Know your fear - and ride it out with personal courage

When you think back to the last time you were faced with a challenge to do or to say something you knew you should, and you chickened out, what sort of thoughts and feelings come to mind? Do you feel guilty and a failure for your lack of personal courage? Do you secretly call yourself a coward? Do you regret not having done or said what needed to be done or said, and the consequences which followed?

Cowards and heroes - what are they all about?

'Coward' is a real bogey word, isn't it? The steady diet of individual heroism fed to us by Hollywood action blockbusters, non-stop TV dramas and best-seller thrillers gives the impression that life is all about heroics. Facing down the big bad guys, battling through the dangers of the wild world out there. No cowards there. Courage? They've got it in spades.

Be brave - don't write yourself off as a coward

So when you can't find the courage to tell that rude clerk at the post-office counter what you really think of their behaviour because your heart is pounding too hard at the thought of what they might say back, it's easy to write yourself off as a wimp. And once you've started to do that, it seems that more and more things scare the living daylights out of you. It begins to feel like you can't take a risk with anything.

Learn to distinguish the myth of courage from the reality of courage

But of course the Hollywood action heroes are not real people facing real challenges. They are fiction. Those who save the planet, defend your country, rescue someone from death scenarios are not very likely to come your way. And when they do, experience shows that major crisis situations often carry people right out of their ordinary sense of themselves. Fear may just not come into it, or even be noticed till afterwards.

Ordinary life demands more than ordinary courage

For most of us, most of the time, the challenges are quite ordinary. Like taking a stand. Or facing down a bully. Being ready to speak out on something we feel strongly about or to intervene to help someone in trouble. Leaving that safe (but maybe dull) job and doing something new. Risking making a mistake and getting laughed at. Even facing rejection when we don't go along with the majority view.

What you really need courage for - and where to get it

It's not about being prepared to risk your life (usually), but about risking your 'identity' - your sense of who you are and who those around you think you are. Being prepared to change the received 'definition' of who you are and what you are capable of. And the truth is that pounding heart and shaky limbs are very appropriate physiological responses to such a challenge. You need courage in a very real sense to take such a step.

And where do you get courage when there is (probably) no 'crisis situation' to carry you through?

Well, it's like everything else in life. You practice.

Facing up to fear - finding the courage within

Eleanor Roosevelt had this to say about it: We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot.(emphasis added)

And that brave lady (she's the one who also said: No one can make you feel inferior without your consent) stands in a long line which stretches all the way back to the Greek philosophers. Aristotle himself said: Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts. (emphasis added)

Starting out on the road to more courageous living

But where do you start? If you've got a string of experiences behind you where you're all too keenly aware of having demonstrated less courage than you thought the situation demanded, you may doubt that you'll do any better the next time you face a challenge. And you won't feel like going looking for one.

Paradoxically, having a set of such memories is the very resource you need to begin to build your personal courage. With this material - actual situations that you have personally experienced and whose outcome was not what you would have wanted - you have a set of real life scenarios that you can use to bring about deep change inside yourself.

How hypnosis can help you build your personal courage

You can do this both easily and effectively through using simple hypnotic techniques. Personal courage is a courage-focused deep hypnosis session structured to help you develop the resources within you that enable you to courageously face life's challenges, be they small or big.

Personal courage takes your own experiences as the starting point for change. Using deep relaxation, powerful metaphor and hypnotic rehearsal techniques, you will learn how to transform past and future encounters with difficult situations. You will learn to understand the role of fear - and not to be afraid of feeling it.

Download Personal courage and never let fear stand in your way again.