On Cultivating Courage

Wel­come guest blog­ger, James Lynch, speaker, per­sonal and exec­u­tive coach, author, and Chief Poten­tial Offi­cer of Do It Your­self Life Caoching: www.doityourselflifecoaching .com. This is a repost of his Jan­u­ary 20th arti­cle from The Huff­in­g­ton Post.  Here’s a short mes­sage from James regard­ing help­ing out with relief efforts in Haiti fol­lowed by his arti­cle On Cul­ti­vat­ing Courage::

Haiti Relief:
Dear read­ers, I made this offer to the mem­bers of www.doityourselflifecoach.com, my free life coach­ing com­mu­nity and forum and I am extend­ing it here because it is work­ing.
For every $10 dona­tion to a Haiti relief effort I will send you an e-copy of my book, The Ham­let Secret: A self-directed work­book for liv­ing a pas­sion­ate, joy-filled life.
Just send me an email at doityourselflifecoach.comch.com with a copy of the receipt and for every $10 donated I’ll send a copy. Donate more than $20, I’ll send one to a friend you name, etc.
Let’s act quickly as the need is great. Pass this on as much as you’d like.
Thanks for your inter­est and your sup­port.
James

This week I went to speak to a group in Arling­ton Heights, Illi­nois. I knew the pri­mary goal of the group was to sup­port senior exec­u­tives who were look­ing for employ­ment. My con­tact said to expect 150–200 peo­ple and he was very accu­rate as about 180 peo­ple were in the hall when I arrived. I asked again, “How many of these peo­ple are out of work?” “All of them” was the answer. EVERY man and woman in the group was there to hone their inter­view skills, net­work and get sup­port as they worked to find a new posi­tion, some of them after 20 or more years in the same company.

I was deeply hum­bled by the grav­ity of the sit­u­a­tion, espe­cially as I heard how so many had declared bank­ruptcy, lost their homes and their life sav­ings. Before I spoke I stopped to acknowl­edge the sit­u­a­tion and assure them that I was offer­ing my model — cre­at­ing break­through results — with respect for the great effort they were already putting out. The hour passed quickly and the group was a very eager, respon­sive and inter­ested assem­bly and I feel they’ll use the tools well. I’ve already received some very nice com­ments and requests to stay in touch.

As I write this I remem­ber a time about 25 years ago when I took my bike, a tent and a sleep­ing bag and flew to France. I don’t remem­ber why I wanted to, but I rode my bike from Paris to Nice in a long, cir­cu­lar route over a period of a few weeks. I’d camp out every night and ride most every day.

One day, on the south­ern coast, not quite the Riv­iera, I had fol­lowed a gru­el­ing path, climb­ing and climb­ing on a hot and dry day, and I didn’t think I could go on. I checked the guides and the maps and it didn’t seem that any camp grounds were avail­able for miles. I was com­ing into a long uphill sec­tion and was not sure I’d be able to make it. I was already spent and if I stopped, I was afraid I might not be able to start again and I might have to sleep on the side of the road. That pos­si­bil­ity offered a risk of being exposed or rousted by the police in the night.

As I doggedly passed by a beach park­ing lot I weaved through the later after­noon crowd of beach goers and I heard, as if some­one had leaned over and whis­pered it quickly into my ear, “Courage”. It was a French accent, of course, so it sounded more like ‘Coo-rahj’, but it was very clear. I looked over my shoul­der to see who could have said it but no one seemed to be look­ing at me and I shook it off as heat exhaus­tion and trudged toward the hill ahead.

How­ever, the energy of that word woke up some last reserve of energy and as I looked ahead at the hill I found a quick surge of energy to attack the hill. It was slow going, but I was still mov­ing and that counts a lot.

The short ver­sion of this story is that a lit­tle ways up the hill I looked up just enough to see a nearly hid­den sign on the side of the road. Doubt­fully I fol­lowed the sign down a res­i­den­tial cul de sac and unbe­liev­ably found a non-listed camp ground that had been built from an old quarry. It had sev­eral lev­els, a fun tiki bar with super cold beer, and a local swim­ming hole that pro­vided a deep dive into a cool blue cove. I stayed two nights, made a lot of friends and it turned out to be one of the best expe­ri­ences and most mem­o­rable events of the whole trip.

I was so spent, dis­cour­aged and tired I never thought I’d make it that day. Then some­one noticed me and threw a word, “Courage” into my ear to encour­age me.

To those peo­ple I spoke to the other day and to every­one who I know or you know who is out of work or fac­ing some kind of tough time, I say ‘Courage’ and I ask you to do the same. It might be your voice that gets them ‘up the hill’ and it just may be that what­ever is up there is bet­ter than any­thing they’ve left behind.

And for what­ever you are up to that needs a lit­tle bit of encour­age­ment, or a lot: Courage, mon ami, ‘Coo-rahj’.

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