Finding The Courage To Grow

Courage is the engine of self-evolution.

When you first write out your ideals, you’re overwhelmed with doubt and anxiety, accepting your feelings, echoes of a forgotten past self, to be factual and true despite a shred of evidence. The way to move past them is to make a plan and take action on it.

Yet this is easier said than done. When you look around you see a dearth of resources, an absence of support, a paucity of promise.

The way to awaken your ideal life is to begin--and begin with the little that you do have in the moment.

Do what you can, how you can, with what you have right now. This is how you have a shot at making your goals come true.

Adopting spiritual practices is an effective way to gain courage to do what you love to do even when it seems you completely lack a way to do it.

It could be a simple practice. It could be a combination of techniques. The important thing is to find something you can believe in.

Here is a short list of possible spiritual paths that might work for you.

Prayer. Pray every morning to be guided throughout the day. However, you conceive of a higher power, work that magic into your consciousness, remove your sense of solitary struggle and separation, connect with a sense of wholeness, well-being, love.

Affirmation. Affirm that who you are is wonderful and what you can do is magnificent and the power you need to change things for the better is on its way, ready to show up as you act in the direction of your highest aspiration. Carry around a list of affirmations. Affirm your own value. Affirm the impact your work has on the world. Affirm your power to be more than you know how. Affirmations have a way of soothing you, strengthening you, and showing you how to be in the world. Every day, in every way, you are getting better and better.

Healing Meditation. Lie on your back, relax completely, from head to toe, then imagine running energy up and down your body, stroking it with invisible waves of love and light. Imagine this energy nurturing, healing, empowering each and every cell and fiber of your being. You can also send healing energy to others, to life situations, to your ideals. Close this meditation with a request for guidance from your deeper consciousness.

Remove Resistance To Life. “To offer no resistance to lifeis to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness,” said Eckhart Tolle in The Power Of Now. Find your way to healing your resistance to life in your own way. It might be a walk in the woods, listening to the wind in the trees, observing the beauty of cloud formations, grasping the innocence of life. It might be listening to your favorite music, dabbling in art, playing with your cat. Discover your power to be here, now, to be alive, aware, attuned to what is happening, living without an agenda, a cause, a problem, living without an urgent need to repair or resurrect something in your life.

Practice Peace Before Sleep. The last few minutes in bed before you drop off to sleep can be the most important of your day, because what you think and feel is what will carry into your subconscious mind for the rest of the night. Whatever your thinking, it has about 8 hours to marinate, so make it count. Regardless of what is happening in your life, you can turn it around by dedicating the last few minutes prior to sleep to thinking something beautiful, true, and noble, whatever that means to you.

These five spiritual practices will help you find the courage to live your life your way. You never know what works and what fails to work, so try different variations of these themes. The idea is to step away from those ancient beliefs that keep you locked into insufficiency and to open up a way, a mysterious way, to talk to your subconscious mind. When your subconscious mind begins to work for you rather than against you, then you’re changing your world, moving it from its default setting to something closer to your true desires.

Courage, in particular the courage to grow, evolve, blossom into something better, someone bigger, is often thought to be an act of clenching your fist and tightening your jaw--but let us leave these heroics to Hollywood and common misconceptions; it is far easier to gain courage by finding spiritual practices that work for you, that effortlessly tune you into being more of yourself.

It may not seem like an act of cultivating courage to walk toward the sunset or to sit in silence or to breathe life into a painting, but as you source your own inner guidance, you connect with the courage you need to do what you have come here into this world to do.

Change comes from being well and in peace. Seize your vision today and launch it tomorrow. Finding the courage to grow arises from connecting with your spirit.

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