#22: Why Courage Is So Important In Your Relationship

Hey, thanks for coming. Welcome to the Love Shack.

Hey, welcome to the Love Shack, a little old place where we get to get together, explore fresh perspectives and eavesdrop on juicy conversations and uncover mysteries that nobody talks about, but absolutely influence our relationships. If you are struggling in your marriage, just starting out in a new relationship, or are single and looking to do better next time, this is the show for you. My name is Stacy Bartley and I am here with my co host and lover, Tom. Together for the past decade, we have been teaching and loving on people from around the world with the sole purpose of helping individuals and couples to love more and fear less in their relationships, both with themselves and others.

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Are in this moment. Bottom line is thank you so much for listening in. It's great to be together with you. And today we're going to be jumping into a topic that we don't talk about much, especially when it comes to relationships. I hear it a lot in the entrepreneurial world, courage. But it absolutely is an important part of our relationship journey as well. And this is a piece that most relationship coaches, therapists and counselors would probably say, communication is the problem, not courageous. And I would absolutely not agree with that because I could give you all kinds of fabulous communication frameworks and great words and phrases to memorize and use in that moment when maybe things start to escalate a bit, or you're trying to really get out what it is you want, or in an effort to feel heard, or you're finally going to ask for that appreciation and that acknowledgement that you feel like is so well deserved and yet so not given. And it's in those moments where courage is the most important thing because it inhibits our ability to actually stop ourselves and show up. So if we think about it, we stop ourselves in those moments and then we have to kind of learn how to, in our courage, push back against that fear. So today we're going to jump into what that looks like in our relationships and I'm going to share with you a personal story that plays out again and again and again, not only in my life, but in the many, many clients that we're privileged to serve. And yes, communication matters in our relationships. But what's more important than communication is our ability to show up and say what it is we need to say, especially when it counts. But usually it happens like this that our knees buckle, our hands get a little shaky, and we can't follow through. Unfortunately, we don't talk about courage when it comes to our relationships with others and our relationships. But absolutely, courage is the most important thing we need in our relationships in order to create what we call love for a life lifetime. So today, right here in the love shack, we're going to come back in a moment and Tom and I together will explore courage, what it means, why you need it in your relationships, and how you can get some, starting right now. So when you need to show up in your relationship, you have what you need. We'll be right back.

Do you feel like your love life is on life support? It's time for a turbocharged relationship resuscitation with an alternative to marriage counseling. Head over to staceybartley.com to learn more about their proprietary programs their clients use to save their relationships. S-T A C I B A R T L E Y.com Visit stacybartley.com today. Are you tired of sitting on a couple's counselor's couch and feeling like you're just rehashing the past and making no progress? Do you feel like you're holding on to your relationship but panicked you're losing your partner? It's time to learn how to deepen your connection. Finally resolve the arguments that keep coming up. Understand yourself and your partner and create the level of intimacy you've been dreaming of. It's time for love to tingle your toes again. Schedule your private session with relationship expert stacy bartley@staceybartley.com checkup.

Reset your relationship in five days flat from March 8th through the 12th.

It's a free five day experience.

Five days full of free live workshops, foolproof roadmaps, and the Exact tricks and tools you'll need to reset your relationship.

Day 1. Transform your hot mess.

Learn how. Catching yourself in the moment is the secret to learning what we call the power of a pause.

Day 2. Get back to dreaming with your partner.

You'll learn exactly what you need to do to start dreaming with your partner again. So often when our relationships are suffering, we're focused only on what we don't want. You're going to learn what to do instead.

Exactly what to do during arguments.

During arguments, most of us either find ourselves in one of two camps. Controllers. We're trying to bogart the conversation and tell our partners what to do. Collapsers. We shut down or walk away from the conversation. There's a third and really powerful option. Today you're going to learn it.

Day 4. Ready to return to bliss.

Resetting our relationships is all about getting back to how we felt at the beginning of our love stories. Remember what it felt like to know you were the most important person to your partner. So today you're going to learn how to sprinkle a little fairy dust.

Let's pull it all together.

We're going to bring together everything you've learned so far. And you'll learn the four step strategy our clients use to stop the endless arguing, reignite their connection and save their relationship.

To learn more and to register, visit stacybartley.com reset that's staceybartley.com reset Talk radio for the heart and soul. Alternative Talk 1150.

Hey, welcome back. We're getting ready to roll up our sleeves and dive into a juicy conversation around courage. No, you're not tuned into the wrong station. Right. This is usually a conversation that we have around entrepreneurship or opening a business, you know, those kinds of things.

Or maybe extreme, you know, athletics.

