you don’t, like, forever! In this week’s blog learn How To Become Courageous In Business And Life As A Woman and download the free e-Guide Rewire Your Brain For Courage And Success here.
1. Write Down Examples of Past Challenging Successes And Affirm Them
The brain’s negativity biases causes us to focus on and over emphasize failures or other types of bad experiences. The brain is hard-wired to absorb and quickly remember negative experiences as well as potential threats due to this negativity bias, while on the other hand it easily forgets positive experiences. According to neuropsychologist, brain expert and New York Times Best Seller of the book Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science Of Contentment, Calm And Confidence, Rick Hanson there is a part of our brain called the amygdala that “uses about two-thirds of its neurons to look for bad news,” and locks down on this negativity once it finds it. It is all in an effort to protect us from danger even if the danger isn’t actually real. He says that the brain is like velcro for negative experiences (i.e. it sticks to them and quickly imprint them in your brain) and teflon for positive ones (teflon is the material made in non stick pots … so quickly drops off!!). So I will stop with all the brain information now because I know it can bore a lot of people but all I can say is wow! The brain sets us up for this incessant focus on negativity like fear and failure. The good news is that we have the ability to re-wire the brain, but it takes work, consistency and effort. I know however, that you powerhouse ladies are up for the challenge. This powerful first tip that I am sharing with you on writing down examples of past challenges and affirming them will help you to do what Rick Hanson says will re-wire our brain towards positivity by using the process of “taking in the good.” We have so many good experiences and successes in life but since we forget them quickly and spend more time ruminating on our mistakes and failure, we will be intentional about letting this good fact of what we have done sit with us as a positive experience. The process of writing it down helps us to focus on the event and process the positive experiences associated with it. As you feel and think about the positive experience my dear friend, don’t rush out of it, sit with it for a minute or two and remember how challenging it was, remember the grit, remember your courage, remember your fiery determination that was the fuel to get you through. Allow these positive facts and the actions that you took become a good experience in your brain and savor it for for at least a minute. View this as a type of active meditation practice. Then you can make this positive memory into a short affirmation and repeat it regularly to consistently remind yourself of actual evidence and real life facts supporting how truly amazing, brilliant and unstoppable you are. I have found that supplementing my affirmation practice with the badass things I have done in the past really helps me to believe I have what it takes to repeat those actions again in the future. So try it and I celebrate you as well for taking this step.
2. Create Courage Momentum
We have all learned about Newton’s first law of motion that states that an object in motion will stay in motion but did you realize that he also said that an object at rest remains at rest? So if you are paralyzed by fear, the best anti-dote is to get moving!! Get in action, with self-love as your basis. If you don’t move the law says you will stay frozen, but every step forward you take in action begins to melt the binding power of fear from your life. I recently procrastinated from having a tough discussion and finally got fed up with not doing anything and said to myself at this point “you know what, I don’t even care about the outcome, I just need to have the talk to be able to look myself in the mirror with integrity because I knew that if I wasn’t walking my talk, my own self-trust and subsequently self-confidence would be affected.” Once I had the conversation, I had the most exhilarating flow of energy that propelled me to take action on quite a few other things over the next few days and weeks. This was the power of momentum. I did a hard thing and once the hardest thing was done, all the other things that I had to do was like cake walk. The most surprising thing was that I didn’t even get the answer that I wanted to get after having the conversation, and it didn’t matter, I didn’t die and the momentum that happened after taking that one action had a ripple effect that was way better than one teeny tiny outcome.
I tell you my own story to encourage you to take action! To support you in this action taking process, I have decided to create a totally free 21 Day Courageous Women Challenge from February 9th to 29th! It will be a temporary pop up group of ladies who want to get 2020 on the right track and create momentum for an amazing year of BREAKTHROUGH! January will be over soon and the New Year’s goal/vision/resolutions hype-wave will be mostly over, so the rest of us that are serious about creating a new year and the best life for ourselves will rise our heads above the noise and GET IT! I will blog more about it in the upcoming weeks and post a lot about it on my instagram but if you want to participate, sign up for my email list and you can get all of the details leading up to the kick-off!
3. Preparation
Success is when opportunity meets preparation. We are strategic ladies, so yes we work on our mindset and prime our emotions to support our goals but we are also tactical as well and know that we need to DO THE WORK that it takes to succeed and win!! So we dig in and do the research to get best practices in our field that work, we take every measure possible to prepare and then we practice i.e. rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. However we do step out on center stage fairly quickly because we have to take action recognizing that done is better than perfect. Read my blog Secret Strategies Powerful Women Use To Overcome Perfectionism and Build Courage for more information on Overcoming Perfectionism (and yes this one is another blog!).
We don’t allow ourselves to be sabotaged by perfectionism but we draw a line in the sand refuse to get stuck in analysis paralysis and over preparation without actually executing. We go from mindset work to planning and preparation and quickly to execution! It’s all about the LEAN START UP mentality (yes, that’s me always finding a way to drop my book recommendations!! lol)
4. Learn To Live In Your Duality
Many of us are not able to own our strengths as women because we are not willing to embrace our weaknesses or maybe we have over identified with our weaknesses and made it our identity rather than putting it in the right perspective as just a part of the FULL story of who we really are. The full story of who we are is that we are complex, beautiful, yet messy creatures that are full of paradoxes.
Let’s allow ourselves to embrace our beautiful mess aka our “DUALITY” in the words of Lisa Nichols world renowned New York Times best seller, motivational speaker, CEO and transformational leadership coach. Whenever we step up to play big in the world, we will encounter obstacles and failures but it isn’t about how we fall but about how we rise. Maya Angelou says and still I rise, out of a past that is rooted in pain I rise, leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise. Into a daybreak that is wondrously clear I rise. Bringing the dream that my ancestors gave, I rise. I am the dream and the hope of the slave, I rise. I rise. I rise. Keep rising, because a clear daybreak is on your horizon. Keep rising because you are someone's hope and dream. Keep rising, because your power isn’t in how you fall but in how you rise up. So it’s time to get back up again and live as whole integrated person.
When we own our brilliance, we can own our imperfections. When we own our strengths, we can also own our weaknesses. When we own our faith, we can also acknowledge our doubts. When we enjoy our laughing we can also allow the crying. When we can embrace our glory we can also recognize the shame. Embrace all of you.
Celebrate your wins but never over identify with the failures. Give yourself permission to recognize your brilliance without allowing the ego to trick you into impossible perfectionism. In our imperfection is our beauty.
Living in your duality is embracing ALL of you!
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