This post is part of the Keys to Happiness Series. The keys to happiness are courage, generosity, connection, clarity, presence, non-attachment, and gratitude.

It was Steve Pavlina’s cornerstone article, The Courage to Live Consciously, that turned me on to the importance of exercising courage. Of course, like most other great ideas that I find out about, it took a while for me to really put it into practice ;-)

I thought that I had to make grand gestures to be considered courageous. Not quite on the scale of pulling people out of burning buildings, but more on the skydiving level. It turned out that I needed to be most courageous in my own life. I had to exercise courage in my daily decisions.

Would I continue to swallow my feelings or have the courage to speak them? Could I have the courage to be vulnerable and share my true self in my friendships rather than pretend to be perfect? Would I sing on the way into work or worry about what the person in the car next to me thought?

How many little decisions are you making daily that are made out of fear? Are you aware of how much freedom you have within the parameters of you current life? Yes, you have to work, you aren’t financially free (YET), but you can use your lunch hour to work on your passion. It might cost you popularity among your coworkers, but it will be a step towards the life you want. Yes, you want to lose weight, but what’s stopping you from taking the belly dancing class that you always wanted to take. Are you afraid of how you will look when your hips are jiggling from side to side? These things seem small, but they will require courage.

When you take the courage to do the belly dancing class, or use your lunch hour the way that you choose, or let your child run in the park without care for what others think, you are breaking down your barriers. You are sending a message to yourself to expand. You are saying that you can, indeed, be free - that you own your life.

Those tiny bits of courage later give you the courage to seek better employment or venture on your own. They give you the courage to go shopping for lingerie so that you can feel sexy. They add to your joy.

What does courage have to do with happiness?

When you do something that you didn’t think you could do, you are elated! Whether you succeed or fail at it has no bearing. You are just happy that you are actually doing it. Courage breaks down your self-defined barriers. It expands your horizon and opens up new worlds of possibilities. Those possibilities cause you to live in awe and wonder.

Start by doing what is necessary; then do what is possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

–St. Francis of Assisi

In Spirit,
Nneka