Courage is the foundation of freedom. Thucydides (460BC-395BC) wrote:

“The secret to happiness is freedom … And the secret to freedom is courage.”

Last month I wrote about forgiveness and how showing forgiveness is the pathway to freedom. Showing forgiveness is not easy for any of us to contemplate and real forgiveness takes a lot of courage. Letting go, not blaming others, and taking responsibility for your own life takes courage, but until you find that courage you will find it difficult to enter the ‘free space’ I wrote about in my last article. We all have ‘free space’ in our minds where we can choose to go into. Here we can make our own conscious decisions without reacting to negative situations coming from outside. We can be in charge of our own feelings and reactions. However, for a long period of our lives we may have handed over the responsibility of our lives to others; we may have created a certain belief about ourselves and the world in a way which was not benefiting us. Perhaps we didn’t believe we were free; free to live in love, abundance, and good health. Because of this, it takes courage to re-introduce yourself to the world and to let go of all the old energy blocks and take back the power for yourself. It can be overwhelming to adjust and to take back the power that you once gave away. That is why we say: ‘It takes courage to be, it takes courage to do, and it takes courage to have’.

Courage ‘to do’ is relatively easy to understand; we may be afraid to contemplate bungee jumping, or public speaking for example; these we can be frightened to do, but ‘being different’, do we really need courage there? The answer is yes, because unless you are really ‘being it’ you cannot live it. A lot of people dream about having or doing different things but look from the outside; often we are looking at a façade rather than looking at what is real. In my book ‘Better the Whole World Against Me than My Soul’, I describe my journey from dependency on old paradigms I hadn’t relinquished, and my movement into the free space.

Who are you really? What is your essence and your purpose? Do you dare to say you are unique? Not only is your fingerprint different from any other, so are you! You are extraordinary. There is only one you. Remember also that copying, or trying to be someone you are not, will not benefit you at all.

So do you really have the courage to be yourself? Only then will you be able to use the ‘free space’ we talked of. When you have the ‘free space’ you are literally free to decide what you want to do, to be or to have. This sounds simple, but is it? Many people dream of winning the lottery thinking it would change their life for the better, but often those very people who do win lose their money before too long. This is because they didn’t have the courage to be different, to be in one of the minority who has the wealth and the chance to make life changing decisions. But we are not just talking about wealth here. This thinking can be applied to our health too. Many people live with average health. Doctors often tell us that the chronic conditions we have are part of getting older, something we have to learn to live with, and this is deemed to be normal. But is that normal? It takes courage to be super fit and super healthy but once we enter the ‘free space’ we can look forward to achieving it.

People dream of living longer; they fear pain and death, but are we really more afraid that we will die before we have made our mark on life? Are we afraid of not having done the things we wished we had before we happily leave planet Earth? Very often I test people with the question: ‘What if you were the last one of your kind – the last apple on the tree?’ So many times, people say to me that they are lonely; all their friends are gone, perhaps they have lost their lifelong partner, and feel there is nothing really left to live for. But you can be lonely when you are surrounded by people; there are eight billion people on the planet, yet many feel isolated. But it is just a decision people make to be lonely; the result of building a life around a few chosen people.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• If you really want to be rich could you cope with a life of riches when you may be surrounded by people who live in poverty?
• If you want to be super fit would you be comfortable with this when most people live with mediocre health, or are sick?
• Are you prepared to live a long life, to be the last apple on the tree?

Your inner belief systems will decide the answers to the above questions, and how you go through life. The more awareness you have, the more you have the good energy that will enable you to change things. And the good news is that modern science now shows us that our thought patterns and focused energy can even change our DNA and unblock our genes and create new healthy stem cells.

So at least for an hour once a week, I urge you to think about your life, to go through the issues that need your forgiveness. Take the time to ask yourself if you are really ready to be the person you want to BE, to be ready to DO what you want to do and are really ready to HAVE what you want to have. It takes courage to be ready to receive. But if you are prepared go deeper with your thinking you will understand that with courage you will have the necessary requirement to BE.

Information about my book ‘Better the Whole World Against me Than My Soul’ is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1543284280