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What is Courage? · Fierce Encouragement

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hi there.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Mark Walker.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I am excited to have you join me on my new podcast called Fierce Encouragement.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: In this high impact podcast, I'm going to dive deep into how we can use coaching, mastering our mindset, and even harnessing the transformative power of meditation to make our lives better.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you'll join me as we learn how to conquer self-doubt and unlock that deeper, true potential.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the powerhouse of personal growth.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is Fierce Encouragement.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Hey there, this is Mark.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining me in this, the inaugural first episode of my new podcast called Fierce Encouragement.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: I know this won't be for everybody, but as we delve or go deeper into some of those things that I've used as a coach for other people in moving towards those strong mental foundations that we kind of all value and want, we want that veracity of mind to show up in tough moments, but also to be open and compassionate in those moments as well so that's why I started this to simply share tools that worked for me for my clients in hopes that they'll help you so that's my aspiration for all the listeners out there that are taking the time to listen thank you for tuning in I hope this is helpful In the three plus years that I've helped people coach, and in the many years before that as a trainer, as a knowledge management specialist reaching out to people in IT, trying to win hearts and minds through activities and actions, I know and I feel, even within myself, that deep need to be encouraged, to be connected, and to have this better relationship with ourselves.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think we all probably could stand back or zoom out from where we are in our minds and our thinking and just pause and do a quick audit.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: How is my self-image?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: How is that inner encouragement?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And how can we make a fierce inner encouraging voice more prominent than the one that seems to kind of default to the negative storyline?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard work.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is very hard work, but it is also the most noble and important work that we can do in our lifetime.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: It helps us show up better as parents, as workers, but most importantly in how we communicate and connect and talk to ourselves.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: So when we think about the word courage, we need to consider how that virtue, that positive value that we can have in courage, that balanced value, forthright courage in our life, it can inform all the other areas or the body of our whole being.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: It is the heart that pumps.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: It is our courage that pumps all the time without asking.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes we take it for granted.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Just that basic courage to get up and walk the earth sometimes is a very, very powerful thing.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't pause to consider that the heart of our being, the heart of our life, is that courage that it takes to literally wake and move and help and learn and reach out day after day after day.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: The courage is the part of us that doesn't give up, that's always moving, subtly creating the energy that we need to go through the day.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: But courage being the heart of it.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: I love this, and I love it as the title of this new podcast, down at the root of that phrase, the word courage, the value and virtue of courage, is something we could all get a little bit better at.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so to interrupt that thought and to level set, courage doesn't mean running into a hail of bullets.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Courage doesn't mean fighting a lion or a bear on the savannah.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it does when you're trying to save your family or save your friends.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it is taking bullets to save somebody.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: That is courage.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm talking not about harshness or rashness of running into bullets just to run into bullets, but something that is informed with wisdom.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And behind courage, we have this intelligence or wisdom that's calling forth within us, kind of guiding us, if you will.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we need to work at that more.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: If we don't hear those intuitions and don't feel that connection with an inner intelligence, it simply means we need to put some more time into that during our days.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: But when we think about courage, it's easy to think about the weight of discouragement that we get from modern culture.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Emotionally, we're kind of living with that baggage from our parents or from the way we were raised.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: the way we learned.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if we step back again, this society is sick in the way, craving, treadmill that we're on of accepting and rejecting, of hating and loving.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we just get worn down from that.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: So we have a huge weight of discouragement or our culture doesn't celebrate that.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: or encourage people as much as it could.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And again, this is not to demean or bemoan those teachers and those managers and those leaders and even those moms and dads and those aunts and uncles that are out there doing amazing work, showing up, being encouraging for kids, for families, for communities.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: There are so many amazing people out there.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if we start to look for those people and look for those helpers and teachers and assistants and those secretaries So in the same way we can encourage ourselves as a coach, I find that most people are thirsty for that.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: The thing that I wanted to bring them to feel encouraged through my positive viewpoint on their problems or their success or their ups and downs.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we just kind of need to remember that when we're working in that arena, especially me as a coach, that we're working down at the base of things sometimes.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: People didn't have a good relationship with their parents or their childhood.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there was a particular coach, an athletic coach, or a gym teacher, or a teacher, or a parent, or a brother or sister.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it's all of the above, right?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: That did not encourage us.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so here we find ourselves in middle life or halfway through her journey or maybe past that.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't know what to do.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know how to work with it.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: We don't understand those wounds.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: And here we are kind of frozen.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: We've got these insecurities, these limiting beliefs, and we just can't see it.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: We just feel the pain, the symptoms.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to go anywhere.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to reach out, call somebody new, go do something that's outside of our comfort zone.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: But again, if we stand back from this and take modern science along with ancient wisdom of meditation and practicing mindfulness of our emotions, ups and downs, not getting too harsh with ourselves, but just being more curious, we can look at the science of encouragement and see some positive things that have come forth from that in the last few years.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Stoicism knew this, so did meditation.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: But when we practice self-encouragement, In the moment when we find ourselves berating ourselves or just feeling negative, when we practice that self-voiced encouragement, it is a powerful antidote to that self-criticism.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: It is literally the tonic or the antidote that will break it down.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Studies are showing this more and more with that resilience of mind that we can show up moment to moment, even in a mindfulness focus practice.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: When we train with that muscle of coming back again and again and again and asking where our mind is at, that creates a moment where we can shift that language in our head so we can encourage ourselves.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of self-sabotage ourselves spontaneously.