Finding Courage

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the 

judgement that something is more important than fear." 

~ Ambrose Redmoon

It takes a lot of courage to get through life. Nobody goes through life without facing major life-changing events. A loved one dies. You lose your job. Your marriage is dissolving. A pregnancy comes at an inopportune time. You experience violence. You're in a terrible accident and are injured. A fire claims your home and all your belongings.

The creeping cold of fear settles in your chest and you freeze from the inside out. You're numbed; the question "What the hell do I do now?" echoes in your skull. 

And you don't know what the answer is. You just don't know.

You might pray. You might turn to others for advice, perhaps you sit and read self-help books and articles—like this one—to try to find a way to haul your wounded self up and keep going.

That takes courage.

Most people envision courage as exemplified by a hero in a movie getting up at the last second—when it looks like his end is imminent—and finding a huge surge of energy to complete his task with an awe-inspiring calm and clearheadedness. On top of that, the hero comes up with a fantastically clever way of escaping unscathed and saving everyone with panache.

That's spectacular movie fodder, but it has no application to real life. In real life, we often get beaten. We don't save the day. We don't win.

When my mother died, it was up to my brother and I to clean out our beautiful family home of 30 years and get it ready to sell. I had hoped to inherit it—my mom had always told me that it'd be mine. It was a peaceful home with a little creek out back and a garden full of rhododendrons that would bloom so beautifully in the spring along with the cherry trees. I loved that home intensely.

But my mother had left us with 15 judgements against her estate that had to be paid off. If we didn't sell the home, the creditors would descend like vultures and tear it apart, leaving us with nothing from the sale. There was no escape. 

Ultimately, I had not only lost my mom, but my home as well. I felt like Freddy Krueger had come with his horrible claw and taken me to his nightmare. 

I still had to get myself back up, go to work every day and pay my bills while I was losing everything dear to me. I felt crippled by fear. 

But that's where Redmoon’s "judgement that something is more important than fear" comes in. In that heavy defeat, I had to deem something was more important than the fear, the despair, and the sadness in order to find the courage to keep going. 

For me, that was deciding that I would have a home of my own. I couldn't have my beloved family home, but I could make a beloved family home. I could rebuild family back in the face of loss.

We sold the home, paid off the debts, and processed the grief. The situation wasn't easy or graceful. It was like being walking wounded for a long time. It went really slowly. What kept me going was my dreams and working on them. Doing that brought me light in the darkness—and hope out of the sorrow.

I met my husband around that time. He helped me through a lot, and I am happy to report that we'll be buying our home this summer. 

So that's the key to courage. When you're afraid and feel like you can't do what you need to, start thinking about things you really want to do in your life. That's what is more important than fear and where you will find your courage.

Photography by BJWOK

How to Start Any Project in 8 Easy Steps

I'm certain you've all heard this advice when you've complained about wanting to start projects that you never seem to get around to.

"Well, just sit down and start it."

It's not bad advice. The "just do it" idea has been famously used by Nike with great effect for sales of their shoes. It doesn't take much energy to start doing something—just enough to swing one leg in front of another and start walking. We all know this, but why are we still—years later—just wishing about that garden we want to put in, that bedroom we've wanted to paint, or taking that dancing class we've talked so much about—instead of actually doing it?

Accordingly, here are some quick tips to help you figure out how to stop procrastinating and finally start on what you want to do:

1.) Find out why you want to do it. What exactly is it about this project that appeals to you? Wanting to paint your bedroom because you "hate the color" might be a bit too vague. After all, if you hated it that much, you would have done it by now. If you never go into your bedroom except to sleep, maybe it's not as big of a deal as you thought and not really worth your time.

2.) What's in your way? Why have you been procrastinating? Procrastination is an interesting beast. It's more than simply being lazy or avoiding responsibility. Procrastination always has motivation behind it (ironically enough, that's exactly what you're looking for!). Take the time to sit and really think about why you are not starting. Are you too tired? Too busy? Do you have too much else you need to do first? Or are you really afraid? Be honest with yourself; fear is a very powerful instinct in all of us and directs our actions subconsciously. Indeed, you might not know you are really afraid. For example, if you aren't taking up your dream of dancing because you're really afraid of embarrassing yourself, that's a significant barrier to consider.