Yeah. But rarely do we hear somebody talking about it when it applies to our relationships. But it absolutely does. We're going to explore the world of courage. Why it's an essential part of navigating love right here, right now with Tom. And so let's start with what the heck.

Yeah, what, you know, what, what is courage anyway? And how do you. How do we. How do I develop it? Have you ever wondered?

Well, and what comes up for you when you think about courage? I know for myself, when I, or before, shall I say before I started looking into human behavior and studying all its components. Courage to me was always like someone dashing in to save the day. Like, you know, somebody rescuing somebody from a burning building.

I'm having a huge flash of the lion and the wizard of Oz.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Courage. What was that? Pretty good, huh?

Well, yeah, well, and courage actually is those things. But I would say think about all the times that we in our lives demonstrate courage on a smaller scale. It's not necessarily rushing in to rescue somebody or to save the flames or.

Lift the car off the person that's been trapped.

Yeah. Because courage, put another way, is the little teeny tiny moments where we decide to overstep our fear and not let it stop us in all those many little teeny tiny ways. And in order to create deep, intimate, committed relationships, we absolutely need to consider courage as being part of the deal. But let's first define the meaning of courage, because that's where I went like, okay, let's define the word. Let's decide what courage really is. And so Webster's Dictionary had this to say about it. The ability to do something that frightens one strength in the face of pain or grief. And I don't know about y', all, but when I read that, I went, yep, yep, that's, that's what I think of courage.

Well, certainly pain and grief are very prevalent in our relationships. Right. That's back to a few episodes back we said, what's the four letter word that doesn't begin with L? That's in every single relationship.

Yeah. And so think about all the ways where we're shut down because of grief or pain or, or fear. And that prevents us from really moving forward and in our relationships, saying what we want to say, expressing that I love you, for example, expressing how I feel or what it is I want or what's not truly working. I don't know how to have that difficult conversation. And so the courage part is what really stops us. And little did you know that those are little teeny tiny acts of courage in our day to day lives where we finally overcome the doubt and the fear and the insecurities that we're feeling inside of ourselves and we show up instead. And this conversation always takes me back a few years to about 1998. And at this point in time, I was in a relationship that I really, really felt like was my forever person.

This is, ladies and gentlemen, this is pre. Tom.

Yeah, Tom, you might want to use earmuffs for a minute. Right?

No, it's okay.

But it's pretty. And I really thought, which is really fun part of the story, by the way. We'll come back around and tie that in. Because it just goes to show that what you think, you know, in the moment isn't necessarily so. So at this particular time in 1998, I had met a very handsome, charismatic, funny, hilarious cowboy from Wyoming. And this man swept in. He actually was selling me a car. And because I was in the market, and after cruising the lot and driving, test driving a few cars, we ended up, right, deciding we were going to date. And I'll never forget him, right, taking me out to that same car lot where we had met and pulling down the tailgate and asking me to go steady. I mean, like, who does that in 1998? Steady was back in the 70s. But it literally melted my heart. And so at that point in time, I had really fallen head over heels in love with this guy. And our relationship was pretty intense for about nine months. And what ended up happening is he came to tell me that he felt like he needed to go, even though he had battled a lot of conflict with inside of himself about, you know, proposing one day and telling me it was over the next. And I was so hurt by this, right, that when he said, stace, I'm done. I've got to leave now, and I wish you and your kids all the best. He had four, I had five. That meant we had nine. That might have been part of the deal. It was a big package, and I desperately wanted to say to him, as he was. He was leaving, I love you. Love you, love you. Please don't go. And yet the feelings of rejection actually shut me down, and I decided to appear emotionally unaffected instead and continue to present an air of indifference and not allow myself to experience the love that I deeply felt for him. My lover had his own fears, and he was desperately working to manage those as well. And as I just shared, he would say to me all the time, I want to propose in one moment and run like hell the next day. So I'm leaving, and I'm going to go now. And I thought to myself, oh, we all know that I am, like, the best catch ever. And we all know that this thing has been pretty incredible on both sides. And I remember reassuring myself in my inability to speak up and say what it is I really wanted to say and express where I was really coming from and how much I really did care by saying, he'll be back. He'll be back. You know, it's gonna. It's gonna pass, you know, and here's the thing. We'll just give it some time. And I did. And there was no contact for several days. And the reality set in that he really wasn't coming back or returning my phone calls. And it was in that Moment where I began to cry, I began to cry. And sometimes I look back now and I think, was I crying because the relationship was over or was I actually crying from the regret of not expressing how I truly felt and what it is I wanted in that moment? Those are the things that haunted me for years, right? Even more so than the loss of the relationship itself. I lacked courage. The courage to express myself, my fears and my heart. The courage to risk and to share myself fully with another human being, even though he was walking out the door. Now, had I shared my true feelings in that moment, I'm not saying it would have saved the relationship, but if I could have, it would have definitely created a very different ending. And instead what ensued was an emotional aftermath for myself of doubt, regret, wondering if I would have finally said something, would it have worked out? Would he have come back if he had known how I felt? And I understand now how I could have created an ending that was instead maybe ended, maybe the relationship would have still ended. But this ending, if I would have said something, if I would have had the courage to muster up the strength to actually say how I felt, would it have ended with more love and appreciation between us? Would it have ended with a discovery of why it was he was feeling the way he was so that there was some completion at the end of it? And most of all, that understanding would have been between us that we could have shared and that would have diminished my fears and intimacy that were running my relationship experience and by the way, trickled into my next experience of love and relationships. I am absolutely certain, especially now, after all these 25 years of doing the work that we do, that when we can get complete to a place of understanding that's more important than whether the relationship stays together or does not. Because our regrets are in what we say and what we don't say. Because sometimes we say something, but it's really not the truth. We say something in defensiveness, we blurt out, we. We criticize, we minimize, we pretend like we don't care. So it's not about just saying something, it's about saying what you mean.