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Modern neurology and a lot of the great science that has come forth in the past decade plus talks about how our brain and our neurology is plastic.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's rebuildable.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's remotable.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: And when we think about that, we can consider the default modal network that we get caught in.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: That is the way our brain fires naturally.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the way we can kind of find ourselves in this world.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: We get conditioned to that trauma ripple effect that I was talking about earlier, how we don't have the support during childhood.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: We might not have those roles or those adults that we could connect with and kind of like develop an identity alongside of them.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: kind of have them as models or inspirational people.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Some of us didn't have that.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: So again, we can kind of find ourselves in that self-sabotage.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't even have to be pronounced.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have to be this big trauma.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where we can fault ourselves and just think like, ah, I'm just screwed up normally.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: My thinking is screwed up.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think that I have a broken brain.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard this.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard this from dozens of clients of mine and people that I've had discovery sessions with.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good program, but you don't understand my mind.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's really broken.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And we can do this in meditation sometimes.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: We'll sit down for the first 10 minutes and we notice at the end of it when the bell rings.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't even have a moment, maybe like a minute of practicing with the breath or practicing on the focused area we wanted to look at or practice focusing on.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of it, we'd be like, oh, see, more evidence.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: My mind is shattered.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Or perhaps we start to notice that the mind's wandering and we realize that it does it five times every minute, 20 times every minute.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then we can naturally get frustrated.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And again, go back to that dialogue.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: My mind is broken.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: I told you.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes people walk away from the practice at that point, thinking that they have something different and what the medicine or tonic of meditation and focus is not for them.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: It can't happen.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd simply say that's not true.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: You just need to simply start again.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Keep your practices short, repeatable every day.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: And with time, gradually, over weeks and months and years, you'll notice that you have control of the mind.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: That is, you can at least observe it when it's off track.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we can really come back to this idea of self-encouragement versus that self-sabotaging mindset that we can get on.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And this really draws a parallel between to the hero's journey, right?
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: When we think about Joseph Campbell, we need to descend.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: We need to leave the land of comfort and descend and go past all the madness and take that big trip.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: We need to go into the recesses of our mind and just be there and be present with them and learn from them.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: And again, return with awareness to wherever we're at using that sage-like quality.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Seeing those saboteurs or the people that are pulling us away from our best self, whether it's addictions, addictive mindsets, maybe it's the complaining mind or the shame-filled mind.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: These are all saboteurs and we look at the opposite of them.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: We have the noble characteristics like the word courage.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: It takes courage to show up moment to moment to moment.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: in order to build and be that best version of yourself.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: It takes courage to ask a community for support.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: It takes courage to ask a spouse or a partner or even a brother or sister or somebody close to you, like, hey, I'm struggling.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: I need help.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Can you encourage me?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Can you talk to me?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Can we have a good discussion?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll end on this.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: These are the rules for engagement.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: We need to empower engagement.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: each other.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I'm here.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: As a coach, I feel that longing, that calling, and that need for fierce encouragement for my inner self too, to develop that voice, to be present with that voice more, to notice when I'm off, to continue to come back again and again, being like, I can see and envision that fierce encourager within me.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: giving them an image, a color of a shirt and the way their body is built and how they stand and how they voice.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: Do that for yourself.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Find that person inside of you.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's that youngster that's within you.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's that old wise sage that's within you.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Find that person, that identity, if you will, within you that would encourage you.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Your best self would cheerlead and holler for you all day long.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: So why can't we do that for ourselves?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: We treat dogs on the street better than we treat ourselves.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: We give them more love and acceptance and happiness from our heart than we do with ourselves when we're struggling or going through change or loss or just understanding that, hey, we have a lot of work to do.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Just remember the formula for success is always to come back to that encouraging voice.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: How can we encourage ourselves fiercely?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: How can we look at those around us, assume that best intent, and just encourage them to be the best person they can be, even if they are making mistakes?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: We can have a love of learning, a curiosity, and an open heart as we go forward.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I just wanted to take a minute and thank you very, very much for joining me on this episode of Fierce Encouragement.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Your time, your energy, your willingness to sit and listen just means the world to me.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you again.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you found today's episode inspiring and wanted to stay connected, please reach out to me on email.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: My email is markmark at markwalkercoach.com.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: I I would love to hear from you.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Let me know how you like the episode, if there's anything you'd do differently, or if you're looking forward to maybe covering some topics in that mindset, meditation, and coaching realm.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: It would be just great to hear from you.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: past that I just wanted to remind you that this journey of growth and personal development kind of pushing past our boundaries can get lonely sometimes you're not alone there's many of us out here we're all trying to do better believe in ourselves and get better and push past our limits so I would just simply offer to you keep encouraging yourself embrace that inner best version of yourself that's just calling out to you wanting you to be more loving to be more kind to be more expectant But also just to bring that best life you can to yourself and those people around you.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate you.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate your time.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Until our next get together, stay fierce, stay encouraged.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Goodbye for now.