THE BEST ME

BRAVERY

lesson 1: what is bravery?

bravery

If HOPE is perhaps the most important POWER STRENGTH, then BRAVERY is possibly the most difficult to master.
Why?
Because in order to be BRAVE you have to face your FEARS, and that isn't always easy to do.
But, you are going to learn how you can do this in this BRAVERY module.

what is fear?

Fear is an emotional response we have to a real or perceived threat.
We aren't talking about fear of things like flying, spiders or clowns here, they are phobias.  
Although both fear and phobias come from the same place; our thinking.
Fear can be a good thing, it can save your life if you sense danger, but we are not talking about that kind of fear either.
Instead we are talking about fears that get in the way of us doing things in life, e.g: fear of speaking out, fear of what someone might say, fear of not getting the result we want, fear of letting someone down, fear of trying something new, etc...
The type of fear that gets in the way of you being the BEST YOU.

fear and thinking

It is our thinking about a particular thing of situation that causes us to generate the emotion of fear within us (not the thing itself).
And because we have this understanding of how thought works, we know how to deal with fear.
And the first thing is, we need to know where the thinking is coming from.

fear- behind the scenes

If we take a look behind the scenes there are really only 2 fears.
Behind every single FEAR that you can think of lies either:
  • 1
    the fear of failing
  • 2
    the fear of the unknown

1. the fear of failing

We fear failing for a number of reasons:
  • 1
    we don't like looking stupid in front of other people
  • 2
    unconsciously we don't want to expend mental or emotional resources for an outcome we don't want
  • 3
    we don't want to feel that we aren't good enough
  • 4
    we don't want to feel that we aren't loved

2. the fear of the unknown

We fear the unknown because:
  • 1
    we like certainty, it makes us feel safe and secure
  • 2
    we may get into situations that we think that we can't cope with
  • 3
    not knowing what is going to happen makes us feel uncomfortable
  • 4
    we may try our best and it might not be enough

bravery and the path of life

As you can see below, we are going to need to use the POWER STRENGTH of BRAVERY quite a bit.
You need your BRAVERY to start your journey (with ZEST of course). 
You need your BRAVERY to overcome the challenges you face.
You need your BRAVERY to create and try the CREATIVE solutions you come up with.
You need your BRAVERY to act after FAILING- knowing that you might FAIL again.
You need to use your BRAVERY to live the life you want.
All of these involve dealing with the fear of failing or the fear of unknown.

3 steps to being brave

We have a 3-step process that is going to help you to access your BRAVERY:
  • 1
    learn to deal with the fear of failure
  • 2
    learn to deal with the fear of the unknown
  • 3
    learn to deal with fear itself
You will start learning these in the next lesson.

lesson complete

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