I was guest blogger today over on Christine Kane's blog. I wrote about my experience choosing courage as my word of the year. Here's what I wrote:
Almost exactly 10 years ago my friend Charlotte and I were sitting in a dark coffee shop listening to an unknown-to-us folk singer named Annie Gallup. She was singing her quirky lyrics in her quirky style and she was getting to us.
When we left that night, Charlotte didn’t hesitate to buy one of her CDs. It was titled “Courage, My Love”. I picked it up, flipped it front to back a couple of times pretending to examine it carefully and then put it back down, deciding not to buy it. Truth was, I was afraid to go back to where she had just taken me. Like I did so often in my life at the time, I made a choice from a place of fear.
Fast forward ten years and another unknown to me singer-songwriter had romanced her way into my life. I don’t remember how I came across Christine Kane, but soon after virtually meeting her, I was signed up in her very first e-seminar. I was pursuing some exciting new directions and in reading Christine’s writing, I knew she was a kindred spirit - someone who was down the path ahead of me a little shining a light.
The seminar went well. The final week wrapped up. Then a few weeks later - an email from Christine. Choose a word for the year. I won’t lie. I rolled my eyes.
Oh yeah, this routine. I’ve done this dance before - the words, resolutions, inspiring quotes, etc. that I had chosen and then abandoned shortly thereafter littered my psyche. Let’s see - there was discipline, wellness, health, vitality, tapas (the sanskrit word for discipline), beauty, grace and so on and so on. Now here’s the thing - there was nothing wrong with any of those words. The problem was that I knew, for me, they were all code for the same thing:
“You’re fat and you need to lose weight.”
Those words were all different ways of reminding myself that I was bad, lazy, ugly, flawed and fat. They weren’t about creating something new, they were about fixing what was *wrong* with me. When I realized that, when I decided to take up the challenge of the word of the year from a place of love and creativity, it became meaningful. And when I created the space to find my word, it came to me from the cover of Annie Gallup’s CD. The one I was too scared to buy. It came to me in this quiet yet persistent way and it said, “Courage, My Love.” I rolled it around a few times, like a river stone in my pocket, feeling it’s smoothness and solidity.
And then, being a word geek, I looked up the etymology of the word: The state or quality of mind or spirit that enables one to face danger, fear, or vicissitudes with self-possession, confidence, and resolution; boldness; bravery. (from Latin cor, heart) Yes, that was where I wanted to live, what I wanted to create and what I wanted to embody.
It was the perfect touchstone for a year of growth and love and fearlessness.
It’s been a fabulous year.
One of the first things I had the courage to do was to give myself the gift of not dieting for the entire year. I stopped reading fitness and fashion magazines and I stopped reading online forums where everyone talked about dieting and weight and analyzed all their body parts. I gave up comparing in favour of creating. Given that I have been either “on a diet” or “off my diet” or “starting a new diet tomorrow” or “cheating” since I was 12 years old, that was one of the most courageous things I’ve ever done. Who am I if I am not thinking about my diet? I am someone who is loving herself.
Now what was I going to do with all that energy that I used to devote to obsessing about my weight?
Well, I took another leap, took a leave from my job and enrolled in Martha Beck’s Life Coach Training. I already had completed one highly respected coach training program, but Martha was calling to me. The fearful me would have convinced myself that this was just a waste of money, that I already had spent a lot on coach training, that I couldn’t afford it, etc.
But my heart knew better - and as I came to realize over the course of the year of courage- fear often cloaks itself as the rational, the thinking mind, and in this way demands obedience. If you disobey, you are being irrational. But beyond rational and irrational is a deeper sense of knowing - I call it the arational.
With Courage as my mantra, I was able to trust the arational to lead me in a way I never did before. And here are some of the wonderful things that happened for me when I did:
I started a life coaching practice that is thriving. I was written about in Canada’s national newspaper. My husband and I decided we needed a new house so I could have a home office. We visualized what we wanted and found and bought our perfect house a month later. We put our house up for sale at the worst possible time to sell, and had an offer from our dream buyers in a week.
These were big things, but there were also so many smaller, but just as amazing, happenings that I am now in full agreement with W.H.Murray when he says:
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation. There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen events, meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would have come their way. (from The Scottish Himalayan Expedition)
Word of the year - I’m a believer!
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