A GENTLE FORM OF BRAVERY THAT DOESN´T OVERWHELM YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM
We are often taught that courage means looking your fears right in the eye and moving forward regardless. But when we haven´t built the confidence and trust in ourselves, going all in can easily overwhelm our nervous system. In this article I encourage you to take a softer, gentler approach to courage that gives you sustainable safety and confidence.
When I first started my business, I thought I had to go all in from the beginning. I felt like I had to take bold moves, exude confidence and move full speed ahead. And so that is what I did, or at least: I tried to. I would gather all the courage I had and make a move.
The thing is, I didn´t really feel that courage. While I felt a deep pull towards this work, I felt equally afraid – or perhaps even more so. After I took a step forward, my fear and self-doubt would catch up with me, and I literally wanted to hide under the bed. It often would take me three weeks to pick up the courage for another big move, and the cycle would repeat itself.
It wasn´t just my thoughts that focused on my self-doubt, it was very much a physical feeling as well. Fear comes with sensations in your body – like an increased heartrate, difficulty breathing and tense muscles. That is because your nervous system picks up on what feels unsafe and responds to that. Fear is often a reaction to a perceived danger, and your body can´t distinguish whether that danger is real or not. I have written more about fear and our nervous system here and here.
When we start with something new, whether it is a business, job, or a new habit or pattern we want to implement, we aren´t usually super confident on day one. Our deepest longings are often accompanied by our biggest fears. What that fear looks like is personal, it could be fear of disappointment, failure, judgment, abandonment or rejection. Or perhaps it is simply the fear of big changes, because as deeply as we may long for something, change is often scary. We are wired to want what feels comfortable, even when we have outgrown it.
When it comes to fear, we tend to take one of the following two approaches.
The first one is to stay as far away from what we fear as possible. This can look like avoidance, but also like waiting for something to fall into place so we can move forward.
If you want to create meaningful change, courageous steps are necessary. It can be tempting to wait until you feel confident enough or gained more experience, but there will probably never be a moment where you feel fully ready. You might get trapped into a cycle where you feel like you need another course, more time, money or experience to take a step.
We can also spend a lot of time waiting for someone else to give us the permission to move forward. This could be a parent, your partner, or someone you see as an authority figure. But the tricky part is that others usually start believing in us when we believe in ourselves, not the other way around.
Confidence is something that grows when we decide to take those steps, even when we don´t feel quite ready, entirely confident or certain that it will lead to success. Those first steps are always going to feel vulnerable, messy and perhaps even a little silly. But taking them anyway, consistently, over a period of time grows our trust in ourselves.
On the other end of the spectrum, you can choose the approach of wanting to do everything at once and ignoring or suppressing the fears you feel.
One approach to courage is to go from 0 to 100, overriding your fears and diving right in. This approach to courage, while it may be effective for a while, can feel a little harsh. It gives off the message that you aren´t allowed to be afraid and that your feelings aren´t valid.
You force yourself to take steps that you aren´t quite ready for because you haven´t built the emotional safety around those steps. We tend to compare ourselves to others who already are where we want to be, but we all have our own journey with our own set of fears and doubts, hopes and dreams. What feels completely natural to one person is deeply overwhelming to someone else.
Your fears are the result of your previous experiences, upbringing and beliefs that were instilled in you when you were young. Those patterns don´t just dissolve from one day to the next. When you feel physically deeply uncomfortable when you take action, that is your body´s way of telling you that you need a sense of safety.
Your nervous system needs a little time to catch up as you move out of your comfort zone, and everyone has their own pace for doing so. When you go too fast, you may ride the wave for a while but probably end up feeling overwhelmed.
There is a third approach to courage, one where you go as fast as your nervous system can handle, not as fast as the world tells you to go.
Soft courage means you take small consistent steps while giving your the space to integrate your fears.
When you choose to take steps that feel a little scary but not overwhelmingly so, you grow your resilience to fear over time. Soft courage is a gentle commitment to your dreams, while you honor your natural rhythm and pace. You acknowledge your fear and implement tools for safety while you work with where you are currently at.
When you take a gentle approach to courage, you don´t have to pretend to be more confident, courageous or experienced than you are. Rather, you work with where you currently are as you grow your self-trust.
Courage isn´t about grand gestures but about a deep, personal resilience. It isn´t something you need to force, but something that naturally evolves over time as you extend your capacity for doing scary things. You grow courage through gentle, consistent action and growing your trust in yourself over time.
It is the quiet determination of someone who refuses to give up even when things feel scary, but that may take the scenic route to getting there. In the process, you give yourself space to notice your fears before and after you take action, and you give yourself time to integrate these feelings. You learn what you need to feel calm again after doing something that feels scary, and implement calming practices to regulate yourself back to safety when you need it.
With this approach, you learn to develop a deep sense of trust: in yourself, your own journey and life as a whole. You don´t try to be somewhere you aren´t yet, but enjoy that you are now here.
If you would like to implement soft courage into your life and could use some guidance, I invite you to plan an introduction call with me.
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