3.) Learn. One of the most inspirational things you can do for yourself is to sit and learn about it. Even if you're already an expert at what you want to do, just looking at pictures and videos of other folks doing the things you're interested in can be plenty to get you excited and inspired to start working with gusto. If it's something really worth your time and money to do, it's worth learning about and getting inspired over.

4.) Make a plan. Write out the stepsDraw out diagrams. Start writing out a journal of your feelings about the project, and any questions you have about your project. Physically writing your questions helps get them out of your head so the answers can follow. Write those answers down too—this helps you organize, improvise, and get it all together before you go out and spend money and time.

If you've done this much, congratulations—you've just started your project!

5.) Start small. It's really easy to fall into the trap of "I have to do the whole thing now," or to radically overestimate your time and abilities on a project. If you have time constraints from a busy career and home life, then starting small and keeping it manageable is the way to go.  It's also best to start small if you are a novice at your chosen project. Take gardening, for example.  It will likely be a disaster to try to plant an entire plot at once if you don't know how to care for it. Start with picking and potting just one plant and placing it where you want to go in your garden. Practice with it, make mistakes,, learn all you can about it. You will see if you really are enjoying taking care of it. If you are not, then the damage done is minimal. If you do enjoy it, add another plant and repeat the process. It won't be long before you have a thriving garden!

6.) Recruit.  If your project is big and you need help, then ask for it. Talk to your significant other and tell them it's really important to you to do this. Ask your friends to come over and help you, and make them dinner afterwards as a reward. Hire a professional to come out and do part of the project along with giving advice. Hire a babysitter to watch your kids while you take the time to work on your dreams. Dreams are worth sharing with others.

7.) Make the time. If you're really having trouble finding the time, then you need to consider how your life is structured. Going small and simple is a good way to start. However, if even that feels like too much, then it's time to seriously examine your life and find the (often nonessential) stressors that can be delegated  or eliminated completely.

8.) Rest and eat well. This might be a surprising step, but the foundation of all our activities in life is grounded firmly in our health. There is no point in signing up for that dance class you want if you're always too tired to enjoy it. Sleep and a good diet rich in whole foods like vegetables and lean meats will go a long way in giving you the energy to work and play the way you want.

These steps might seem like no-brainers, but that's the insidious nature of procrastination. It's like a thick fog that you can't see through. Our negative thoughts and emotions flood our minds and make us feel overwhelmed, anxious, and finally too tired and discouraged to the point where we go and do something else and forget about it for another day.  The steps outlined here are some of your guides through that overwhelming cloud; you will find others as you go along. The most important thing to remember is that working on one step at a time is enough—the rest will come.

Before you know it, you will have "just done it!" 

Learning to Live the Light Life

I'm a third generation hoarder.

When I was growing up, I was surrounded by stuff -- my grandmother's stuff, my mother's stuff, and my stuff. If you've ever watched the show "Hoarders," that's pretty much what my brother and I grew up in. Cleaning my room was not something that could be done in one afternoon. There were times it could literally take a week to do because I had so many toys, papers, books, and garbage that needed to be organized or disposed of. Letting go of it was a near impossibility.

One of my favorite movies, being a child of the 80's, is Labyrinth. I remember the part where the young protagonist Sarah wakes up in the junk yard and runs across the "Junk Lady," a hunched-over, old lady Muppet, stooped over and carrying a huge pile of items on her back. The items were precious to her despite having no real value, yet she kept them anyway and kept gathering more as she pawed through the heaps of refuse. She tried to convince Sarah that her own room and the things that she treasured from her childhood were really the most important things in the world, and starts to pile them up on Sarah's back. Ultimately, Sarah fights through her confusion and remembers her quest to save her baby brother from the Goblin King. She exclaims, "It's all junk!" then trashes the room and fights her way out and away from the Junk Lady.

