BRAVE AT HEART
BEING BRAVE AT HEART MEANS FACING YOUR ENEMIES HEAD-ON
AND REMEMBERING FDR’s WORDS AT HIS INAUGURATION….”THE ONLY THING WE HAVE TO FEAR IS FEAR ITSELF.”
There are so many ways to be brave in this world.
Your ‘brave’ can also be another’s easy, their easy your ‘brave.’
We cannot judge or understand another’s journey. Sometimes bravery involves risking everything in your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves packing your bags and giving up everything you have or have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of your sanity, peace, or sadly, even your safety.
But sometimes it doesn't involve overt risk. Sometimes, for some people, it's just being brave in everyday life. Living with a physical or mental disability, a disease, or perhaps being a carer for someone else, and dealing with daily challenges and difficulties.
Sometimes it’s nothing more than growing into adulthood, leaving high school and making career decisions, just growing up and learning to navigate our ever-changing and evolving world.
Even travelling on your own to somewhere you’ve never been before can be a nightmare. For some of us, it’s an adventure….for others, it’s an overwhelming difficulty. Like when I travelled to Texas for the first time.
Whatever your bravery is, then it’s valid to you.
It is nobody else's business to judge you, question you, belittle you or diminish your feelings.
So what does being brave actually mean? Well, bravery means facing or enduring something or someone without any fear. A real brave heart is someone who reacts without fear to a situation of danger. Bravery isn’t someone who boasts about being brave, someone who’s all show and no go.
A person is truly brave is he or she displays true courage and fortitude and tries to stick up for themselves or others, or safeguards his loved ones in a dangerous situation.
I can honestly say I truly understand the essence of bravery. I understand what it means to be brave in every sense of the word. To my surprise, one of my older friends, out of the blue, sat and had coffee with me, and commented that I was a truly brave woman. I told her that I had to have courage in my life, because there was no choice. There was simply no possibility for me to be faltering or backpedal when faced with the many threats to my own and my children's lives, both physically and financially. I recount this all in my autobiography, Counting Feathers. You’ll read how I had to quickly find my armour and load my weapons.
I had to outsmart the enemies my ex-husband had gathered together, and stand my ground. I will never forget being thrust into a world of law and finance and physical threats that I’d never encountered before.
To the outside world, we looked like the picture perfect family, the perfect home with the perfect husband. I had done a wonderful job of hiding the truth in the hope of his changing his cheating and abusive ways. In Counting Feathers I write about how the universe will keep throwing things at you until you wake up and are forced to accept change.
So accept change we all did.
The world is one big board-game and practising perseverance, honesty and above all else taking responsibility, are the only ways to overcome the challenges that life throws at us.
Playing Roller Derby for my team. I was in the ‘jammer’ position, and was the team fitness trainer. I was in my early 50’s at the time, training women less than half my age.
Not only did we accept it, but my children and I embraced it. From this seemingly bleak situation came life lessons of bravery, empathy, kindness, survival, and ingenuity.
Being brave also teaches you unconditional self-love, it gets right down deep into the wounds and cracks of your soul and fills them up with love in a way that cannot be broken again.
We must learn to live life appreciating all experiences, the good and the bad, the bitter-sweet, the dark and the light, summer and winter, pleasure and pain. Experience all the dualities. You mustn't be afraid of your human experience, because the more experiences you have, the more enlightened and mature you become.
An enlightened person will disconnect themselves from anything that is connected with fear. That’s how ascension and maturity occurs within the matrix. Just watch all your acts, all your beliefs, and find out whether they are based in reality, in experience, or based in fear. And anything based in fear has to be dropped immediately, without a second thought, because living in fear creates disease. It feeds it and feeds it until you become sick.
So what are you fears?
IN A SHORT SPACE OF TIME, I KICKED MY CHEATING HUSBAND TO THE GUTTER, LOST MY HOUSE IN A FIRE ALONG WITH ALL MY POSSESSIONS.
I had to face my fears of being alone with four children, penniless and homeless. So what did I do? I decided to get a boating licence, overcome my fear of flying, and get on with life. So I’m sitting in the Captain’s chair of a $6.5 million Sunseeker motor yacht, putting in the hours to get my licence.
I know first hand that bravery isn’t the absence of fear, but the ability to move on despite it. The bravest person will be fearful, but will continue regardless.
So many struggle with this concept, and think that those of us are just lucky, more robust, have others to help them. But the truth is that eradicating fear from your life is a solo gig. Only you can deal with it.
Some of us believe the opposite and think that the best way to move on from your fear is to shut it out, ignore that it exists, never face it and pretend that it’s not happening.
Living in this suppressed state of being is living half a life and it will flow over into all aspects of your life. It will tarnish other experiences or even your relationships.
Sightseeing over the Bahamas in a helicopter. Manifesting your dreams without fear.
Hiding from your feelings actually makes the object of fear seem even more massive and elusive. The first step is to acknowledge your fears and accept that they exist and then make a plan on how to attack them.
Of course, I’m not downplaying how hard this will be. Admitting that you are afraid is one of the bravest things you’ll do in your lifetime, but remember we require fear in order for us to rise to new heights and then feel proud about ourselves.
When your back is against the wall, when you’re forced by the dynamisms of life to make changes and grow, then incredible things can happen. Don’t let the fear stop you, ever. One day you may even come to appreciate it to the point where you actually embrace it.
