Episode 124 of Here to Thrive, and I'm talking courage over fear. Courage. I feel like it's a word that gets thrown around a lot these days in the self-improvement space, and I really want to break it down a little bit more and talk about why I believe courage leads to a good life, how a growth mindset can help us become that much more courageous, how stretch goals help us grow, and then the inevitable disappointment that we need to manage sometimes when we are stretching beyond our comfortable edges. So stay tuned for more.
Welcome to Here to Thrive. I'm your host, Kate Snowwise. This is a podcast for people who are ready to step up and live a happier life. It's for those of us who are dedicated to understanding ourselves and getting the best that we can out of this thing called life.
It's a mix of psychology and modern spiritual thought, always with a focus on practical advice so that you can take it back and apply it to your own life. I don't believe we're here to merely survive. I truly believe we're here to thrive. So let's get going.
Before we launch in, I want to thank you for the reviews you leave. I didn't know this, but apparently it's true that those reviews really matter in the podcast rankings and in iTunes, being able to decide or not whether or not this is a show they will promote. So please, you're doing me a massive favor when you leave those positive reviews, and they mean so very much to me. That is going to help more people discover Here to Thrive.
So if you haven't yet left a review and Here to Thrive has had a positive impact on the way you view life or the way you're thinking about things, it would mean so much to me if you could take a moment after listening today to go and do that for me. Let's talk courage. Courage over fear. What is courage?
Specifically to me, it is the idea of choosing courage over comfort. I'm a personal believer that your boldest and brightest life, your highest potential, lives outside your comfort zone. I don't think this ride through life is meant to be easy. I think we're designed to challenge ourselves in order to truly grow.
Now, Brene Brown, who I best attribute that phrase to, courage over comfort, her quote reads, we can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can't have both, not at the same time. Now, I want to define courage. In the quote a minute type of way, to me, courage is not the absence of fear, but moving ahead in spite of your fear. The actual quote came from Franklin Roosevelt when he said, courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than your fear.
Do you see how hard I'm trying to say that word, by the way? Fear? It's hard when I don't say my R's properly. I like that quote.
I like that it recognizes that something is more important than your fear and worth moving towards even though it's going to be uncomfortable to do so. Now, this to me is a key differentiator between, say, happiness or hedonistic joy in the moment, feel good, and fulfillment, which is about sometimes doing the hard thing that is worth it. Courage is doing the hard thing that is worth it. Now, Elizabeth Gilbert, she's the lady that wrote Eat, Pray, Love, in case you're not familiar, she talks about putting fear in the backseat of the car and not allowing it to be a driving force in your life.
As she's acknowledged in her own journey, the fear has always been near. It's just that she has relegated it to the backseat. She hasn't allowed it to be a primary driver in her life and to thwart her creativity. For me, courage is inextricably linked with fear.
That's why this episode is called Courage Over Fear. Courage is only possible if it's scary. Courage is only possible when you're uncertain, scared, and nervous. As Brene Brown's quote illustrates, courage and comfort are incompatible.
To be courageous, you have to be uncomfortable. For me, gosh, I feel like I've been practicing courage over comfort again and again over the last six years since I moved to the USA. This has been something that forced me out of my comfort zone, and it's been a giant lesson in managing my own fear and discomfort and moving ahead anyway. The perfect training ground.
To give you some examples, it's still really nerve-wracking for me to show up and record these podcasts week after week and put them out there into the world for you all to listen to and possibly judge. That takes courage. I am far from immune to judgment. Fear is there, but I don't let it drive me.
Another example is meeting new friends. Moving to the USA required me to move through my fear, and truly, now I'm actually pretty good at it. I've never been as well connected in my entire life. The other day, I organized a little community get-together where I live.
We have 50 houses in our community, and most of us have never been connected to one another, and I was scared out of my wits doing that. I didn't want to knock on the doors of random neighbors I didn't know and check that they were okay for us to meet in the cul-de-sac in front of their house. That was so far from comfortable for me. I literally had to psych myself up, and I procrastinated, I'll be honest, but I pulled it off in the end, and people in our neighborhood were so, so very grateful that I did that.
One more example for you of how I show up every day and have to practice courage. Last week, I was attending an amazing women's leadership summit. It's called Women on Point. Shameless plug for them, but it's not a paid plug, but I am one of their executive coaches, but this was hands down the most impressive program I have seen.
Loved every moment of it. I'll put a link in the show notes if you want to check them out some more, but I had to put my fear aside of walking into a room of 27 women I didn't know and put on my confident persona. You've all been there. You know when you channel that side of yourself that is way more confident than the standard version of you?
