Bravery

To Be Brave

At first glance, the idea of being fearless sounds quite appealing, but imagine being so unafraid that you lose all discernment about situations that are actually painful or dangerous.

The truth is, I am not brave. Not in the slightest.

Living day by day really brought that truth home to me. There is no aspect of daily life, when it is an authentic expression of your soul, that does not bring you face to face with your deepest fears and survival mechanisms.

Are you afraid of being seen? Guess what? Your path will guide you there.

Are you afraid of responsibility? Well, your path will lead you right into facing it.

Are you afraid of being judged? Of being alone? Of being abandoned? Yep. You guessed it.

It is not that all your fears will manifest, to be clear. But you do have to be brave.

The challenge is that the version of you who currently exists cannot hold the fullness of your daily life and experiences. In order to step into the version of yourself who can fully live your life, you must unravel, heal, or release any patterns that prevent you from doing so.

This would be so much easier if fear were not involved. To be brave would be a simple thing if there were no fear.

But fear keeps us safe. It acts as the membrane wrapped around many of our behaviors and patterns. It is the mechanism that warns us when we are stepping out of our comfort zones and into parts of ourselves we have made off-limits. Fear is what makes us brave.

If the parts of you that you have sealed off are essential for the full expression of your soul, you will be led straight to them.

So, if the spirit of your heart is guiding you to be seen, there is no way around that. There is no way to be seen without actually being seen. Trust me, I have tried. There is no magical, overnight transformation into a person who is comfortable being seen. You simply have to step into it, over and over again.

Every single time.

Changing the pattern requires walking through the fear, not once, but repeatedly.

Each time you step into the unknown, you will feel as though you are on the brink of collapse. It will bring up panic so intense that you will question everything about your life. You will want to run away. You will want to give up on the whole thing. Your desires will seem insignificant and foolish. You will long for the comfort of your safety bubble.

And yet, you must keep going.

Does it get easier?

Yes and no. It gets easier because you will start to realize that this is the path. The idea that once the fear subsides you can return to your comfort zone will begin to dissipate. You will start to understand that this fear is actually the gauge for your personal expansion. The only way forward is to walk hand-in-hand with it.

You will become more comfortable with the fear itself, no longer letting it control you.

But if you are asking whether it ever stops being scary, the answer is no.

You are not moving from one extreme to another. You are not going from zero to one hundred. Instead, you are going from zero to one. Then from one to two. Then from two to three. Each step is into the unknown. Your world is expanding incrementally.

Each new step will feel just as scary as the last because it still involves walking through fear.

However, you will grow more adept at it.

You will become the kind of person who sees the fear, acknowledges it, and says, “I know what this is, and I will keep going anyway.”

You will begin to understand that, although it feels terrifying in the moment, it will eventually feel better. You will simply carry on until you reach that point.

As you continue to face your fears, you will build a body of experience that shows you the powerful rush that comes once you break through the edge of your own fear membrane. The voice inside you telling you to keep going will grow louder and louder. The exhilaration becomes a memory that you can hold on to.

You will start to become the person who does the terrifying things, regardless of how you feel.

You will not stop.

This is true bravery. This is true courage.

And bravery is a million times more valuable than being free from fear in the first place.

I cannot count the number of times I have wished that I could turn off the fear switch in my brain. Stepping into something that scares me feels excruciating. My entire body wants to stop me from moving forward. In those moments, the only thing that I can do is trust the version of myself who made the decision to step forward, even when fear was not in the picture.

Trust the version of you who was fearless, who was aligned and excited to take the leap.

It is that version of you that you must trust when your mind is in a panic, when your palms are sweating, and when you find yourself thinking, “I would rather be anywhere else but here right now.”

Keep going.

Eventually, you will start to feel the energy of your heart path flowing through you in these moments. It will be faint at first, because if it were stronger, you wouldn’t be feeling the fear in the first place. But you will feel it.

Soon, you will find yourself at the edge, feeling both the terror and the trust side by side.

Eventually, you will realize that you can choose, and despite the irrationality, you will choose trust.

And then, again and again, you will choose trust.

But the fear never fully disappears.

So, you learn to keep going.

You and your brave heart.

You will continue to step into the unknown.

Because you know that the version of yourself who exists beyond that fear is everything you have ever wanted, and everything you have ever dreamed of. The comfort of safety will no longer appeal to you when you realize that the true adventure is in running, tripping, trembling, and soaring headfirst into the arms of your own becoming.