I now love to challenge my fears and I make a point of crossing off a bucket list of them all. I dreamed of riding a 3,500 cc Triumph rocket motorcycle! And I did it. I got my motor bike licence 6 years ago and the rest is history.
What is your fear?
Once you know a fear exists within you, it’s time to understand the why?
Many people suffer terribly for years with fear and anxiety without ever understanding what is making them afraid. They go out of their way to avoid lifts, high places, crowds, animals and even big aeroplanes. For years, I was terrified of going overseas because it meant travelling by plane. Firstly, knowing "what" you’re afraid of helps you get a handle on what triggers your emotional responses. After 30 years of anxiety about flying in a large aeroplane I knew I must deal with it once and for all. Small planes were no issue, in fact my eldest son acquired his pilot’s licence and flying in small planes was great fun.
The issue was deep rooted and stemmed from my mother abducting me when I was a schoolgirl, and taking me overseas from Australia to England and away from my father for a whole year. Watching my father running along the windows of the airport terminal, frantically waving his arms as our Qantas Airbus taxied out of the holding bay when I was 12 was obviously so traumatising to me that it stayed with me for 30 years. It manifested itself into a full blown phobia!
DESPITE MY FEAR OF FLYING, I TOOK A LONG INTERCONTINENTAL FLIGHT FROM SYDNEY TO DALLAS, TEXAS.
Don't ever go back there, don't ever get on a big plane again. So how did I finally tackle this fear? By throwing myself into the deep end - that's how.
In life I never did anything by halves and I was mad at myself for allowing this to take such an emotional hold of me. I was brave in everything I did. Surviving my husband’s abuse, a house fire, loss of everything we owned, raising four children alone, changing careers.
I booked 3 tickets to America for myself and my two teenage children for three months to travel and be home schooled, I left two older ones at home which was also a brave thing to do, and I left. Just like that. No counselling, no over-thinking, no more time wasting, I just wanted to rip the Band-Aid off as quickly as possible, I had already missed so many opportunities to travel aboard, to see my family and the rest of the world.
Was it easy? No it most certainly wasn't.
At the airport I had to lay down several times and put my feet up against the wall to stop myself from fainting. I was sweating profusely and feeling extremely panicked, and believe me, that’s an understatement.
My children pushed all of our bags through to the check in, explained to the bewildered lady at the counter about their mum’s embarrassing predicament and together we finally made it safely onto the plane.
Once we had taken off and were high up in the sky I held my children's hands with all the love in my body and was finally at peace after 30 years.
If there was one thing I wanted to do in life, it was to never fail myself or my children, and to teach my children how to live with no fear. I didn't want to be a hypocrite and encourage them to do things they may be scared of if I couldn't do them myself. The best teachers are the ones who walk the talk.
MOWING MY ACREAGE.
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD HAVE FAITH IN HER ABILITIES
Also, being an energetic and passionate women I didn't want any of my fears to hold me back or stop me from living a full life experience.
When you try to avoid or run away from your fear it actually feeds it more energy. It builds and builds over the years until it becomes a full-blown storm cloud of anxiety. You start to live in the fight and flight response and you begin to avoid more and more situations that could lead to fear.
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But that's not being "responsible". You have to take responsibility for your own fears, happiness and unhappiness, successes and failures, and for how you respond to your challenges.
People that aren’t brave blame other people for their challenges and play the victim card, just so they can gaslight and avoid. Yes, I could have blamed my mother or even my husband for his part later, but there is zero point in that. People also can focus on your fears to take the spotlight off their own. So be mindful you’re not a perpetrator of that or a victim..
Fearful people can also pick on you or tell you that you’re a failure, and that's exactly why and how you may find yourself as an enabler.
WITHOUT MOUNTAINS, WE MIGHT FIND OURSELVES RELIEVED THAT WE CAN AVOID THE PAIN OF THE ASCENT, BUT WE WILL FOREVER MISS THE THRILL OF THE SUMMIT. AND IN SUCH A TERRIBLY SCANDALOUS TRADE-OFF, IT IS THE ABSENCE OF PAIN THAT BECOMES THE THIEF OF LIFE
- CRAIG D. LOUNSBROUGH
What's the worst thing that can result from your fear? Sometimes the fear of fear itself is worse than the actual fear! One major motivator to avoid fear and the things that cause us fear is that we are afraid to fail in front of other people. Living like this is ridiculous! I will tell you why... all people live in fear of something! They are just like you! And while you are worried about what they are thinking of you, they are doing the exact same thing! Kind of crazy isn't it!
If you learn to master being afraid to fail, which is all a necessary part of learning anyway, you can move huge mountains! If you embrace the process of being willing to try and try again and do different things if necessary to get to the end result, then the amount of self-love and respect you will have for yourself will be huge!
Don’t run. Don’t hide. Be willing to fall on your face and get back up again, and not only fall but laugh at yourself! That’s how real change will happen for you.
Now what are you waiting for!? Spread those beautiful wings of yours and fly out of fear and into freedom.
Sometimes our fears can come from past life experiences, and the only way to understand them is to learn how to connect with the spirit world. If you can’t, then seeking out a genuine medium, clairvoyant, or tarot reader can help shed some light on your fears for you.
You can find my services to help you when you go to the "Work With Me" section of this website.
~mpowerusleeza~
“Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence.”― Rumi
“He who has overcome his fears will truly be ― Aristotle
