What does courage mean to you?
To me, courage is what keeps me going when I face significant challenges. It’s what helps me turn my fears into fierceness, gives me the confidence to believe in myself, and ultimately moves me towards achieving my dreams.
In today’s blog post, I want to inspire you to build your courage from within with these ten practices.
10 Ways to Cultivate More Confidence and Courage In Yourself
- Cut ties with the pain of your past.
Hold space for yourself to digest past feelings, experiences, and fears by taking the time to understand your past emotions from fear and the wisdom they offer. As an exercise, think about three moments in your life where you experienced a feeling of fear and what lesson can come from it.
- Envision a life that excites you.
Envisioning a life that you can be excited about keeps you motivated, allows you to hold on to those things you desire, and helps bring your dreams to life. As an exercise, consider practicing scripting where you write down your dream vision in the present tense as if it is already happening. This exercise helps shift your mindset to one of abundance, and so you can see that this reality is indeed achievable for you.
- Claim confidence and practice self-awareness.
A small but important part of cultivating courage is building confidence. It all starts with self-love. Affirm that you are more than enough in those situations where you feel unloved or unworthy, and know that you can rise above those limitations that hold you back. Additionally, understanding your fears or fear-based beliefs helps you become more self-aware by helping you become more conscious of those fears when they arise again. Consider listing out your fears on a piece of paper, as well as what key moments could trigger them.
- Open the door to freedom with compassion and self-reflection.
Similar to practicing self-awareness, practicing self-compassion helps in the process of acknowledging and processing your feelings. The essential key is to go easy on yourself when negative emotions arise. Hold space for yourself to feel through them, viewing them as friends to teach and guide you. Make a list of your fearful feelings and see how they could be your friends, providing changes to make you feel more positive?
Reflection is also crucial when practicing self-compassion. Create a personal ritual with reflective journaling, writing down your emotions. Reflective journaling is a helpful tool in reminding yourself of your successes and achievements, especially during moments of self-doubt and criticism.
- Forgive and let go.
When digesting your fears and wanting to cultivate more courage, you’ll inevitably have to dig deeper to identify what pain you’re holding on to. Observe and seek to understand if unresolved triggers need healing—and take the necessary steps to free yourself from the pain. Because the truth is when it comes to helping yourself heal, you have the best answers within you as nobody knows yourself better. For this practice, I recommend a transformational writing process to express your feelings in a way that allows you to forgive, let go, and move on.
- Practice gratitude.
You’ve heard me say this meaning times before that practicing gratitude helps shift away from your fear-based mindset towards one of love, focusing on a more abundant mindset. Count your blessings regularly, this not only leads to feeling more optimistic and enjoying a greater overall satisfaction in life, but it builds resilience by helping you bounce back more quickly from adversity.
- Create a Love Bank
Create a jar filled with ways you express love to raise your vibration and feel good about yourself and your life when those challenging moments arise. Learn more about my love bank practice here.
- Replace limiting beliefs with liberating affirmations.
Identify limiting beliefs and brainstorm ways to replace them with liberating affirmations about self-love. Consider further tackling those limiting beliefs through guided meditations and with journal prompts. Explore your needs and focus on cultivating self-love with my Self-Love Guided Meditation.
- Recognize the freedom in discipline.
Create daily rituals to live in harmony with yourself. Whether you call it “discipline” or “consistency,” these rituals will help you live with greater intention, as well as enhance love and confidence in yourself. Examine how those daily rituals empower you to nurture yourself and prioritize your specific needs.
These are some of my favorite rituals that I practice daily: Morning meditation, journaling, breathwork, and reading something enriching.
- Have faith.
Love and faith go hand in hand. It’s crucial to consider the belief that something you can’t see or touch exists to guide you through your toughest times and teach you to surrender and trust the universe in your most fearful moments. Faith can mean something different for everybody with no right or wrong ways. Ultimately it’s about believing in something greater than yourself and leaning on that greater power.
How to Cultivate Courage and Confidence in the New Year
Imagine…
- Letting go of old fears so you can be FIERCE and LIMITLESS
- Having the CONFIDENCE and COURAGE to create a life you love
- Living with renewed CLARITY and ENERGY to pursue your TRUE PASSIONS
- LOVING YOURSELF and living with LIBERATING JOY
If you wish to live your most radiant life and learn the techniques to cultivate the courage and confidence you need to create the life you love, claim your free 5-day pass to my 10-day course: Bravely You at OneCommune.com.
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