Yeah. So I would say in your, you know, thank you for sharing that, baby. You know, it sounds like. And I know this to be the case for myself, so courage doesn't necessarily guarantee that the outcome is going to be different. But what I hear you say, and I would totally agree with my experiences, is when we have the courage to speak up and truly share what's going on for ourselves in oftentimes these difficult Situations, it's going to give us a sense of completion. That without. That would be my understanding. What causes a lot of our regret is because it's that perpetual what if going around and around and around and around in our mindset and our consciousness that creates all that unknown. So courage would be synonymous with completion?

Yes, absolutely. Instead of having an experience where I say, I love you, please don't go, is there anything we can do to work this out? Right. You really mean the world to me. I could have said that, but I, of course didn't want him to know that I was hurt and that I was really defensive because of the rejection of him saying that he needed to go. So instead, what ended up happening is he left. There was no completion. There was no understanding. There was no uncovering for me especially why it is he felt like this wasn't going to work for him. And I affirmed my fears instead. And I really want you to hear this. When we affirm our fears, they grow. It's kind of how our emotional bodies put on weight. When we affirm our fears, they grow. They get bigger. And I robbed myself of any chance at feeling complete in this relationship, which caused me to feel more pain because it was the pain of the insidious regret. What if? What if I would have done this? Because what if doesn't affect you in regards to stopping you, it also affects you when you think about what could have happened that didn't. And the end result for me was a heightened sense of needing to be more careful. And I remember those words trickling through my mind. And I did for a long time. Oh, remember. Okay, next round. See stays. Don't get too deep, don't connect too much, and don't get too committed, you know, and that whole love thing, next time you find love, remember this experience. And love is for idiots anyway. So don't ever get all in. Don't ever do that. Don't ever give your heart away like this again, because it hurts in the end. And for any of you who might be finding yourself in this place today, I want you to understand that it's not the pain of rejection or disappointment that hurts us. What really hurts us is the way we mentally keep that story playing out again and again and again. Our hearts, our emotional bodies, they are so resilient and they have the capacity to love many and to love again and again and again and again. It is thinking like this that keeps us from having love. And then we try and enroll ourselves into not pursuing love or allowing ourselves to love again. And that's what's painful. That's where the pain is coming from. Because you're literally trying to enroll yourself out of a human experience that is so life giving. Because my head says, remember you got hurt last time. Don't go there. It's a dangerous thing. And so courage is going to be needed to confront those fears. Now, I got to be honest with you. We are in a place right now where I don't just see this in a few people's lives. I see many human beings in this place where love hasn't necessarily worked out the way that we thought it was going to. And we're creating a narrative just like this. We're choosing to be more alone and lonely than ever before. And if this was actually the answer, I would suppose maybe you would with me that we would be getting happier as a human race and more miserable, especially with all of this isolation and having to quarantine this last year. I hope that you're starting to see loneliness is not good for us.

Well, and I think it's without a doubt because you look at the, to the great extremes that we all have seen in the various, you know, media stories and such that to what lengths people will now go because they are, they are feeling so isolated and alone. So to me, like, that's the absolute confirmation that we're, we're designed to be with others. That's the way that our creator, whatever it is that you believe, that's how we're designed. That's the blueprint.

