I have felt lost, frustrated, low in self-esteem, lacking confidence, unhappy and mostly afraid.  My world lacked direction.  I was not motivated and felt of very little value to the world.  My career was okay, but I was stagnating.  I was going through a divorce after 10-years of marriage.  I thought my world was falling apart and me with it.

My call to change came the moment I asked myself the question “what is happening?”  In answering this question, I saw my life as going through an experience.  People had survived divorce and it gave me hope that perhaps I could too.  I decided I wanted to try and asked myself what I could do?  This was the start of my Hero’s journey, my personal voyage of discovery.

Without this moment of realisation, I may still have been stuck in a life I did not want.  The suffering I had experienced through the divorce process was my call to grow and develop personally.  I was drawn to self-help and I have not stopped.  Through this, I came to realise that my key strength is growth.  In turn, I developed another strength that is recognising the potential in others and helping them to grow it.  This gives me purpose, direction, energy.  It has also supported me to grow in self-esteem and confidence to feel happier and more successful.

If you are feeling anything like what I was, ask yourself 2 questions:

Write down a list of all the emotions you are feeling.  It is important to acknowledge the emotions you feel as the more you suppress them the more, they will amplify.  By engaging with them they become real, and as such, you can do something about them.

In turn, go through each emotion and try and understand why it is there in your life.  What is it trying to tell you?  If one of the emotions is fear, what are you afraid of?

Staying with the example of fear, perhaps you can rename it “excitement”.  The unknown can often bring up fear, however, when we visit a new holiday destination we have never been to, we are excited.  Aim to see this situation as a new adventure.  Avoid assuming the outcome will be bad because it could well be amazing!

Understanding why you feel the way you do enables you to understand the message contained within your emotions so you can make changes.

Therefore, Clarity of what is going on now is the first step with courage.  In the COURAGE model of Change©, it allows you to begin your Hero’s journey.

If you want to know more about working with me, contact me for a virtual conversation over a cuppa.  We can chat about what is happening in your world and how I can help you.

Danielle is a Personal Development Coach and founder of The Potentiality Project.  She utilises her corporate career success and her passion for development to help individuals embrace fear with the COURAGE Model of Change© to enable growth into their unique potential.

Main Image by Deirdre Weedon from Pixabay