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Do You Have the Courage to Heal Yourself?
A Different Sort of Courage
Whether we are focused on healing our bodies, healing our society or healing the planet, we are being asked for a different sort of courage. This courage is being ask of all of us, from child to elder, from laborer to manager, from humble to wealthy.
This courage differs from the courage of the lone fighter, the hero risking death to save loved ones, the individualist going it alone to the heights of success. The courage to give yourself in death for what you believe has changed the world yet it is an unsustainable courage and it paralyzes growth and healing. Only by developing a courage steeped in nurturing, love and openness can we hope to heal ourselves and our world.
This different courage is about looking inward, rather than outward; about facing the demons inside our heads that may not lead to individual death but definitely lead to the death of human potential; about finding solutions that include and support even those we disagree with; about creating rather than destroying.
It is a question of expanding a woman’s natural instinct
Women know this courage in the context of their personal communities because of their biological charter as generators and nurturers of the human species. Their first instinct is to save and protect life within the bounds of their “circle of caring”: family, tribe, culture, religion, nation. This instinct to save, to connect, to nurture is the source of a new way of seeing and solving problems and a new way of experiencing the world. In this nurturing instinct we have the building blocks to create a new humanity that can achieve its genius in harmony with nature and each other.
What we must do is expand this instinct beyond the “circle of caring” and develop its potential into tools, beliefs, patterns of engagement and unconscious governors of our actions. This uses a different kind of courage that is willing to open, to include, to love, to grow, to change, to look inward to make a difference outward.
Can we shift a primal instinct?
In order to expand the nurturing instinct beyond the circle of caring we must address what is most scary about reaching out to someone who is outside the circle and thus is categorized as “other”. When we go beyond the boundaries of “us” into “them” we automatically wonder: what if their success is a threat to my existence? If I include them can we both survive? The thoughts are so scary that we are generally unaware that we have thought them and we unconsciously make the decision to protect our existence by denying them theirs. For what is more frightening to the mind than non-existence?
When I am assured of my survival then I can easily reach out to help others. When my survival is in doubt then my response is to close, to protect, to create barriers between me and the “other”, to take a stance of “me first” and create reasons why my survival is more important than theirs.
The basic questions are:
- Am I willing to develop the courage to hold my fear of non-existence at the same time I reach out to care beyond the circle?
- Am I willing to develop my self-concept so that I can respond from a place of openness, love, inclusion, and growth?
- Am I willing to use my new courage to open my eyes to the development of my potential and that of humanity’s?
- Am I willing to use my courage in the service of mindful questioning–questioning everything, from the place of heart and soul?
Drop me a line if you are curious about how developing your courage could make a difference in your health, your life, your world.
Women Don’t Do “Lone Ranger”
The Lone Ranger was actually one of my favorite characters as a child. Single-handedly righting wrongs, doing good and riding a horse; you couldn’t get much cooler than that. I carried that image into college and adulthood. Unfortunately, as keen as I was to do it all by myself and to do it my way, those beliefs only served to make anything I attempted that much harder.
It took me decades to realize that women prefer a group approach to doing just about anything. We love cooking together, watching the kids together, doing projects together, eating together. We even go to restrooms together! It also took me decades to realize that working with group support was more fun, more creative, more powerful.
I now enjoy mastermind groups for my business, workout groups for my exercise, walking groups for my dog walks. To be sure, I spend a lot of time thinking, being and doing on my own. However, when I need a breakthrough, when I need the support that is going to carry me over the hump, when I want to celebrate my progress, I turn to another powerful woman or group of women and we all get on the horse together to ride into the sunset.
I’m not opposed to inviting men into these groups; I’ve just found that many more women than men are comfortable in that space of unconditional support, collaboration and win-win thinking. My hope is that women will make a bigger effort to create these powerful experiences for their sons so they have a chance to model a different way of interacting and experiencing community.
So where are you? Still on the horse by yourself? Think about how you can add powerful support to your endeavors, especially your business. Going it alone only serves to postpone creating the thriving business and life that you truly desire. Share your journey now; don’t wait until you reach your destination to find your community.
Running From Safety
Here is Michael Katz’s newsletter on “Running From Safety”
He talks about what to do when we feel that fear in going forward with our business. Very well worth the read. And if you want to learn about writing worthwhile e-zine articles, Michael is the man to go to.