Well, and I'm just going to point this out. We can't grow very well and see ourselves or have something to expand our capacity to become all that we are if we're not in relationship with others, because it's in a relationship with someone that all my fears and insecurities get brought to the surface. Right. And that you're going to challenge me and my perspective in ways I can't even imagine. I always say to our clients, hey, if you want to put your personal growth on steroids, just go ahead and get into a relationship that's going to take care of everything, everything that's stopping you, everything you're afraid of, and everything that's keeping you from stepping into who it is you have the capacity to be. Just, just. It'll take care of it all. It'll bring it all to the surface. And it does. And that's why they're so challenging for us. And that's why courage is such an important component of it. The reality is, if we don't muster up some courage. The end result is a heightened sense of needing to be more careful. Don't get too beat. Don't get too connected. Don't get in too committed.

How many times do we hear from our clients, babe, we feel like. I feel like my picker is broken.

So many. Yeah. And so it goes for most of us who are struggling with our fears of intimacy and connection and commitment. Our fears of sharing ourselves with another stops us dead in our tracks because of our lack of courage. And what gets sacrificed as a result is the true intimacy and connection that we are all desperately longing for as we remain in our emotional prisons thinking we are safe. And we are. But not much else happens with safe. You're safe. And another day goes by and you're safe. And another day goes by and you're safe. There's a saying that says it all. Dying will come naturally, but the courage to live and love will not. It is absolutely something that we must develop inside of ourselves in the moment that that lover of mine in 1998 was saying goodbye. I desperately needed some courage, but I didn't have an ounce of it. As a matter of fact, I got extremely defensive and didn't say a thing. I want you to know that courage is something that we can all learn and develop. It can be an exhilarating experience as well. And it won't cost you any cash to get some. Just some butterflies in your stomach and maybe some sweaty armpits. It's time for us to develop some courage. Not by accident. That's how most of us develop courage. We don't give it much thought at all. And yet it's the very thing we need when we find ourselves wrestling with fear. So we're going to take a break for a minute and kind of let this kind of sink in. And when we come back, we're going to absolutely share with you some things that you can do to start developing some courage in your own life. Like right now. We'll be right back.

Reset your relationship in five days flat. From March 8th through the 12th.

It's a free five day experience.

Five days full of free live workshops, foolproof roadmaps, and the exact tricks and tools you'll need to reset your relationship.

Day 1. Transform your hot mess.

Learn how catching yourself in the moment is the secret to learning what we call the power of a pause.

Day 2. Get back to dreaming with your partner.

You'll learn exactly what you need to do to start dreaming with your partner again. So often when our relationships are suffering. We're focused only on what we don't want. You're going to learn what to do instead.

Exactly what to do during arguments during.

Arguments, most of us either find ourselves in one of two camps. Controllers. We're trying to bogart the conversation and tell our partners what to do. Collapsers. We shut down or walk away from the conversation. There's a third and really powerful option. Today you're going to learn it.

Day 4 Ready to return to Bliss.

Resetting our relationships is all about giving back to how we felt at the beginning of our love stories. Remember what it felt like to know you were the most important person to your partner. So today you're going to learn how to sprinkle a little fairy dust.

Day 5 let's pull it all together.

We're going to bring together everything you've learned so far, and you'll learn the four step strategy our clients use to stop the endless arguing, reignite their connection, and save their relationship.

To learn more and to register, visit stacybartley.com reset that's stacybartley.com reset Are you tired of sitting on a couple's counselor's couch and feeling like you're just rehashing the past and making no progress? Do you feel like you're holding on to your relationship but panicked you're losing your partner? It's time to learn how to deepen your connection. Finally resolve the arguments that keep coming up. Understand yourself and your partner and create the level of intimacy you've been dreaming of. It's time for love to tingle your toes again, schedule your private session with relationship expert stacy bartley@staceybartley.com checkup. Do you feel like your love life is on life support? It's time for a turbocharged relationship resuscitation with an alternative to marriage counseling. Head over to stacybartley.com to learn more about their proprietary programs their clients use to save their relationships. S T A C I B A R t l e y.com visit staceybartley.com today alternative talk 1150.

