For many years Ann had dreamed about starting her own catering business. She had a name picked out, she had saved money for the start-up costs and she had taken several classes on how to start and run a successful business. Her plan was to wait until her last child left home and then it was her turn to pursue her dream.

Yet, as she watched her youngest son leave for college, she felt a small tingle of fear start creeping into her body. This was it. This was what she had been waiting for, but now that she actually had the time and freedom to develop her business, doubts started to arise. Would she really be able to do this? Was she smart enough? Did she really want to take the risk? Maybe it would be wise to put this off for just a little longer until the economy settled down, until she was more secure in her ability to run a business, until she was more certain that this was what she really wanted to do, until…

The idea of starting a catering business was not a fly-by-night idea for Ann. She had thought about it for years and had taken concrete steps to ensure the success of the idea. So, why now was she getting cold feet?

Ann was getting cold feet because she has decided to make a change in her life and that change was going to upset the status quo of her body. Our bodies are systems; and as with all systems, they do everything they can to maintain homeostasis, or equilibrium. When a change occurs, or even when there is a perceived change on the horizon, our bodies respond by sending out little red alerts. Our heart speeds up, our breath gets shallow and our stomach tightens. We recognize these feelings as fear, as something to avoid.

Our natural tendency when experiencing fear is to retreat, to give up on our dream and return to the safety of our comfort zone – that place where we feel protected and secure. And although we feel relief by retreating, the relief is only temporary. Soon there will be something else that comes along and tempts us to take the risk of stepping over that magic line. Will this be the time we follow our hearts or we will once again give into our fear of fear?

As we become more aware of this push-pull of wanting to make changes, yet being afraid to try new things, the question becomes: “How can we diminish the power that fear has in our lives so that we can pursue our dreams and achieve our goals?

One way to address the issue of fear is first to understand that fear is a label we have given to a group of physical sensations. When our body perceives a threat to the system, it automatically responds by sending out alerts. However, what we need to realize is that what the body, or more specifically our limbic brain, sees as a threat is usually nothing more than just a small change in our way of being. The limbic brain is the flight or fight center of our brain. Its job is to alert us when there is danger and it does that by causing specific physical sensations in our bodies.

And because we experience these as negative sensations, we interpret them as being “bad” and immediately go into our head and create a story to help us make sense of them. We then add our own commentary to the whole experience.

Statements such as “If I feel this way, it must mean that I shouldn’t do this”, or “This feels way too scary, what was I thinking!”, or “I don’t think making this change is such a good idea”, start floating through our heads, and before we know it we have talked ourselves out of doing something we really wanted to do, basically because of some relatively innocuous body sensations. Once the dialogue and story begin, the experience, which may have started with just a sweaty palm, now takes on a life of its own.

If we want to short circuit this process so that we can keep moving forward toward our goal, we need to shift our focus from the limbic system of automatic responses to the more intellectual and practical response of our neo-cortex; and it is in this part of the brain where you will find your courage. Courage can be defined as the ability to keep moving forward in spite of all the fears and doubts that your limbic system is throwing at you. Courage comes from the rational and intellectual part of your brain and it has the ability dismantle the stories and beliefs that your emotional part of the brain has created to keep you stuck. It gives you the power to break down your fears and doubts one step at a time; and with every fragment of fear you break down, your courage increases.

Courage is not a mystical force that only belongs to a select few. We all may not possess the heroic kind of courage that allows us to save people from burning buildings or fight wars, but each of us does possess the quiet inner courage which allows us to tackle the fears and doubts inherent in any life change.

However, courage is like a muscle. It needs to be exercised to remain strong. When we give into the stories about not good enough, smart enough or deserving enough to achieve what we want, we increase our fear, not our courage. But there is another option. We can start to reconnect with our courage, begin building up its strength and then use its power to break through the fear and begin living the life we truly want to live.

Reconnecting and strengthening our courage takes time. And, similar to building up our muscles, we need to start slowly and be consistent in our training. The following exercise is a great place to start.

EXERCISE: Strengthening Your Courage

Step One
Think of something that you want to do but haven’t because of fear/doubt. You might want to start with something small.

Step Two
Write down all the fears/doubts that come up when you think about tackling this project. Be specific.

Step Three
Now prioritize your list of fears from the least scary to the most scary and starting with the #1 – the least scary – ask yourself: By itself, is this fear still a fear? If not, you can move on to the next. If it is still a fear, then ask yourself:

1. What am I afraid of? Be as specific as you can.

2. What do I need to do to overcome this fear? Options could be: Information, resources, talking with a friend or just jumping in and doing it. As you work through this step, notice the sensations in your body and remind yourself that they are just sensations and by themselves they have no meaning. Also, notice what the voices are telling you. If you start to lose your confidence, take a moment to sit quietly and get back in touch with the rational and courageous part of you. Ask for support. Write yourself little pep notes – do whatever it takes to stay centered in your courage as you work through this fear.

3. Continue through your list, viewing each of these fears from the rational part of your brain. Remember the courageous part of you knows you are perfectly capable of making this happen and will give you the support and strength to make it happen. As you work through your list you will notice how much easier it becomes to draw upon your courage and how less often you will get tripped up by the stories of your fear.

The secret to building up courage is to take it one step at a time. We are a society of instant gratification junkies, so our tendency is to look ahead to the final goal and then get completely overwhelmed at how much it will take to achieve it. This feeling of overwhelm puts our limbic brain on instant alert and then the fear cycle starts. If we work on our goals one step at a time, our body is less stressed. This lessens our fear and allows us to use our courage to achieve our dreams.

“Courage is only an accumulation of small steps.” – George Konrad