Free Courage: Overcoming Fear and Igniting Self-Confidence by Debbie Ford Page B

coworkers told her she was excellent, and she knew that she was masterful at what she did, but when she went home at night she felt bored and empty. She just wasn’t fulfilled. Although she fantasized for more than five years about quitting her job, she was never able to make a plan or take any steps toward moving on, always finding an excuse and listening to the Voice of Doubt that said, “I’m not good at anything else”; “I can’t make it on my own”; “What will people think of me?” As we confronted the fears that lay beneath the surface and examined her lack of courage in this part of her life, Amy remembered one time sitting at the family dinner table as a child. She remembered her beloved grandfather, whom she greatly respected, talking about women as if they were second-class citizens. She recalled him saying, decisively, “Men are the only successful entrepreneurs. Women should be nurses, secretaries, or at home with their children.” Hurt and shocked, she went to bed that night confused and sad.
    Although Amy loved her grandfather and didn’t want to blame him for planting the seeds of fear and unworthiness, when I asked her to look at the meaning she chose to assign to this incident, Amy went on to tell me that she decided that night that she could never be one of the great women of the world. She buried her dreams. By sixteen, she had become promiscuous—“the town whore,” as she described herself. By seventeen, after having an abortion that sealed in the belief that she was worthless and useless, Amy decided she had to cover up her shame with a new self-image. She quickly got back into her studies and applied to the best college in the state. Because she had been so bright, she was admitted, and she quickly excelled. It was only a matter of months before Amy concluded that this new life would hide the shame she felt so deeply.
    So here we were, twenty years later, looking at all of Amy’s accomplishments, but deep inside she couldn’t access the courage she so desperately wanted and needed. Once she recognized that it was something buried deeply from her past that was blocking her from her courageous warrior, Amy made a plan and left her job six months later. She finally let freedom reign.
    We are all born with limitations, challenges, fears, and insecurities. But if we believe that any of these things are the truth and the only truth of who we are, we will stay trapped in our stories and the patterns that are now deeply ingrained in our subconscious mind and watch hopelessly as they take over our actions and our choices. We can’t access our warrior’s courage until we remember who we were born to be and why we are here at this time on earth. To get to this place of a warrior’s courage, we must let go of our human drama. We must give up the stories that have ruled our lives and shatter the self-image we created to affirm our story. We must recognize and admit to the ways we have confirmed our story and colluded with our past. We have to distinguish and then let go of the beliefs that have kept us bound to the past instead of bonded to a greater future that is calling to us. We must be willing to give up any version of the self that limits us so that we can become the strong, powerful, courageous warrior we were born to be.
    Life is filled with unlimited possibilities for who we can become. But we can’t be our courageous self when we find ourselves fearful or stuck in some area. That’s when we find ourselves frustrated, tired, bored, resigned, or unfulfilled.
    When Jane showed up at one of my workshops, she was easy to spot. A tall woman with long, unkempt dirty-blond hair, she sat in the back row with her arms folded, trying to hide herself in a public place. When she spoke, she was eloquent, intelligent, and dynamic—nothing like her appearance indicated she would be. When we began to explore this disconnect, Jane originally bragged about not caring about her appearance, not wearing