Hey, welcome back. If you're just joining us, we are having a very juicy conversation on courage. I've shared a story that I feel like really highlights it from my own life about where I didn't have the courage to show up and really say what it is I wanted to say. And that moment cost me years of regret and disappointment because I was left with wondering what would have happened if I would have said something. And I was also left with a lack of completion, like really understanding why it was the relationship ended the way it was. Now, let me just highlight here that it's difficult for us if we don't develop some courage that these kinds of things will shut us down. And when they do, those fears that stopped us in the first place tend to take on some intensity. So then all of a sudden, I, in the next round, would say, okay, don't get too deep, don't get too connected, don't get too committed to this whole love thing. Remember what happened last time. And I want you to know that our emotional bodies. I like to separate our emotional bodies and our physical bodies because it helps us wrap our head around what's going on. Our emotional bodies have the ability. They're very resilient, and they have the ability to heal and move on and love again and again and again. And not only just one person, but many people. I mean, think about that. You love your kids, you love your parents, you love your aunts, you love your uncles, right? You love your lovers. And babe, I just want you to know I love you most of all.

Public declaration.

Yeah. So we have the ability to love and love and love again. What's going to stop us is our. Is our mentality around it, the fear around it from really showing up and saying what you need to say. And in all fairness, when this story unfolded, I'd been through two divorces, and I really felt like the reason that those didn't work out was because I wasn't in love. And this time I was in love. It was probably the first time, being 36 years old, that I had truly experienced that feeling of truly being in love and understanding what love was and what it wasn't. And so this was a really big blow for me because I really thought that love was going to take care of everything. That if you find yourself in that feeling of feeling in love, well, then you're good to go. And so when this ended, I couldn't wrap my head around it. And then I was so hurt by the fact that I was in love and I was the one that was being rejected. I was usually the one that ended it because I wasn't ever really in love. But this time, he was ending it. And I was left feeling incomplete and rejected and not being able to say I love you and get that completion, that created a tremendous amount of regret for me. And I did go on. Just so you know, for the record of 15 more years being independent, not fully being in any relationship, I always had one foot in, one foot out the door, just in case I can't say that I ever really gave my heart away again until Tom came into my life. And the reason why that was a thing for me because he would have been just another, shall we say, sad to say, not on the headboard, if it hadn't been for an experience that I had way back when as a 14 year old girl where I was sitting on the porch of my family home and he popped out of the backseat of a car for my soon to be new brother in law's wedding. And I went, oh my gosh, I want somebody like that someday. And so when the opportunity came to explore a relationship with Tom, it took me all the way back to a 14 year old girl who had a really incredible moment of thinking this is the man that I want. And it was just enough, you know, Gus is so smart. God, universe and spirit. So, so smart. It was just enough to stop me dead in my tracks from this crazy, crazy mentality and fear that I had built up around me like a fortress, like an emotional prison that prevented me from ever into relationships again. And all of a sudden I found myself trying to figure out how to undo that fortress, how to overcome those fears and how to step into really loving and giving my whole heart once again. And that was a moment where tremendous courage was absolutely something that I had to embark on. And I mean, Tom will tell you the first time we ever talked. Right?

Yeah, no, it was, it was, I always say there was a lot that went into creating that moment much beyond, you know, our human abilities. Again, I, I'm a pretty good detail person but even with all that, you know, you just, again, I think there's a, you know, the universe, whatever is conspiring to help us. Sometimes we simply just have to get out of the way, you know, and, and yeah, what did I tell you.

When we had our very first conversation? What did I tell you right out of the gate? I said, tom, I have no intentions.

Of ever getting married again. That's fine. I mean, good lord, we don't need any more kids, you know, we got, we got a whole friggin crew. The party comes when we arrive, you know, so that's not a deal breaker. So yeah, that was my second conversation we ever had.

But, and you can tell that I was still struggling with my own commitment, phobic fears and insecurities while I'm trying to muster up my courage on the.

Backside and let me just share with our, you know, with our listeners, with our audience. Look, we don't take a position whether people should be married not married. I mean, there's so much around that we are, what we like to say, neutral body of work, meaning whatever works between the people involved is what's important, you know. So, yes, we are married. But again, marriage doesn't give you anything more than what you already have. So that could be an episode for another time, for sure.

Absolutely. There's a wonderful quote by Leo Biscalio who says, certainly no one has ever succeeded in love has played it safe.

Read that again. I love that.

