EP3 Courage, start small.

My first therapy appointment was in 1999. I was 20 years old; I had 1 year of community college under my belt with no signs of finishing anytime soon and was working my way through the restaurant industry. I had no idea who I was or what I wanted, but I had all the clothes in the world, a super-trendy car, and my friends list was forever long. I loved the party scene and was the life of the best of them, but underneath the cool party girl was a lot of pain. I was the queen of hiding. I was addicted, had an eating disorder, I was numb and I was driving myself into the ground.

I get really excited when people change their lives. Like, a big, resounding YES! comes up from my soul. Changing is hard work and incredibly courageous. A lot of people choose the path of least resistance and miss the beauty that comes from leaning in to the resistance. People who choose to pivot or change to better themselves and keep going in the face of adversity? This is what wakes me up in the morning—well, there are actually two things: transformation and art. Everyone faces adversity when changing… Everyone faces adversity when we’re not changing. No one is immune to challenges and speed bumps or backlash when rearranging your life. It’s the way of the warrior and will always be so. Also? You can pivot at any age: 20, 45, hell, you can do something different at 65 if you realized how you were living wasn’t working anymore. I was reading about a women in Cincinnati who’s 57 years old and became a doctor 25 years after being accepted in medical school.

She applied at the age most people do and got accepted, but by the time she enrolled, she had a 9 month old baby, was commuting back and forth between school and her husband back home. She got pregnant again and ended up withdrawing a week into medical school. They settled down and she stayed home with the kids. Eventually she became an Episcopal priest, but right after she was ordained, her husband took his life. He was chief of staff at a hospital.

She found herself with a huge mortgage and four small kids so she sold the house and went to work full time in the church, but she never let go of the dream to practice medicine.

When she turned 50, she started looking at the years she had left and decided to give it one more shot. It was obviously hard, but she took the MCAT and was accepted into Wake Forest’s medical program. Can you imagine? She’s 57 years old and her classmates are in their mid-20s. They’re in completely different seasons of life. She could have easily let her dream go and honestly, I don’t think anyone would have said anything about it. But she didn’t and at 57 she’s all-in and going for it.

She’s doing two specialties, in family medicine and psychiatry and wants to help small villages where depression, addiction and suicide rates are high and where there aren’t any medical professionals. I love what her spiritual mentor said:

“We have to be stewards of all the gifts that we’re given, even those that are won through pain and suffering — meaning, that, that gift of perseverance, or a more compassionate heart for those who suffer, from surviving something as traumatic and heart-wrenching as the suicide of a spouse, can be used to bring good about in this world.”

Oh, y’all, can we just stop for a second? It’s really somethin’ to hang on to our dreams like this. Life can throw us some major curve balls and some of the things that happen to us could easily take us down… and just like this woman, no one would fault us for not pursing something of this caliber after all we’d been through and at her age. It takes guts to change our lives, but it’s another level when we hang on to our dreams in spite of our pain.

I love this definition of courage: courage is STRENGTH in the face of pain or grief; the choice and WILLINGNESS to confront suffering, pain, danger, or uncertainty.

We’ve all heard how courage isn’t the absence of fear, but there’s power in understanding it as the ability to OVERCOME fear.

Some of the most badass people I know feel fear, but what makes them change-makers is their ability to stare fear in the face and not let it get in their way. Have you ever looked at fear? Like straight-on, right in its face? It’s gnarly, but it’s also incredibly powerful.

My first therapy appointment was in Dallas. I lived in Austin at the time and my appointments were every week, so I was driving to Dallas 4 times a month. I would drive up in the morning or around lunchtime, have my appointment in the afternoon, stay overnight with family, and would drive home the next day. It was intense, but I was terribly unhealthy and needed that kind of intensity. But what I realized is the only two things (other than A LOT of prayer) that got me to the therapist’s office was fear and courage. That was it. I had had a couple conversations that opened my eyes a little, but no one made me go. It was up to me.

I was afraid that if I didn’t stop doing what I was doing, I would die. The choices I was making with my life and my body were like a game of Russian roulette and it was only a matter of time before I lost the bet. Going to a therapists office (while scary and hard) was still a better option than being emotionally, spiritually and/or physically dead.

This is heavy and really hard to re-live, but it’s also a part of my life. I made it out of there with some now faded scars, but my hope is that by sharing this you’ll see your own self-worth and courage in that sweet girl back there.

Fear is what drove me to that office, but courage is what kept me going.

Fear is a basic human emotion with one purpose: to signal us in times of danger and prepare us physically so we can accomplish what is necessary for survival. And when necessary, it can be one of our most vital resources. Staying stuck in a place we don’t like or one that isn’t serving us because of the what-ifs and fear is when life stops and things go sideways. When life hands us an opportunity for growth or change and we reject it, we stop the natural flow and rhythms of life. It makes me think of a dam—every time we turn away from change, we set a rock down and if we keep turning away from these invitations, we eventually build a dam that blocks all the blessings and gifts that only come from this kind of courageous living. And I’m here to tell you, these gifts are unprecedented, incredibly beautiful and worth every bit of the journey.

I read a quote that I love that said, “Courage is feeling fear, not getting rid of fear, knowing something is more important than fear and taking action in the face of fear.”

Living courageously takes work and it’s hard work building up that muscle. It requires commitment, discipline and practicing small courageous acts one at a time, so when the big courageous choice is needed, we’re ready. When I made the choice to go to therapy, I had already been building my courage muscle. When I was 7 or 8, my family was at the lake. Everyone was down at the dock hangin’ out. Everyone decided to go back inside and my bother and I decided to stay down there. After everyone was inside, he jumped in the water. No life jacket, no floaties and he didn’t know how to swim. He was 5. I immediately jumped in, grabbed him and brought him back to the dock. I saved his life.

We’re all capable of being courageous. It’s a skill that anyone can develop. I truly believe there’s no such thing as someone without it. Some people have underdeveloped courage and some people ooze it, but everyone has it.

On the last episode I talked about looking for proof. I bet if you took a minute and asked yourself for proof of your courage, you’d find it. It shows up differently in people and different in every season, but the principle is the same: STRENGTH and MAKING THE CHOICE TO MOVE in the face of fear, pain or grief.

Maybe you were afraid to look at the news, but you needed to make some decisions where this kind of information would be helpful, so you went ahead and looked and was able to make decisions you feel really good about? That’s courage. What about trying a new recipe that had ingredients you weren’t familiar with, that if it turned out badly your family would have to eat sandwiches for dinner (and you also struggle with perfection so this was an extra risky choice), but you cooked it anyway and everything worked out? Also courage.

My first therapy appointments were hard. I didn’t say much during the first one and the two after that I just cried. The whole time. It wasn’t easy unpacking parts of myself that I’d stuffed down, but the rewards were far greater than any of the discomfort I felt. I had no idea how any of it would go and certainly wasn’t looking more than two feet in front of me, but after that first therapy appointment, I spent the next year getting sober and getting all the help I could find. I found a church that I loved and just kept plugging away at rebuilding of my life. I left the restaurant industry, but after enough time, I was healthy and stable and got a job at Chuy’s where I eventually found my husband (or he found me, rather) and the rest is history.

It’s not easy choosing courage, it never is and I think that’s why it’s so admirable. Fear was my catalyst for change and it’s what got me to the therapist’s office, but courage is what kept me going.

Give yourself credit; don’t cut yourself short – any act, big or small, that requires you to risk and step outside of your comfort zone for the betterment of yourself or someone else is a courageous one. If you want more courage, then start today with one courageous act, one choice. The more you work this muscle, the easier it becomes to access it and use it. You can do it. I know you can.

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