The most essential ingredient for realising our heart’s desires is courage.
But not in the way most people relate to or think of courage.
Courage is not about overcoming fear.
As we’ll explore briefly in this post, overcoming fear is not only bad for your health, it makes life hard.
COURAGE
The origin of the word courage is ‘cor’.
Latin for heart.
Courage isn’t being brave of heart. Courage is the heart.
Courage and heart are one and the same.
It’s no surprise then that courage is required for realising our heart’s desires.
And that the heart can only experience what the heart is involved with.
Courage cannot co-exist with fear.
Because the heart doesn’t know fear.
Only the mind does.
And the body then senses it….
Fear being sensation with a mental story attached.
We may of course flit rapidly and unconsciously between heart and mind.
Will I? Won’t I? Should I? Shouldn’t I? Indecision. Procrastination, Poor Choices, Wise Choices, etc.
Which can be both tiring and costly but regardless…
Any doubt and fear we experience is always from the mind.
Never from the heart.
Contrary to common belief, courage is not about overcoming fear.
This may be a popular strategy and it may work and be ok in the short-term.
But overcoming fear is suppression.
And sustained suppression eventually leads to depression, illness or dis-ease.
In contrast…
Courage is about our willingness to surrender to our heart’s desires.
To abandon the ‘egoic shell’ we’ve unconsciously built in a bid to protect our heart.
A shell which paradoxically then smothers and stifles our heart and hides our vision and truth.
A shell made up of a body of beliefs, assumptions and perceptions which we believe are true…(or valid and justified).
Because our mind can and will always find the evidence for them.
Being courageous is about being willing to fall fully in love with our vision.
The willingness to be vulnerable.
Not just by being OK with not knowing.
But by fully surrendering to not knowing.
Surrender scares the hell out of the ego.
Because our ego doesn’t believe it’s safe to trust our heart.
Ego wants and seeks control.
It wants what’s known. It wants what’s safe.
But the known is the past… which is not where our vision is.
And so, when we’re run by the ego, we’re using our past to drive our future.
Whether we know it or not, that’s what’s happening.
So we slow our progress, oscillate or get stuck.
And the comfort the ego sought soon becomes uncomfortable.
Sooner or later we become dampened by fear.
The challenge being that our ego cannot understand that surrendering to our heart’s desires means the heart gets what the heart wants.
With certainty, at an accelerated pace and without the striving and the struggle.
So, when it comes to realising our vision and goals and en-joying the journey, the questions to ask ourselves are not:
“What should I do or what’s the best strategy or how can we x,y,z?”
The questions to ask are:
“How willing am I now to accept my boldest vision in my heart…
..despite not knowing how?”
..despite my ego’s fears?
“How much ‘cor’ can I really give to my vision?”
“How much heart can I bring to my business and to my life in the present?”
“How willing am I to return to imagining as I once did with an open heart?”
“How willing am I to be vulnerable and to therefore set myself free from fear?”
Surrender takes great courage.
Literally.
But it’s liberating.
And courageous leaders always go further, faster and have a more enjoyable journey.
And, ultimately, surrendering is the only way to get what the heart most wants.
Without the courage to surrender, we can’t ever step into our true power.
And the growth, results and fulfilment which our heart longs to express are going to be hard fought, compromised or elusive.