Are You Living a Courageous Life?

While most of us would agree that courage and bravery are positive qualities, many people would not use these words to describe themselves. Most people are still too afraid to live the life they truly want — afraid of taking risks, of failing, of being disappointed or of what others might think.

However, everyone has the ability to live courageously. As the Wizard of Oz tells the Cowardly Lion in L. Frank Baum’s classic children’s story, “You know, of course, that courage is always inside one.”

So what is courageous living? How do you know if you are living courageously?

Courage Starts Inside
Courageous living is our innate ability to take a stand for the future we want to have and then allow that vision to begin to shape our priorities, choices, behavior and actions.

Courageous living starts with who we’re being. We must be willing to think for ourselves, to make decisions that are true to us regardless of social norms and what other people think, to dream our dreams, to believe in ourselves, and to take a stand for what we want.

It’s believing: Yes, I can achieve my goals and dreams. Yes, I can be as rich or successful as I want. Yes, I can have the family and the love that I want. Yes, I can live where I want.

Decades ago, after my wife and I had our second child, Eden, we decided to emigrate from Israel. Professionally I was doing OK there, but it was a small pond, and the prospects for success were limited. Wanting to build a better life for our family, we moved to North America. Our original plan was to live in the United States, where we had friends, but we ended up in Canada because of visa requirements.

That was a very scary period for my wife and I. We didn’t know anybody. We had two young kids, and I was away from home 80 percent of the time during that first year developing my career and building the prospects for our future success. Then, after a few years of working in a company where I wasn’t fully satisfied and didn’t feel that I could fulfill my dreams, I decided to start my own business.

That really required courage. I was terrified that I would not be able to provide for my family. I had many sleepless nights questioning my decision of giving up my safety net. There was no guarantee. But I had a vision of my life that required us to take some risks and make a stand for what we believed was possible. And we never looked back!

Courage Takes Many Forms
Courageous living doesn’t just apply to the big, life-changing decisions — such as whether to leave a safe job and start your own company or whether to leave an unhappy marriage. It’s also important to take a courageous stand for the little things we want out of life.

For example, my wife has a very busy schedule. She runs some of our businesses, raises our kids and manages our household. She is an amazing wife, mother and professional. She patiently and generously takes care of everyone around her, including me. She is also a very talented artist — but her busy life has previously kept her from doing what she enjoys for her self-expression. So, several months ago, she made a decision to dedicate one day each week to her art, regardless of everything else that is on her plate.

Courageous living could mean making time for your hobbies or for exercise and not neglecting “you.” It could mean quitting smoking, learning a new skill, applying for a job you’re not exactly “qualified” for, or simply deciding that you will find a way to attend your child’s soccer games.

Living courageously simply means that you take a stand for what you want in life — however big or small — and you stick with it, no matter what.

Join the Conversation
Please share your views about what courageous living means for you. What have you achieved or overcome in your life — big, small or medium — that took independent thinking and courageous living?

Generating Breakthroughs in Challenging Relationships (Part 4): Rules of Future Engagement

How do you take a challenging relationship — personal or professional — and transform it into one built on trust, respect and intimacy?

Over the last three weeks, we have examined the first three steps for generating this kind of breakthrough:

  1. Both parties must authentically desire a transformation and commit to having the conversations necessary to take the relationship to a new or better place.
  2. Have an honest, open, rational conversation about the history in order to drive closure, complete the past and bring the relationship back to the space of nothing (zero).
  3. Generate rich, exciting possibilities for the future of your relationship.

This week, we’ll cover the fourth and final step: Turn the new possibilities into clear actions and practices that take the relationship to the next level.

Turn the Possibilities into Reality
This phase of the conversation is about cementing the new possibilities you’ve generated for your relationship with clear promised actions and practices. If the last step was all about creating rich possibilities, this phase is about narrowing the playing field and committing to specific actions.

Most people like to keep commitments ambiguous because it leaves wiggle room, which allows them to avoid the potential stress of having to do what they say. The problem with vague promises is that they leave a lot of room for failure and disappointment. So, my coaching to people who are in this step is always to keep the promises simple, clear and rigorous.

  • “Simple” because it is better to commit to fewer actions and really keep them well than to have a list of 20 things — I call it the “should” list, the things we should do — and not follow through with most of them. In fact, I recommend making the fewest promises that make the most difference.
  • “Clear” because different people at times have different views about what certain things mean. And I have seen so many breakdowns in trust that were caused or made worse by people believing everything was clear only to discover through the other person’s actions and behaviors that this was not the case.
  • “Rigorous” because especially when people turn a new page, it is particularly important, in my experience, to manage promises and expectations in a rigorous way. This is a time of heightened sensitivity. It takes many conversations and much effort to give a relationship a new chance but only one screw-up to ruin the progress and take things backward.