Now, I don't see that as being inauthentic. It is me pushing aside my nerves and fear so that I can step into my potential. It's about recognizing who I want to be and how I want to be viewed. For me, that's someone who is warm and friendly and welcoming.
I value those attributes, but it's often a very conscious effort for me to bring them out. It's not that they aren't within me. It's just that I have to get through my barriers around being a little bit socially restrained or shy. So it doesn't come super easily to me, but it is a part of me that I can choose to express.
So life requires courage. Stepping into our potential requires courage. Living in alignment with our values and the principles that we believe are virtuous in others. It requires courage.
Some of that may not come easily, but it's always worth it. But how can we become more courageous? For me, mindset has played a crucial element in this. The other one is choosing consciously to make myself uncomfortable.
Let me explain this a little further. Some of you may have heard of the concept of having a growth mindset. Now, this idea was popularized and researched by the psychologist Carol Dweck. She found that having a mindset and the associated self-talk that when you don't succeed, that you're growing.
It helps people to persist. It helps us bounce back. And we do that much better in the long run. It's about recognizing that even if you don't win, you're learning and bettering yourself.
And this has been a vital mindset shift for me. This shift has helped me recognize that it's not always about the outcome or the exact thing that I am trying to achieve, but what I'm learning and how I am developing in the pursuit of my goals, what I'm developing and learning on the way, it's who I am becoming through being courageous. That to me is growth. You can call it personal growth.
You could call it soul growth or learning life's lessons, whatever resonates with you. But coming back to this concept that I'm growing and learning, even when it's hard, it has kept me so grounded and resilient through the challenges I faced in my life. So that is the growth mindset piece. I also believe that courage comes from what Renee Brown said, choosing courage over comfort.
You don't need to wait to be thrown out of your comfort zone. The most courageous people instead willingly choose to set intentions and goals that they know are going to challenge them. We stretch ourselves and purposely step outside that comfort zone into the scary. They're often called setting stretch goals, and I think that's a really good way to think of it.
It's about stretching that zone of comfort. Now, I'm far from doing this flawlessly, but I can recognize how far I have come in this regard. I now label the emotions like fear and nervousness and pushing myself as indications of a good thing, that I'm challenging myself, that I am stretching my edges. It's still scary for me, and this is where the courage back comes in, but I know that ultimately, I'm growing.
When I need an extra boost, I will bring it to mind some of the times where I have felt deeply uncomfortable, but have accomplished great things through it. The rush I felt afterwards and the confidence I gained, I bring that to mind when I need it. It's one of the great ironies, I feel like, of confidence in that to become more confident, you typically have to push outside your comfortable or confident zone, and you probably do have to put yourself in situations where you feel unconfident, and I even Google search, you know, that unconfident is legitimately a word, but that you do have to put yourself in situations where you don't feel confident for you to gain more. So how do we become more courageous?
We can choose to have that growth mindset. We can choose to see that we are growing through our challenges, and we can choose to stretch ourselves outside of our comfort zone intentionally. But what happens when you do that? When you're outside your comfort zone, when you take a risk, when you put yourself out there and you fail, or you get deeply disappointed and knocked back by life?
I've been here on my journey so many times. I feel like so often we just see the glossy version of what is in front of us, but every single person who is daring enough to put themselves out there is not going to win every time. I've gone to networking events and felt like a fraud. I've slipped into the background and wanted to be eaten up by the world.
I have submitted articles to places that I was nervous to put out there, only to hear nothing back and feel completely deflated, might I add. But I do have to say, if you're interested in writing, this gets way easier the more you do it, I promise. I've also had rough feedback as a career person that I took super personally and wondered if I just sucked at everything, a globalization issue here. And I've had high hopes of having certain paths in life work out.
I've had my mindset on a relationship or a program of study that I thought I wanted that didn't work out. We've all had these moments of disappointment. And how can we apply courage when it's not about stretching ourselves out of our comfort zone, but about picking up the pieces after we took the risk? This is where I apply the mindset hacks that I shared with you just before.
If I receive feedback now, I'm still not unfazed. I'm not cool as a cucumber, but I literally choose to see it through the filter of the growth mindset. I need the feedback in order to reach my potential. And it's only through feedback that I can grow and improve.
Now, what about taking that risk? Especially when I talk to my clients, those creative risks where you feel vulnerable. You send the article somewhere, you start the business you've dreamt of, or you're manifesting like a crazy lady, and it doesn't work out like you hoped or planned, or at least not on the timeline you envisioned. You have to remember that this doesn't mean that you suck.
It's part of the process of growth. You have to get back up and keep going. Getting back up says more about you than trying. If you have a dream in your heart, this is a friendly reminder to keep pursuing it.