That part always stuck out to me because I recognized myself in both the Junk Lady and Sarah. The metaphor of that scene is obvious. 

For many years, I was not brave enough -- like Sarah -- to discard my hoard and start focusing on what was important to me. That appears to have been because my hoard was always in my vision. You can't see the clear space opportunity if there are things piled on top of it.

Clutter has an all-encompassing meaning to me. I define clutter not just as physical objects, but also our mental and emotional objects as well.  It's all tied together. Hoarders don't hoard because they like living in squalor. We do it because there is more to our stuff than just what is seen. The mounds of newspapers from years ago are visual reflections of our minds and hearts, burying the pain.

Most people aren't hoarders of course, but most of us do suffer with having clutter -- physical, mental, and emotional. You may have the cleanest home, yet still be burdened by an unending avalanche of thoughts and feelings making you feel stooped and tired like the Junk Lady under her burden. We think if we hold onto our mementos, our memories, our experiences, our worries, our vices, and our checklists, that we're protecting the things that are most important to us.

Essentially, our identities. Our legacies. Our families. Our security. Our little scraps of happiness that have gone past that keeps us going in times of stress.

At the same time, we know that isn't the case. Clutter is suffering. We're sapped of energy carrying our heavy burdens of junk around. We get sick easily. We withdraw more and more trying to deal with it. We overeat junk food just to get some energy to keep going. We pack "junk in the trunk" in the form of body fat. 

Something is wrong, but we don't know what else to do and frequently have our vision obscured.

On October 27, 2008, the ceiling came down on my hoard when my mother committed suicide. She died alone in her hoard of mental, physical, and emotional junk -- cut off completely from what was important to her.

As you can well imagine, that incident put my life in a spotlight so bright that it could have outshone the sun. I was headed down that same path, and I know that's the last thing my mom wanted for me.  All that stuff we shared in our relationship and our home had to go.  I vowed that I would not let her death be senseless. I would MAKE sense of it. I would clean out the darkness cluttering up my brain, my home, my body, and my life and let the light in.

I resolved that I would lighten up and create a lighter life.

In the three years since my mother's death, I have:

• Gotten rid of my physical hoard bit by bit.
• Gone back to school, put myself through it, and graduated as top of my class.
• Learned to eat and exercise healthfully every day.
•  Built my own successful home business.
• Found and married the man of my dreams.
• Learned to relax.
• Found time for my passions.
• Paid down all my debts.
• Become a chronically happy person.

It wasn't easy. It wasn't like I had this major traumatic incident and suddenly I had resolve to clean every day and my issues didn't matter anymore. Being in a state of grief, I really only had the energy to do one thing at a time. That's the first lesson we have to learn. It's O.K. to start right where we are. We don't need anything else. We don't need to start a massive cleaning and therapy project. We don't need to be perfect and keep things perfect.

Now is fine. You are fine. This very minute.

I want you to get up from the computer and find one object that is out of place.  Pick up only ONE thing and decide what you want to do with it. Don't attempt to clean the whole room at once. Journeys begin with one step, and this is a journey, not a cleaning project. Look at your chosen object and decide whether it's something you love and care for or use frequently. If it is, find a permanent home for it and put it there.

If it is not something you love or use, then think about if someone else can use it. If you can, then see about calling up that person up and asking them if they'd like it and set up a time to go visit them. Or find an empty box and put it in your car. Put the object there to be taken to donation. You can keep this box in your car for putting more objects in later to be taken to the donation site when it's full.

If this item is unusable, broken, worn out, or something you really don't want to be bothered with, then throw it out.

Once that is done, relax. You have taken that crucial first step. That was all that is needed. Tomorrow, pick up one more object and do the same thing. If you want to do more, you can. You can pick a whole little space. One cupboard. One table. One shelf. It doesn't matter. The point is not to overdo it.

In other words, keep it light.