I do too. Certainly no one who has ever succeeded in love has ever played it safe. Love is not a place where our fears and insecurities are not going to come up. And even if we love somebody, it doesn't mean that we're necessarily good partners for life. And if we were to entertain the idea of love for a lifetime. Love for a lifetime can be many things. It can be many lovers can be a lover for the long haul, which is what we're really after. But usually what gets in the way is our own selves, our own fears, our own inabilities to get in. And that could be on your side or it could be on somebody's side. Like this gentleman in 1998. He was terrified. And I'm happy to say I still. We've had many, many conversations. He's married, has a beautiful family. We have had many conversations since then where we were able to get complete. And I tell them all the time, hey, I love you. And you know, I want you to see that that's possible. Tom tells his ex wife, hey, I love you. And that just because the relationship didn't turn out the way you had hoped, it doesn't mean that we stopped loving. And that's a, that's a mindset that we've absolutely got to stop in our society where I have to figure out how to not like you anymore. I have have a reason to not like you anymore. And I have to figure out a way to just cut this off, like my right arm and pretend like it never happened. If you hear somebody who's been in a relationship with somebody else, perhaps you're dating again after a divorce, and you hear somebody say, I really love them, know that they have the capacity to love. And if they have the capacity to love, then they have the capacity to love you too. Now, that's not saying that you don't need to make sure that they're complete with that relationship and ready to move on. That's a totally different conversation, though. And we feel like we're threatened if by Chance, they say, hey, I love you. I still love my ex. That's a great sign.

I like to say my first, I.

Mean, my first wife, my first.

I mean, again, you know, when we're all about love, creating and helping people create and experience love for a lifetime, and love for a lifetime will mean many different things for many different people. But what it means centrally is experiencing, feeling, bathing in this place of being in love with wherever we are at that point of our life journey. That's really what I think. At the end of the day, that's what we're all after.

And as I will share with our listeners, listen, if you want a relationship to work, it's going to require us to get all in, right? And if we've got to get all in and love with our hearts, right, that's going to be what's required. Then get all in every time or don't get in at all. Because having one foot in and one foot out just means it's not going to go well anyway.

So stay, share with us again because courage, I know for me, I don't think of courage, you know, synonymous or required or part of the relationship journey. So give us a couple as we start to land this episode, a couple takeaways that people can use specific to courage in their relationships. What would that look like? What would that sound like?

Well, before the break, we promised that we were going to give you some actual steps that you can use in order to start building your courage right now. So let's give those to you right now. Okay? These are six steps that we can go in depth with in our programs and such. But I'm going to give them to you briefly here and you can re listen to this episode if you need to, to get them all down. But number one is it's important as we step in to build courage that we understand that courage is developed anytime we step out of our comfort zone just a little bit. It doesn't have to be a ton, but just a little bit. And when we step out of our comfort zone in any measure, we all of a sudden have this experience of, ah, okay, I can do this. Look, look what happened. It's amazing. And so start this process with step one by looking at all the times and places that you've already demonstrated courage in your life. Make a list of those things. Like, remember when you stepped forward and went for it? Maybe that was in starting a business or asking somebody out on a date or saying yes when you really were scared and wanted to say no, not because you didn't want it, but because you didn't to want know what was.

Going to happen, gave that toast at somebody's wedding or a retirement party or somewhere where you were afraid to, you know, to publicly speak. And you still went past that, that fear and chose to acknowledge that person that was important.

And this will help you kind of bolster yourself up by going, okay, I've developed courage before. This is good. I could do this right? So that's step one. Step two is develop courage now by exercising it. And this means that you're going to have to choose an activity by conscious choice, not. Not by accident, but by conscious that maybe stretches you a little bit, that gets you just outside your comfort zone. I like to use the example if your stomach is flipping over and your armpits are getting sweaty, you're in the right place. That's where courage happens and is developed and strengthened. So just choose an activity. And before you do that activity, I'm going to encourage you to do step three, which is I want you, before you ever do the activity, to write down a list of all the things that you think are going to happen when you do it. Like just write them down on a piece of paper. I think that this. And what if this happens? And what if this happens? And oh, my gosh. Holy cow. And then you. You set that piece of paper aside and you go to step four, which is actually go do the thing that you decided you were going to do. And then after that experience, you come back and you compare your experience, which is step five. You compare your experience with what actually happened. Like, did any of these fears, any of these fears at all happen, come to fruition? And what you find is, no, actually, it was totally different experience. You know, Babe makes me think of when we do live workshops, okay, and we have people walk through this exercise in the live workshop, do you remember? And the exercise that we always give them in the workshops is we line them up and ask them to stare in each other's eyes. And by the way, these people are strangers, so these aren't people who know each other. We line them up and we ask.

Them opposite each other, and we ask.

Them to stare into each other's eyes for a full minute. And then we're going to switch and go down the line so that you're going to have a minute with each and every person. And I tell them what we're going to do before we do it, and they write down what they think is going to happen. And mind you, we're not even speaking in this exercise.

There's no verbal at all.

You're just looking, you're just looking in each other's eyes, across from each other. And you might have to do that with 10 people in the workshop. And afterwards we come back, which is the beautiful thing. And as we compare what actually was the experience to what they thought was going to happen, the fear typically is what? Judgment.

