Courage 101: Tie your action to your mission

But the one thing I'm going to share with you on today's episode is this. The thing that helped me to go ahead and deliver the talk this week, that helped me go ahead and agree and record the masterclass for the course was this. I tied the action to something greater than myself. I tied it to my mission. I tied it to my purpose. So if there was no greater reason for doing the thing that I did, I wouldn't have done it. Because why would I willingly endure fear and your discomfort just for the sake of it? You're destiny to the Circle C Project. Welcome to the Triple CE Project, the podcast that helps you gain clarity, boost confidence, your courage so you can live lifeless. I'm your host, Ryan Spence, the big lore dropout, life coach, author, speaker, lover of hoodies, hip hop and big hairy, audacious goals. If you're tired of living the life you think you should want and ready to start living the life you do want, this podcast will help you get from where you are to where you really want to be. Sit down with friends, I invite you to grab a drink, take a seat, and allow me to guide you towards living a life that's lit. What's up? What's up? Welcome to episode 13 of the Triple C Project. And before we start, I got a little favor to ask. Last week I mentioned that I had booked a studio to record the audiobook of my book, the Triple C Method. And I'm very excited about doing that, as I think I said. And what I need your help with is this. So for the audiobook, I'm thinking about sticking in some additional information, an additional chapter, and I'd love to hear from you what you would like that chapter to be about. So do you want me to talk about what it's been like since the release of the book? Do you want to know more about the process of writing the book? Do you want to know a bit more about the well being habits that I had to implement to help me build my clarity, confidence and courage? Or do you want to hear about something else? I'm really keen to add some bonus info into the, into the audiobook. I always like when people do that. And also because there's now time, I mean, writing the book, you're trying to get to a deadline, trying to get it out and fill in with other people. With the audiobook, there's a little bit more flexibility. So as I think about this over the next couple of weeks, I would love to include information that is valuable to you. So if you've read the book in particular. What in the book would you like to me to expand on? What would you like to know a little bit more about? Drop me a line, send me a DM on Instagram @ iamrinespence, or shoot me an email at hey@im ryan spence.com and let me know. Be great to hear from you. So the last week, couple of weeks, really, there's a couple of big milestones for me. In a sense, they may not be big milestones for anyone else, but for me, they are pretty important. And they really required me to tap into my courage. So I thought I would share that with you. And we dive a bit deeper into the topic of courage in this week's episode. And before I do, I'd like to do a little bit of word association. So when I say the word courage, what does that mean to you? What comes up for you? I know for me, what used to happen was the word courage used to conjure up images of fairy tales as a kid. The courageous knight or the. I mean, who went off and slayed the dragon or slay or saved the damsel in distress. The. That was usually the context in which I had heard courage and therefore was what I associated courage with. But courage is. There's a whole spectrum of courage. I think if I was sort of asked to define it, I would look at courage as doing something in spite of something else. So taking action in spite of feeling fear. Although I would argue that a lot of the times we say that we feel fear and actually what we're experiencing is discomfort, and the two aren't the same. But I think that's a topic for a different podcast episode. I'll make a note of that. But yeah, courage is doing something in spite of what you feel. It's a spider fear. So it's not an absence of fear. It's not an absence of discomfort. It's doing the thing anyway. And it's not a reckless disregard for consequences either. So, you know, I mean, I wouldn't say just jumping off a cliff. Cliff without a bungee rope or without a parachute is necessarily courageous. It could be, but it could just be reckless if there's no real rhyme or reason as to why you're doing that. So what happened for me in the last couple of weeks? Why did I have to dive into my courage? Well, one of the things that I wanted to do more of was this year is more speaking because I feel that in order to make the impact that I would like to make and to help the people who I'd like to help. Getting out, speaking, sharing the message, talking about the things that I discuss in my book, talking about the journey of moving from a life of lethargy to a life that's lit was important. It was a another way of getting the message out there. But public speaking is not something that I particularly loved. It's funny because obviously for my time in the music business and being a performer, I loved being on stage and performing. I still get the nerves before getting on, but once I was on there, I was in my element in my own world and nothing really would phase me. But there's something about getting up and speaking that it's a little bit nerve wracking and wasn't something that I naturally gravitated towards. I remember when I was back in Big Law and I got asked to speak at one of our regional conferences by a colleague of mine and we were doing the talk together and we, we had a lot of prep for it and we had somebody sort of help us, but still like getting up and speaking, it was, I was shaking like a leaf on the stage and I thought, I'm not quite sure I really want to do this again, so why would I want to do it now? Well, I think this is the first thing I'd like to say about sort of courage. It's not going off and doing something because you feel that you should. Courage is doing something because you feel that by doing it you're going to create the impact that you want to create. It's attaching the action that you're going to take to something bigger than yourself. So back when I was giving the talk then there wasn't really something bigger. It was more a case of I was doing this because it was a work thing to do. But as I said earlier in the episode, the reason I wanted to talk now is because I feel that the impact on the message I have to share is bigger than any fear or discomfort that I might feel in sharing it. So by putting out there that this is what I want to do, opportunities started to present themselves. And so in the last couple of weeks I was invited to record a masterclass on the topic of courage from the new Enough for a fellow coach of mine who was launching her program. And it's one of those things I had an idea for for a while and being given the invitation actually made me get my ass in gear to do it. And I loved it, recorded it, presented it and really pleased with the outcome. And who knows, that may be kind of more Widely available at some point in the future. But the other thing that happened actually just this week as I'm recording this is I was invited a while back to be a speaker at a conference, a summit for lawyers. And at the time I said yes. And as it got closer, I was thinking, oh, this is actually quite nerve wracking because although I've talked a lot, I've done a lot of podcast interviews, Instagram lives, masterclasses, recorded courses, this would be the first talk where I was actually talking live to people. It was a virtual summit, but it was actually live, it wasn't recorded. So anything