Beyond Fear

Coaching is a weird business.

Unlike a teacher or mentor who teaches you something you don’t yet know, the essential job of a coach is to help you recognize you already possess everything you need and embrace your hidden wholeness.

Coaches remind you that you are sufficient as you are, even as you strive to develop your potential.

After all, holding opposing or contradictory truths, like sufficiency and striving, is a defining quality of being a happy, healthy, and high-functioning human being.

And what’s the most essential virtue or asset clients already possess that they need to be reminded of, embrace, and leverage so they can fly higher in the difference only they can make?

Courage.

But what is courage really?

Courage is the mental fortitude or moral strength required to explore the edges of your understanding and ability, persevere in a worthwhile cause or campaign, or withstand danger or difficulty.

Put another way, courage is the opposite of fear.

But courage is a many splendored thing and much more than its dictionary definition.

Courage, as a noun (quality or idea), is all very well and good (and even interesting), but it’s the application of courage that makes a difference.

In other words, courage is more powerful when you treat it like a verb and do something with it.

How?

Every day we face moments, large and small, that require us to acknowledge and accept our angst, doubt, or terror and do something that should be done.

What if, just for today, you were to embrace your fate and stop being afraid of your fears, regrets, and anxieties?

Cultivating courage can help you do just that.

How might that change everything?

AND, in the spirit of contradictory truths, what are the things you should not do?

How might courage help you stop doing things that hold you back from or get in the way of stepping fully into your power to make the difference only you can make?

How can you leverage your inherent capacity for courage today? What would you do? What would you stop doing? How might that change how you show up for yourself and the people you care about today?

Scott Perry, Encore Life Coach at The Art of Encore Living

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