Find Your Courage: 12 Acts for Becoming Fearless at Work and in Life

Find Your Courage: 12 Acts for Becoming Fearless at Work and in Life

"An up-front, to the point, and honest masterpiece. You can't go wrong with thisone!" ―Richard Carlson, bestselling author of Don't Sweat the Small Stuff . . . From popular life coach and motivational speakerMargie Warrell comes an inspiring, practical guide forfinding the courage to change any--or every--aspectof your life. Warrell's "12 Acts of Courage" challengesyou to rethink your "life scripts," overcomeeveryday fears, and dream bigger. Each chapter includesproven strategies and "Courage Exercises" to helpyou harness their inner strength and make meaningfulchanges in your personal and professional lives. Margie Warrell is a certified executive and life coach, professional speaker, syndicated columnist, and published author. Margie Warrell is a certified executiveand life coach, professional speaker, syndicated columnist, and published author. FIND YOUR COURAGE 12 Acts for Becoming Fearless at Work and in Life By MARGIE WARRELL The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Copyright © 2009 Margie Warrell All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-07-160537-3 Contents Chapter One The Courage to Take Responsibility "Each man is questioned by life. He can only answer to life by answering for his own life; he can only respond by being responsible." —Viktor E. Frankl, Psychiatrist, Holocaust Survivor, and Author of Man's Search for Meaning The first and greatest form of courage is the courage to take responsibility for your own life. Like it or not, you alone are responsible for the person you are today, the state of your heart, and the shape of your life. You can point your finger 'til the cows come home, but at the end of the day, the buck stops with you. This is your life, and since I'm assuming you'd like to enjoy it, then you need to own your experience of it fully. By fully , I mean owning every single aspect of your life, from your relationships to the satisfaction you get from your daily roles—at work and home—to your experience of getting up this morning. Only by doing so will you be able to muster up the courage to take the chances and make the changes that will enable you to create a life you genuinely enjoy living. Let me be up front with you: the path of responsibility has its share of potholes. If you are fully responsible for your life, it means you can't blame other people or circumstances for the things that aren't going so well. You can't blame your boss or the HR department for not moving ahead in your career; you can't blame the banks or department stores for your credit card debt; you can't blame your spouse or kids for the poor quality of dinnertime conversation; you can't blame McDonald's or the festive season for the fact that your clothes no longer fit; and you can't blame your parents for your succession of failed relationships, imperfect physique, or any of the million and one other wrongs for which we like to hold our parents responsible. As I said, the choice to take responsibility has its downsides and can be tough going at times. If it were easy to take ownership of all the not-so-great aspects of one's life, everyone would be doing it. Facing your problems head-on isn't easy, and sometimes it takes a lot of guts. We humans are wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain—physical, emotional, mental—and responsibility can be pretty bloody unpleasant at times. Though not physically painful, the psychological discomfort that taking responsibility sometimes requires us to endure explains why so many people, perhaps even you, choose to take the softer option of shifting responsibility for their problems onto people or sources beyond themselves. In the short term (which is where our sights are often focused), it is much more attractive to take the comfortable, easy option and pass the buck when things aren't working. But here's the hitch and the key reason that finding the courage to take responsibility is so crucial. By failing to take responsibility for the problems in your life, you are, by default, handing the reins of your life to sources over which you have little, if any, control. Sure, you may not have 100 percent control of your circumstances in life, but you have no power unless you take 100 percent responsibility for your experience of life. Think about it: can a doctor effectively treat an ailment that has been diagnosed incorrectly? No. Likewise, neither can you effectively address the "ailments" in your life that you have misdiagnosed. Instead, what starts out as a small issue in one area slowly grows bigger and spreads out insidiously to affect other parts of your life. Therefore, unless you accept full and complete accountability for your experience of life, you will continue to misdiagnose your problems. In turn, you will fail to respond to the circumstances in which you find yourself every day that would have you creating the life you want. Only by owning what you've caused in your life (however unintentionally) can you move into a position of power