How time flies. The first half of January is already behind us. How are you doing? Are you courageously moving forward?

I hear many different voices when I ask people in my environment these questions. Some courageous and confident and some less so.  I always try to go a little deeper into conversations to try to find out what is behind the less confident comments. What is confirmed again and again is that the way people move forward, in both their personal and professional lives, is very much connected to their motives and the choices they make. In the long run these choices will determine their progress.

What is usually given, is that the people who have taken the lead, set their goals and set a clear direction, do not hold themselves back regardless of uncertainties due to the pandemic or any other reasons. They are eager to move forward and have automatically made the choice to level up their courage. Others who are rather passive and tend to wait for the environment to make choices for them, or let themselves be driven by uncertainties, automatically choose to hold back their courage and stand in line waiting to be asked, to be chosen, to be allowed, to be invited to take a step forward etc.

Which is fair enough, we are all different and have the freedom to choose. However, it would be a real shame if you forgo the chances and opportunities awaiting you and suppress the eagerness to achieve those desired goals purely due to fear, uncertainty and lack of confidence.

There are always ways to level up your courage and to move forward.

Here are 5 tips to help you realise the power of your courage:

The winner mindset

It all starts with the power of your mindset. Create the desire to win and make this ambition attractive. Generate the necessary motivation. Set courageous visions and goals. Define that mindset as the foundation and roots to level up your courage. Remember one thing: “Rule your mind, or it will rule you”.

Higher standards of achievement demand higher standards of courage

If you want 2022 to be the year in which you achieve your highest level of achievements and a different quality of success, then you need to commit to higher standards of courage. Create analyses of your goal setting, decision making and action taking. Where do you position yourself? Are you mostly in your comfort zone or in your courage zone? Where do you see possibilities to shift to your courage zone or within your comfort zone?

Make it happen

Visions and goals only become reality when you set strategies and create action plans. Visions and goals without well thought-out strategies and action plans rarely become reality. Action plans provide you also the opportunity to reflect and help you to measure your progress and success what in turn allows you to level up your courage and confidence.

Commitment and discipline

Use the power of your commitment and discipline to push through and do the hard work. Once you make a start you will find it easier to continue to work hard and you will see your courage muscles getting stronger day by day. You will start being rewarded by higher levels of achievement which will lead to more confidence and continued growth of your precious courage resources.

Identify your fears

As Mark Twain so nicely put it: “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.” Levelling up your courage means also to look those fears in the eye, identify them and make them transparent. Make it a habit to visualise those fears, to analyse why they exist and to work out strategies to deal with them. Once you analyse them, you will more than likely see that most of them are based on assumptions and not on any valid reasons. So do not allow them to paralyse you or to stop you from levelling up your courage.

Once you start moving in the courage zone, or when you start to shift from your comfort zone to your courage zone on a regular basis, you will find yourself in what I like to call the “courage groove”.  You can decide from there how to use this power to move forward on an on-going basis. Always bear in mind the related risks, examine them, but do not let them stop you from doing what you want to do. Risk taking is part of something greater than yourself, it belongs to the courage building ritual.

Do not wait for anybody to give you the permission to level up your courage in 2022 - just go for it!

If you are not sure how, let’s talk: Contact me

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