courage Archives - Melanie Pritchard

“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful” – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 📖

How often do you avoid things for fear of what’ll happen if you face how you really feel and act on it?

How often do you think through the lens of what you could lose rather than what you could gain at moments of uncertainty? Think contemplating ending a relationship, asking for a promotion or having a tricky conversation with a mother in law?

The courage it takes to move in alignment with our deeper knowing can feel mega like mountains. I’ve felt it many a time and still do daily whether doing something new in my business (knowing deep down it’ll leverage strengths I’m scared to lean into) or having tricky conversations that make me feel vulnerable.

But here’s what I’m learning.

There’s no confusion in truth.

When we move in alignment with our intuition, even when we don’t know know where that may ultimately lead, even if we’re slightly terrified underneath, it always ends well. ALWAYS.

I’ve never not felt fear, I’ve felt it again n again n again. But at those key life crosswords like:

🏔️ leaving law for life coaching
🏔️ dating folk my parents initially disapproved of
🏔️moving abroad to places that made no sense to others
🏔️trusting my intuition with puzzley loves others may not have understood through the complex lens of my eyes

– I’ve always known somewhere deep within that I must follow the whisperings of my intuition – even if I didn’t fully understand where that would lead me.

And turns out every brave act has been critical to my growth and happiness.

I wouldn’t have woken up to my passion for freedom, nature, adventure, mental health, travel and entrepreneurialism without small but defiant moves through fear. I wouldn’t understand people half as much as I do if I hadn’t done that workshop for sex offenders or dated free spirits at odds with the corporate world but at one with themselves in a way that woke me up, hard. I would have ‘suffered’ less had I avoided those small, courageous acts but those were my awakening.

And I wouldn’t be able to help clients half as much as I do without having lived a life true to me.

And interestingly, turns out the greater the judgment, fear and confusion I felt from a few influential people in my life at those seemingly rebellious acts, the more powerful and high-results producing those decisions were for me.

So trust your gut. Others ‘shoulds’ are often just well-meaning projections of themselves, which may be shaped by a soul entirely different to yours.

And if you’re wondering what your intuition is saying, turn away from the mind and towards the body.

What are you feeling in it? If it could speak, what would it say?

There’s your answer ✨

“Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous” – Robert A Heinlein

I have a confession.

While many of us have felt it, I sometimes struggle with people who doggedly refuse to move from victim mindset + are unwilling to do anything differently. Obviously, mental illness can keep us there, which is truly hard.

I recognise I may be a bit intolerant having seen my 22 year old brother choose courage at the worst of times – untimely death.

Nobody Googles ‘Glioblastoma’ + comes away feeling hopeful. Ironic the ‘my brother died of a brain tumour’ line is a conversation stopper because his defiance in the face of adversity made it hard for us to view him as anything but inspiring, radically altering the course of my life for the better.

Courage is a powerful thing – especially when the stats tell you you’re f*cked + hope, for all intents + purposes, is lost.

But that’s the magical thing about courage.

It’s truly metaphysical, uniting improbable points of likeness like strength in suffering, bravery in hopelessness + humour in adversity, in the most breathtaking ways.

It finds hope in the hopeless, inspiring life’s Greats to do their highest work on Earth – the most inspiring of whom usually have real reason to be victims – the Nelson Mandela’s of Apartheid, The Viktor Frankel’s of the Holocaust + the Martin Luther King’s.

A few days’ before my brother’s death, he wrote my sister + I a letter oozing a courage that blew my mind: ‘Obviously I’m a bit narked because I thought we could win, so now we have to reassess winning + how we define that’.

w o w

That’s the thing about courage – it takes your breath away – because it’s grit + defiance that flies in the face of fear –

+ you never really know it’s there until the sh*t hits the fan.

In truth, Matthew had always been a bit special, with an understated charm + charisma that lit up rooms – but none of us were prepared for how he made suffering his crowning glory.

Even in his darkest hour, he found the courage to reframe the hopelessness of tragedy: ‘Cancer need not be the epilogue, in many ways it can be the introduction to a richer life of wisdom’.

Towards the end of his letter to his little sisters, my twin + I, he wrote: ‘So we need to have a lot of fun (underlined) over the next few months or so’ (before signing off with an Austin Powers quote).

I’m privileged to see courage daily in my career + life coaching clients – who are, by definition, deeply courageous, seeking the magic hidden in stress. They inspire me daily.

So when life feels impossible, remember, courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s defiance over fear. As Maslow says: ‘One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again + again; fear must be overcome again + again’.

So when you wobble, remember, there is purpose in pain. As Freud said:

‘Pain has nothing to teach those who don’t find the courage + strength to listen to it’.

Tag: courage

How Making Fear your Friend is The Great Game-Changer

Why my Brother’s Death at 23 Taught me that Courage is the Most High-Performance Habit of All

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