The essence of courage is to start again. After you have failed. After something hasn’t worked out. After a hiccup or a total wipe out.
You stopped exercising, you spent too much again this month, you lost all inspiration and weren’t able to do your work for a month.
Just breathe. Start again.
In a motorcycle driver training I took, there were wipe outs. The two instructors, kind, slightly grizzly, Harley-type dudes, said the best thing to do after a crash during the training class was to get up and get back on the bike as soon as possible. If you don’t get back on almost right away, they said, you might never get back on again. I don’t know if I quite believe that, but I get their point. In fact, this is what happened to one woman who was learning to ride a motorcycle secretly so that she could surprise her husband. She suddenly throttle hard and wiped out, and decided it wasn’t for her.
A motorcycle crash, while training, is scary. You feel out of control, helpless. Then you feel like you are not worthy of learning to ride a motorcycle. They’re too powerful, too tricky to balance, or maybe you are simply not bad-ass enough. A voice may say something like “you can’t do this,” and “you shouldn’t.”
Breathe and dig deep for the tiniest iota of belief in yourself.
What little thing can you do?
The road to badassery starts with one tiny smidgen of a tentatively confident step. And then another.
Reach out to someone who believes in you.
Recall a time you triumph despite screw ups in the past.
Breathe. Relax your shoulders. Start again.
This is the essence of resilience and courage.
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