that was going to happen was. Was going to happen. And that was fine until about an hour before. And then all the usual fears and nerves and doubts of came in. But I did it and it was great and I survived and it was fantastic. And so why I wanted to talk about courage a bit more today is because we all have those situations where things come up that hit us where we feel like it would be a good idea to do, but we just don't take the step, we just don't take the action. So let's break down a little bit about what courage is. So we talked about the word association and the fairy tales, in my case, and slaying the dragon. But courage doesn't necessarily have to be that bold. Courage can be having a difficult conversation with somebody that you know you need to have in order to move forward. Courage can be making that bold decision to do something that you've always wanted to do but have been putting off. Courage can also mean going left when everyone else is going right, doing the thing that is right for you, even if no one else can see the reasons for why you're doing it. So courage shows up in different forms and at different levels. But without courage, we can't live a life that's lit. Because without courage, you'll forever be staying in that zone of comfort. Whenever things get hard, whenever you need to put yourself out there, you would always decline, you would always step back, you would always dim your light for fear of failure, for fear of what other people might say. So how do you get past that? If you're struggling to take that action, if you're struggling to have that difficult conversation, if you're struggling to make that bold decision, what actions can you take to get past that? Well, there's a few things, but the one thing I'm going to share with you on today's episode is this. The thing that helped me to go ahead and deliver the talk this week that helps me go ahead and agree and record the masterclass for the course was this. I tied the action to something greater than myself. I tied it to my mission. I tied it to my purpose. So if there was no greater reason for doing the thing that I did, I wouldn't have done it. Because why would I willingly endure fear and your discomfort just for the sake of it? You wouldn't. Right. There has to be a bigger goal attached to the action that you're taking to the thing that you are doing. So if you're, for example, thinking that the job that you're in just isn't the right job for you, leaving that job is a big step and having the courage to admit to yourself that it isn't right, then to write that letter of resignation and to actually leave is huge. And you're not just going to do that unless there's a bigger reason for doing so. So you need to explore what that bigger reason is and then attach the actions to that bigger reason. So it may be that the current job where you're in is affecting your well being, mental or physical. It could be that the job that you're currently in isn't challenging you. It could be that the job that you're in just isn't aligning with the values. If you've done the value work and know what those values are, and once you know that, then you can look at, if I make this change, what do I stand to gain? If I get out of this job and go and do something else, I stand to have more time to take care of my well being. If I go and do something else, I stand to feel more challenged and more fulfilled in my job each and every day. And that's important to me. That will make me a happier person to be around. That will have a ripple effect on the people around me. So by tying the action to something bigger, it then gives you an impetus, gives you a reason to take the action to implement that courage. And the more that you take these acts of courage, the more that you take these actions, the easier it becomes to take the next action, to implement courage in the next thing that you need to do. I talk about this a bit more in the book where I go into a concept that I use of courage. Stacking, of taking the big thing that you want to do and breaking it down, and then ranking the steps that you that you need to take from the least scary to the most scary and keeping that linear path, that tracking of what you've done so you can Keep looking back and recognize what you've had to overcome to get to your current point, which then gives you sort of the evidence to help you see that you can overcome the things that are further in front of you. Be small in the book say if you haven't read the book already, go ahead and check out the chapter where I talk about courage stacking and I also share a courage stacking exercise in the course that accompanies the book triple C101, the module 3, or module 4, but module 3 of the core modules is about cultivating courage, and I share the concept of coach stacking with a worksheet in there as well. And if you're listening to this episode before the 1st of June 2022, if you go ahead and buy a copy of the book the Triple C Method and then head to iamrinespence.com cccc you'll find out how you can get access to CCC101 for for free for a limited time. So tie courage to something bigger than yourself. Tie the action that you want to take to something bigger than yourself. And by doing so, by tying it to your mission, by tying it to your purpose, it will help you to get right in your own mind why you need to do the thing, why it's not an option. Because, look, I can tell you you should do these things. Somebody could tell me you should go up and speak on stage. That's the way you're going to impact people. But I'm not going to willingly go ahead and do it unless I have a reason for doing it. Unless I can tie that action and tie enduring that discomfort to a bigger goal, to something that's bigger than myself. So I hope this episode has helped you to get clear in your own mind what courage means for you. I hope it's helped you to see areas in your life where maybe you've lacked a little bit of courage. And it's also that this is giving you some ideas as to how you can start to work through that, how you can start to break down that resistance and start to just implement a little bit more courage in your life each day. Because as we know, consistency beats intensity. It's those little actions that we take each day that help build up to the bigger goal. And you'll look back and just see how far you've come if you just keep taking those little steps each and every day. So to recap, courage isn't an absence of fear. It's not an absence of discomfort. It's having those things, having those feelings, having those emotions, but doing the thing anyway because you know it has to be done. That's it for me this week. Thank you for listening. I will see you next week for another episode of the Triple C Project and if you haven't already, head to iam Ryan Spence.com and get hold of the Confidence Journal. Confidence leads to courage. So once you have the confidence to believe that you can do the thing, courage is the next step to help you take the action to actually go ahead and do it and achieve it. So build your confidence, get the Confidence Journal I am Ryan Spence.com and catch you next week. Thanks for tuning in to Triple CE Project. If you like the show, don't keep it to yourself. Go ahead, tell a friend and tell me too by leaving a review to get more tips, tools, strategies to help you get from where you are to where you want to be. Head to iamrinespence.com and download my free Confidence Journal. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram. I'm Amry Spence and you'll be the first to know about the release of of my upcoming book Triple C Method. But for now, only thing that I have left to say is stop living a life of lethargy and start living life lit.