Actions and practices could look like:

  • “Let’s agree that every Tuesday, we’ll meet for half an hour to share our key objective of the week, especially the anticipated challenges. Agreed? Great!”
  • “Every time we have a presentation, we’ll first have a one-on-one conversation to ensure we are on the same page and have the same message. Agreed?”
  • “Every time you hear some feedback or some information that could be of use to me, you’ll share it, and I’ll do the same thing. Promise? Good!”
  • “Whenever I do or say something that upsets you, please promise me that you will come straight to me to talk about it. And I promise to listen without getting defensive. Because if I do these things, it’s because I am unaware, not on purpose. OK?”

In Conclusion

Now you are ready to move forward — to change what wasn’t working and to begin building the trust and intimacy necessary to work together well.

To recap, what did we do? We didn’t react to a problem. We didn’t react to an issue. We completed the issue, took it to zero, and then created a new possibility for the future. Rather than reacting to the past, we proactively created the future we want from nothing.

While this might not always be easy to do, the principle and steps are quite simple, and they are based on common sense. Just keep these four last tips in mind throughout your conversations:

First, be authentic. Stay true to your intention. Don’t sell out.

Second, be courageous enough to share your feelings and generous enough to listen as the other shares theirs. Let it in.

Third, stay with it, even if it’s messy or you get lost in the conversation. Go back to your initial intention, and resist the urge to get defensive. Remember, this is about feelings, and whether you agree or disagree is irrelevant.

Lastly, Be smart, not right. I think this is self-explanatory.

If you keep these things in mind and work the four steps, you will be able to transform and/or elevate any challenging, dysfunctional or functional relationship to a new level of trust, partnership and affinity.

I would love to hear your experiences in using this — whether you were successful or not. This will give me an opportunity to provide more support. Please comment on my blog.

Generating Breakthroughs in Challenging Relationships (Part 3): Starting From Scratch

How do you take a challenging relationship — personal or professional — and transform it into one built on trust, respect and intimacy?

Over the past two weeks, we have examined the first two steps for generating this kind of breakthrough. The first step is that both parties must genuinely want to take the relationship to a new, better place and commit to having the necessary conversations. The second step is to have an honest, open, rational conversation about the past so that you can complete the past and “zero it out” so you can start over.

This week, we’ll discuss the third step of the conversation: generating a rich, exciting possibility for the future of your relationship.

Envision a New Future

This part of the conversation is about expressing and declaring what you both want — how you want your relationship to play out going forward.

This is not about creating a plan of action or making promises to each other (that’s step four, which we’ll get into next week). At this point, you’re simply expressing what you want the next level of your relationship to look like and what you both hope to create together.

I picked a few words deliberately here. First is “create.” In this step you are creating the new future of your relationship. You can only create something if you start from nothing, or zero. That is why the previous step of completing the past and returning to zero, or nothing, is so critical. If you don’t complete the past and return to zero, whatever you try and create will be on top of incomplete and unresolved baggage — and it will only be a matter of time before something will trigger the baggage again, and the resentment and lack of trust will re-emerge. If you have done the previous step genuinely and effectively, this step will be very exciting, stimulating, liberating and empowering.

The other word that is important is “want.” In this step you are expressing what you want the relationship to look and feel like: what it could be, what you’d like it to be. When people express their desire, there are very few limitations to the conversation and you can literally create whatever both people want.

Build Excitement for the Future

In the last step of the conversation — where you discussed the past — I suggested taking turns and resisting the urge to interrupt or comment on what the other person has to say. This third phase of the conversation is a different type of conversation — it doesn’t have to be so structured. Ideally, you will build upon what each other says by going through a lot of back and forth.

For example, one person might start off by saying, “You know, I would really like our relationship to be open, easy and straightforward. You are so good at bringing people together and getting them to work together, and I am so good at addressing issues and conflict resolution. If we could work together, we could really do some great things. I would love for us to be able to work like this.” Halfway through, the other person will respond by saying, “You know what? I agree with you. I feel exactly the same way. Remember what happened a year ago when we brought these customers together and they were upset about our quality of delivery? I did a great job getting them to the meeting. But you did such a great job of defusing the tensions and getting a dialogue going that led to our best year ever. If we had done it together in all these other situations, can you imagine how great the results might have been? I would love to work with you in this manner, with no tensions and complications …” “Yes, I agree ….”

This conversation will be highly interactive and energizing, and the two of you will get infected and inspired by each other’s expressions of “What if …,” “How about …,” or “Wouldn’t it be great if ….” The energy will spiral upward. Eventually, both of you will be left in a space of: “What do we do with all this great possibility and excitement?” That’s when you know you’ve just completed the third step of the conversation.

Next week, we’ll examine the fourth and last step — where you cement the new possibilities you’ve created for the relationship through concrete practices, actions and new rules of engagement for the future of your relationship.