Yeah, they won't like me or it's hard to know that someone liked it because there's no voice involved though, which is interesting that that comes up.

Yeah, they're going to think less of.

Me, won't like the color of my eyes.

They're going to think I have flaws. They're going to know all my secrets.

And yeah, like Stacy shared, we've never heard that. It's quite, it's quite the opposite of how enriching and warm it is. And again, there's no words being spoken that you can create that kind of connection with someone simply from a, a very, you know, specific, intentional, you know, gaze into somebody's eyes.

Yeah. And it's such an empowering experience where, okay, that really bonds the group now because everybody has this sense of I'm safe, I'm, I'm good here and I am accepted. And, and literally as they're sharing, because I love to have this, the group share, I hope we can get back to this soon, babe. Because everybody starts to giggle at the outlandish fears that people wrote down on their pages and they get really excited to share them because they realize it's not true at all that they are so much more than their fears. And that's where the magic happens and the courage goes into expansion mode. So that next time they need that courage to show up, they know, okay, just push past this fear because good things are on the other side. And we literally help people do 12 or 13 activities to help them continue to develop their courage throughout this workshop because it's such an important element. And the last step six in exhilarating courage building would be the celebration of any time you find yourself on the other side of pushing past your fears and recognizing and realizing, ah, that didn't happen at all. Celebrate that those are moments that empower us, that build our confidence, that build our self esteem. And it doesn't really matter what the activity is as long as it's outside of your comfort zone. But then when moments like I described in my sharing with you today about showing up and saying what it is I need to say and expressing how I really feel they're much easier because that fear is not going to stop me in my tracks.

Well, and hopefully it's going to start building, you know, again, everything, excuse me, happens with consistency and repetition, especially when it's something that we're not really excited about initially to do. So hopefully that acknowledgement and stuff will be that, you know, what propels us to do it again. You know, again, with consistency and practice, you know, things become less intimidating for ourselves.

So let's give our listeners some really great courage building exercises that they can take away from this episode and that they can start doing like right now. Because you deserve to build some courage in your life so that when it counts, right, and your knees get shaky and your armpits get sweaty, you know exactly what to do do. You're going to confront the fear, you're going to show up and you're going to do it anyway.

Sure. How about, you know, call someone you've lost contact with.

Right. And remember that thinking, right. Oh, they're not going to want to hear from me anyway.

If they did, then it's been a long time. Yeah. Good lord.

So if that makes you feel uncomfortable, that's a great exercise for you.

Yeah. Call someone that you need to apologize to.

Gosh, who wants to do that? Right. And if those seem really easy because you're really good at this, well, then how about something else? How about write your ex a letter thanking them for the things in your relationship that you really appreciated most about them. Does that make you sweaty? Does that make your stomach flip over?

That might be a Big Gulp moment.

Yeah. And why not? Why do these things stop us? Regardless of how they react, the benefit is in you stepping through those fears and insecurities and doing it right. These are great skill building exercises. So I'm going to encourage you to pick one today and go through these six steps because they're going to absolutely help you when the rubber meets the road.

You know, when you go home this evening, depending on when you're listening to this, you know, go home and truly, you know, I think the greatest gift any of us can give anybody that especially to people that are important, is our true presence. So, you know, rather than just kind of going on autopilot, when we step into our home or wherever it is we and our significant others are around us, give them your presence and appreciation just for a moment, you know, instead of how we usually go and do our normal routine. Stop, pause and truly connect. Even if it's for 30 seconds. Look, look that child. Look that partner look your spouse, husband, wife, you know, family member, neighbor in their eyes and really show true appreciation.

Hey, and if you're in a new relationship and you're feeling that love thing, why not be the first to say, I think I love you. Ooh, scary. Why not? Why do we sit on these things instead of express how we feel? Because of the rejection. I tell you what, the pain of them not knowing how you truly feel is going to far outweigh the fear of rejection that you're feeling in that moment. Right. Saying how you feel is just the way I feel. And if you don't feel that way, then that's okay. But this is where I'm at. We call that in our body of work planning our flag. And yes, it does take courage. And so we've got to intentionally develop some. I hope that you're starting to see how important this is and that you've got some courage building activities that you can absolutely do. Right now we're going to transition for a moment because we have a question and it's kind of related to courage for sure. And by chance, if you want to call in right now, you absolutely can.

425-373-5527 and you can share with us.

