From the course: Mindfulness Practices

Face fear and grow courage

From the course: Mindfulness Practices

Face fear and grow courage

- One of the craziest decisions I've made was to leave my corporate career after 20 years and become a first-time entrepreneur. It's also one of the best decisions I've made. Making that decision took about eight months. Believe me, I had many fearful moments both before and after making that decision. My mindfulness practice helped me acknowledge the fear I was feeling and move forward anyway. I connected with what was more important to me than my fear. It was work that truly fulfilled me, where I could learn, grow, and make a difference that mattered to me. The workplace offers us many opportunities to practice growing our courage. We may have fear of speaking up and offering a different point of view. Maybe we fear asking for that raise or promotion and being rejected. We may worry about taking on an assignment that will stretch us outside of our comfort zone and cause us to fail. Fear is a completely normal human emotion. We all have it. Those of us who live the fullest and most impactful lives learn how to face our fear. In my view, courage is not the absence of fear. It's a quality of character where we focus on a value that is more important to us than our fear. Mindfulness practice allows us to develop a different relationship with our fears. We can have our fears and not let our fears have us. In our practice, we notice fearful thoughts, we can label them, we can even feel the discomfort of fear in our bodies, and then we can choose to shift our attention to what matters to us. So we make decisions from our values rather than our fears.

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