How to Find Your Inner Courage

Every day we have to make many choices, some of them more difficult than others. These choices can affect everything from our financial and spiritual realms to our family and work relations. When it comes to making these choices, we can either act courageously, stepping into our power, speaking our truth and letting these situations empower us, or we can act in fear, or weakness. When we act courageously, accepting the fear we feel and allowing it to invigorate us and challenge us, rather than impede us or limit us, we not only face our challenges and grow from them, but we also grow our self-confidence and self-esteem by acting in an empowering manner. When we act out of fear and cower to our challenges and our doubts, or let our past experiences dictate our present and future, that is when our self-confidence and self-esteem shrink. When we feel weak, it is more difficult to fight off negative self-talk, which in turn prevents us from living the lives we wish to lead. The negative self-talk has a habit of building upon itself, sometimes starting from the very moment you wake up. We need to break this habit of self-sabotage, even if it is by one courageous act at a time.

To combat our fears, our worries, our doubts, our limitations, and our past, we must become courageous warriors of love. When we make the mental switch from victim to warrior, we make the choice to fight, not only for ourselves, but the greater good of all. As courageous warriors, we will no longer allow our past experiences, patterns, or problems to have any control over us. Instead, we look to the divine power within for strength. And when you begin to see every other person as a divine being, and every experience as a divine experience, you will begin to understand that every challenge you have faced was actually an opportunity to become stronger, smarter, more experienced, or connected. You will see that these challenges were really chances to evolve, and what you used to consider moments of fear, pain or despair, you now see as moments in which you found love, courage, inspiration and trust. It is important to remember that fear no longer has a place in your life. As a courageous warrior of love, we must cut through our fear and act in courage so as to make our choices in our power, rather than let our automatic pilot guide us back into our old patterns. We must not allow fear to disguise itself either. We must be able to perceive it underneath all of its masks: uncertainty, doubt, worry, dread, self-criticism. Instead, when confronted by challenges, you remind yourself that you are strong, powerful and worthy and you will face the challenge with all of your being, and allow it to build you up, rather than break you down. And when we are confronted by our fears, we can no longer avoid, ignore or try to push through them. Instead, we must embrace our fears for what they are: misperceptions about past experiences that resulted from the challenges we had to face in order to grow and become the people we are now. And when you embrace your fears, you remove their power over you, allowing you to act with courage and confidence in areas where you may have previously experienced worry or doubt.

A key aspect of courage is confidence. There are several different types of confidence out there, and we tend to confuse or interchange their definitions. Confidence, as we tend to think of it, is applied to situations or circumstances. You are confident that you can get you work done. You are confident that everything will work out in the end. The problem with this confidence is that you are placing the power in something else. In these scenarios, you are giving your power away to the results of a situation. Self-confidence, on the other hand, is the belief in one's self. It is the belief in one's own strength, capabilities, worthiness and connectedness. Both confidence and self-confidence are necessary, but we need to understand them better. And in understanding them better, we will learn to distinguish confidence and self-confidence from false confidence. False confidence comes from the ego and is meant to trick us into thinking that we are okay, that we should stay in our comfort zone. The ego is trained from a young age to have us believe that we are all separate from one another, that we are individuals, that we don't need anyone else. Your ego may even have you thinking that you are better than everyone else. That is the negative false confidence. As a courageous warrior of love, you understand that we are all one. Helping
another is helping yourself. And this brings us to the fourth type of confidence: Divine Confidence. Divine confidence can never be taken from you and it's not something you have to go searching for, it is within your soul. It is the confidence you feel when you know yourself, your purpose, and that you are confidently living your mission and your truth in this world. Finding your truth is key to unlocking the door to this divine confidence. When you are blind to this truth, you only have your limited human willpower. When you are open to it, and act in accordance with it, you are acting in alignment with the universe. We must first begin to understand that we are both human and divine. Then, when we understand this, we will see how our lives make perfect sense, how every challenge is really the growth of our soul, and how no moment is more important than the present. We know we are part of a divine plan, and we choose to walk that path with confidence. This can then release us from all of our past pains, traumas, sabotages and experiences, as we realize that these experiences were some of the building blocks for who we are today. True courage, however, stems from more than just strength and confidence. True courage comes from being the true, genuine expression of yourself. When you act with faith in the universe, you are no longer limited by your beliefs, fears, doubts, or past, instead you feel a new freedom as you walk your path, knowing that you will face all challenges with courage, because they are chances for you to grow. As you establish true faith and divine confidence, your freedom, courage and renewed joy will serve as expressions of your alignment with this higher frequency.

The next step is to simply surrender. To let go of everything we were, or thought we were. We must let go of our past to live in the present. Many of our past thoughts, beliefs, decisions and actions only serve to keep us in our comfort zone. So instead we must learn to become accountable and responsible for our past, understanding, learning and moving through our past experiences, rather than getting stuck in them, or letting them limit us in the now. Once
we have moved past the experiences, by letting go of our excuses, justifications, reasons, who was right or wrong, good or bad, then we can see how much we have grown from them. This isn't as easy as it sounds. Our egos hold us back, wanting to blame others or assume a victim role. But we have made the choice to be courageous warriors now, and we no longer make excuses, we instead choose to learn as much from each and every experience as we can and then move on. We choose to believe that all of the things in our lives happened for a greater reason, even the darkest moments. We choose to think this way, because we know we cannot experience true inner peace if our heart is still closed. So we act in forgiveness, rather than resentment, because it takes true courage to forgive someone for wronging you. It only takes weakness to harbor resentment.

As a courageous warrior of love, you must also love yourself. You must embrace every part of yourself, including your past, because it is a part of you, and when you truly embrace it, you become complete. And when you are complete, you are fully in the present, no longer looking through the eyes of your wounded inner child. In the present, you will find your courage and confidence in abundance as you look to make the best out of every situation. You also have
an inspired vision, a trust in this universe that you are walking your path. This vision comes not only from your trust, but also your faith, courage and confidence that everything in your past has prepared you for the moment in the present you are in right now. You let this vision inspire you to rise above your daily challenges and it supports you in making extraordinary decisions and taking extraordinary actions. Let this vision come from within you, and trust and believe in it with both courage and confidence.

1. Say "no" to three people who make requests of you. Affirm to yourself that it is perfectly safe to say no. Feel empowered by saying no.
2. Go out and get rejected several times. Make ridiculous requests of people to learn to face rejection with grace, ease and joy. And then thank them for allowing you to ask for their assistance.
3. Write a "blame" letter to someone who wronged you. Don't hold back. (Do not send the letter, discuss it with someone close to you, if you like.)
4. Communicate something to someone that you have been too afraid to before.
5. Find three people you would like to make amends with and whether by email, phone or mail, apologize and send them your love.