Your questions about courage or some of your experiences. But we've had a question come in from our website and the question is my girlfriend and I have been together for nearly five years. We've been separated now for a year or more. Her mother passed away recently and she fell into a depression and grief. And this is when she told me she was done and didn't love me. I've tried several times to open up the lines of communication and nothing from her. I do love her dearly and haven't given up on this. I do believe there could still be some love like when we first started. So I would say to this dear wonderful human soul, this is exactly where I found myself. Because I didn't say what I needed to say in the beginning. I kept thinking, I'm going to get another chance. I'm going to get another chance. I'm going to get another do over in order to tell them how much I really care and how much I love them. I also want to share with you three key truths that will support you in moving forward. The first one is being. There is nothing that excites us as a human being more than someone who seems alive and vibrant. So it's tough for you to show up like this. But if you're hanging on to an experience that has happened in the past. Instead of vibrancy, it feels instead heavy, obligatory and old, like a stale sandwich you used to enjoy but has now gone still or you've eaten too many of. When we feel needy and insecure and we're trying to chase, I want you to think about when you've experienced that for yourself, you kind of want to push people away instead of, wow, look, oh, my gosh, they're amazing. They're sexy, they're vibrant, they're alive. So please know that you cannot beg her enough in order to come back. And maybe what you're experiencing is a little bit of what I did, of not being able to show up and share and say what you needed to say. Number two principle I want to share with you is as we hang on to things in our past, it's actually highlighting what we don't want instead of what we do want. We can recreate the things we miss by looking for them as we move forward. And we create an awareness for these things when we no longer desire things in the past, but instead look to how we can recreate them in our future. Instead of being in a discovery process of uncovering what it is you don't want or how you're going to get back to a time in the past, I want to encourage you to think about what it is you want and you loved from that relationship that you can take with you into the future to recreate maybe with her, but maybe with somebody different. And number three is we got to let go because space and permission is actually unconditional love. So it empowers and enlivens us all. So we've got to let go of the past, realize we created our experiences in the first place, and we need to turn to the future and take what it is we learned from that experience that I loved, I can recreate. And what I didn't love so much about that I'm going to be mindful of not recreating in my life again. Anything you want to add to that?

No, I think that's a very powerful 1, 2, 3.

Power punch.

Power punch. You know, hopefully that serves you and others that are in a similar situation, you know, as to how you can take what you're experiencing and move forward.

Yeah. Well, gosh, you guys, if there's not anything coming in, you can certainly. I'm going to remind you, go to our website, as Tom had reminded us in the first the episode. You can post your questions there. You can use a recording device. It's called Speak Pipe. You can use your name or not use your name. You can call into the station. We're going to try and do a better job of allowing questions. I just get so impassioned about sharing things with you that I often don't leave time for. But I promise as we go forward, I'll do a better job of leaving, allowing time for those questions to come in. And thank you to this person who remains anonymous for entrusting us with your question. I hope that that helps you with your relationship as you move forward. We got to just go again. We got to love again, my friends. We gotta muster up the courage to get all in because if we got one foot in and one foot out, it's not gonna go well anyway. We're gonna also invite you to join our challenge. A whole story behind that we don't have time to share with you, but we're pushing the reset button and we're gonna begin it again on Monday. So it's not too late for you to jump in. And you can jump in by going to stacybartley.com reset.

Yeah, that's S T A C I bartley.com.

Yeah.

Forward slash, reset. And again, you may hear something announcing on our show here, you know that it's March 8th through March 12th. Well, guess what? It's going to be March 15th again. We're going to reset the reset and do it again. How about that?

Yeah, we're in a whole lot of reset over here in our life. Right. We need to reset our life or reset our challenge, reset our relations, relationships. And we're happy to share this information with you and know that we're right along with you in that process. So come on back to our challenge and come on back next week. Join Tom and I as we explore what you do when you really feel like a hot mess. Because after all, it's March Madness like, Like our end. We'll maybe talk about getting a little lucky because it's going to be right around St. Patrick's Day after. It's going to be great. So the song that we've chosen today to close out our show, we love to do this because it gives you a feeling, an emotion of the conversation that we've been having is a song by Go Pele. And the title of this song, I'm going to get emotional because there's a little bit of a nostalgia in this song. I first shared this song with Tom and I when we were first coming together and it's allowing myself to muster up a little courage and explore what was possible in this relationship. I felt like I was getting closer to my dream dreams. And I've since learned that when we can challenge our fears and muster up that courage that we need, we absolutely get closer to our dreams. So I share this with you as I turn to you and I tell you, gosh darn it, I like you.

All right, everybody, we'll see you next week.

You bet you.

Get closer to your dreams and join us next week when we look forward to that.

It's gonna. Bye. Bye.