You will become the person who's capable of it, but don't be so obsessed with your destination that you don't enjoy the journey and all of the ways you're growing in the interim. And for those situations where you've had your heart set on something, you may have heard me say it before, but I have a couple of strong beliefs or mantras that keep me grounded and help me pick up the pieces when it hurts. Mine are, nothing that's truly meant for me will ever miss me, and I'm growing into the woman that is ready to receive this dream. So to summarize this podcast with the cliff note version and the specific action points that you can take away to embed the principles, in the context I've discussed courage today, I see it as about moving forward towards the person you want to be, towards your potential and your goals, even though it may be outrageously uncomfortable to do so.
You can become more courageous by having a growth mindset and by actively choosing courage over comfort. And sometimes it hurts to be courageous. Sometimes not everything goes just as you hoped. Please know that's part of the process of growth.
You're still learning and growing, even if it is not how you hoped. And the most important part, the thing that sets you apart from the others, is how you get back up. Now, the actions you can focus on to embed some of the teachings from this podcast, this is where it might be useful to get a notebook or open the notes section on your phone and scribble down these points. I encourage you to identify stretch goals that you know will personally challenge you and take you close to the person you aspire to be.
Do one thing that stretches you at least every three months. That's my own personal mission. I do one thing every three months that is uncomfortable, and I do it intentionally. The second point is I encourage you to do some research on a growth mindset.
Watch some videos, Google Netit, Carol Dweck's work is super famous, but it's truly something that once you understand it, it can be like a switch that flicks. It can change how you view the world and make you instantly more resilient and courageous. And then my final point, bring to mind those times that you stretch yourself and were deeply uncomfortable, but you gained something. Maybe make a note of them so you can refer back to them, especially when you need that extra boost of confidence or a piece of resilience to help you move forward.
You could keep these in a journal, slightly different idea, but some coaches recommend wins journals or a brag book. But I want you to think about times that you've challenged yourself and done something that you might have thought was beyond you initially and succeeded. Those are the ones you've got to bring to mind. This last bit, less of an action and more of an important point to remember.
If you are dealing with disappointment, if you are finding it hard to feel courageous and pick yourself back up, you're allowed to feel sad. But remember that your power comes from getting back up when you're ready. You grow by trying, by getting knocked down and not giving up. That's how you grow strong.
That's how you get a resilient spirit. The path to your dreams or your best life or your potential, it's not supposed to be a walk in the park. Expect it to be more like the hero or the heroine's journey. Expect the stumbles, expect the rejection, expect the tough feedback and know that it is all helping you to hone your gifts.
It's helping you develop the skill and expertise to own your greatest dreams. You're in training and disappointment's part of the game. Changing things up a little bit, I have a really personal story to share with you and ask. A very close friend of mine and her daughter are on their way as we speak to Houston from New Zealand for a groundbreaking immunotherapy trial at Texas Children's Hospital.
That's right, children's. And if you don't know anything about immunotherapy, that is treatment for cancer, and it's a groundbreaking treatment. We do not know if it will work. When I think of courage, I think of little Nora.
She is the most courageous person I have ever met. In New Zealand, the Childhood Cancer Foundation gives up beads of courage for every single procedure that a child facing cancer has to go through. Nora already has 850 beads of courage. The reason I tell you this and I share this personal story of Nora and the battle to save her life is that she's coming from New Zealand to have medical care in America that we are all hoping will save her life.
But aside from that, it is advancing the state of cancer treatment for everyone that comes after her. She is the trial. She is the trial. The answer I have is that Nora and her family need your support.
They need straight up the money to help pay for this care, which is going to be over $100,000 American dollars. New Zealand has already rallied behind Nora in amazing ways, but she's not at the target she needs yet to be able to pay for this medical treatment. I have included a link to the Give A Little page in the show notes for this episode. You can also find it in my website at thrive.how forward slash Nora, N-O-R-A.
It would mean so much to me if you could leave whatever you can afford there to help Nora and her family get to the States and not have to worry about paying the bills. I'm personally flying down to Houston tomorrow to get Nora off the plane so that her blood can be drawn and they can start making T-cells or genetically engineering her own cells to try and fight her cancer. And they will put the cells back in next month. All of your hopes, prayers, wishes, thoughts, they matter.
But please, if you can donate any small amount to advance this research and to help Nora, it would mean so much. So she needs a little over $200,000 in New Zealand currency. I feel like after talking about Nora, it feels even more important to finish up as I always do and say, keep thriving, beautiful people. Go out and keep thriving.
Go out and keep thriving.