To subscribe to this newsletter, send an email with your request to: ContactUs@BluePenguinDevelopment.com
| Hello!Today’s newsletter is about fear of the unknown. And how giving in to it can keep you from the best experiences of your life (wow, heavy stuff man). Click here to listen to today’s edition (5 minutes, 29 seconds).Click here to subscribe via iTunes (will load iTunes Music Store).The permanent link for this newsletter is here.All the best,Michael J. KatzFounder and Chief Penguin |
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Running From Safety
Here’s what I’m usually not doing on a Saturday night: Sitting in a car for 90 minutes in a rundown section of an unfamiliar city, across the street from a seedy-looking bar. But that’s precisely what my wife Linda and I were up to this past weekend.
Here’s how it happened…
Over the past few years, my 17-year-old son, Evan, has learned to sing and play the guitar. He’s done a lot of high school-related shows, but in recent months, and as a way to gain more experience, he’s been doing his best to expand to other venues.
And so a few weeks ago, after doing some online research and exchanging e-mails with the owner of a place in nearby Worcester, Massachusetts, Evan managed to get himself booked as the warm-up act for a heavy metal band called “Aftermath.” (I suggested to Evan that maybe he could introduce himself that night as the band, “Math,” making the main act’s name the punch line to his own performance. He said that was dumb.)
Anyway, when Saturday night rolled around, and since I’d never actually seen Evan perform in public, Linda and I decided to go along and cheer him on.
All was going well … until we pulled up outside and got a look at the bar. Yikes. If the Cheers bar is the place “where everybody knows your name,” this establishment looked like the place where everybody steals your car.
But we were already there. So Evan grabbed his guitar, got out of the car and walked towards the front door, past a bunch of people hanging out along the sidewalk. Linda and I, meanwhile, stayed in the car, painfully aware that as a musician arriving at a gig, the only thing less cool than having your parents drop you off in a minivan, is for them to actually walk you in the door.
An hour and a half after they told Evan he would be playing (I don’t know why I assumed that rundown and seedy would somehow correlate with punctual), Evan texted us that he was ready to start. We said a final farewell to our hubcaps, locked the doors, paid the five dollar cover charge and walked in.
Big surprise. It was bigger and nicer inside than we expected. A couple of pool tables, a few couches, a wide dance floor with lights, and a huge bar that wrapped around an entire wall.
The people inside were even nicer. There were only about 25 yet at 10 p.m., but they cheered and clapped each time Evan finished a song. The older man next to me at the bar introduced himself (Samuel) and told us the history of the building. When Evan was done and it was time to settle up and leave, the bartender/owner, realizing we were Evan’s parents, gave us our drinks for free, “Since you guys had to drive all this way.”
Here’s the thing. If you had given me even half a chance to call the entire thing off while we were waiting outside in the car, I would have. But Evan had promised he’d play. And we’d already driven 40 minutes to get there. And it was too late to do anything else that night. So we went ahead with it.
I can’t tell you how glad I am that we didn’t figure out a way to leave and go safely back home. Because if we had, we would have missed one of the most unusual, enjoyable, fun evenings I can remember.
Running your own business is a lot like that. It’s scary. It’s filled with people you don’t know and situations you’ve never encountered. And there are plenty of days – I’ve lost count at this point – where you think maybe you should just turn around and run back to the perceived safety of a job.
Don’t do it.
First, because it’s a lot less safe over there than it seems … and a lot less dangerous over here than it feels. It’s less predictable out on your own, but no more risky.
Second, because everyone’s scared (even the people who appear to be successful), not just you. Some people are just better at hiding it. Try not to let that stop you.
And finally, because just by being over here, just by trying to figure out what you were meant to do and doing it, you’re already successful. Any regrets you ultimately have aren’t going to be about failure; they’re going to be about having been too afraid to give it a go.
Here’s the bottom line. I hate to think how ready I was to leave the other night, and how I could have missed the experience of walking into that bar, meeting all those people, and watching Evan play his music. I just hope I remember that the next time I have “one of those days.” (I hope you do too.)
P.S. To watch and listen to one of Evan’s songs from that night (courtesy of my iPhone), click here. (That’s Samuel clapping in the background.)
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