Courage

Often the courage to continue requires more than the courage to begin.

Transcript

Hi, this is Katie, and thank you for joining me on the Creating Your Sanctuary podcast. And this is a podcast about creating those little moments and space that support you. And today I wanted to talk about courage, because courage always seems like that secret ingredient that you have before you start. But I want to challenge that a little bit, because as I mentioned in the last podcast about beginning, I feel like beginning is that very first step that doesn't require courage, actually. You can actually just take that step and, as I mentioned, like step up and look around and kind of take an assessment, and figure out if that is like where you should be stepping. And it's a place to gather information and everything. But when you take the following steps after that, sometimes that's when you need more courage.

And that can be because you don't know where you're going, or you're trying something, and you're in more of a vulnerable position, right? You're thinking about how you're being perceived sometimes, how valuable your next steps are, how they link to your end goal, if you have a goal, how you can help others, how others can help you. Like, there's a lot more factors. Because I feel like that first step is indeed gathering information, but also kind of making a checklist. It's kind of like you're making this list to then take action upon after that. So in this vulnerable state of thinking, okay, now I'm on stage. Now it's my time to start showing what I know, or showing what I can do, or showing how I can help, showing the world what matters to you, what passions you have.

It can be really hard. I'm being seen, I'm being heard, and I don't know if I'm doing this right, and it's messy, right? It's always going to be a bit messy. But that's okay, right? I don't know of anyone who has had perfect steps from the beginning into the middle. It can maybe feel really good if you've done it many times, or it echoes similar projects that you've had in the past. But oftentimes, we're venturing into new lands, right, into new pathways we've never seen before.

And so we have to adapt and figure it out and misstep, right? You can have mistakes all the time. And sometimes it's the courage to begin badly so that you can actually course correct, or restart a bit, maybe you have to take a step backwards a bit. But you've already started, right? So you can't undo starting. At least, I mean, you could quit, I guess, but and sometimes it's okay to quit, right? I've talked about that in the past.

But I don't know, there's something to that, well, you've already started, you've already, you know, kind of ventured out, why not follow through? Why not see where this leads? And we may not know all the next steps. But it's that courage of taking each step after that. That's what matters and keep showing up and keep being messy and keep trudging forward. And that's what we all want to see from you. We want to see that you're being, you know, brave and courageous.

And, and that inspires us as well. We may not be like your ideal audience or anything like that. But when you are inspiring to others that spreads. So no matter what you're doing, even if you're in different courageous and keep going, to me is hugely inspirational. I love, love seeing that. And I love cheering people on as well. So I hope that brings a new perspective of courageous to you, because we're just courage in general.

And I would challenge you to say, where is one little step in your life that you can continue being courageous with? What is one further step down the road that you can take because it is vulnerable, and it may put you on the spot, but we want to see you do it. So remember, however, you're creating your sanctuary right now, whether you're taking that first step, or that courageous next few steps, it's enough. I'll see you next time.