Steve Chandler - Fearless: Creating the Courage to Change the Things You Can

FEARLESS

Creating the Courage to

Change the Things You Can

Steve Chandler

Table of Contents

Chapter:

Fearless: Creating the Courage to Change the Things You Can. Copyright 2008 by Steve Chandler. All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be reproduced or copied in any form without permission from the publisher, Maurice Bassett: ReinventingYourself@gmail.com

ISBN 1-60025-027-0

ISBN (13 digit) 978-1-60025-027-9

Published by Maurice Bassett

http://www.ReinventingYourself.com

Steve Chandler

http://www.SteveChandler.com

Cover art by SeeSaw Designs

To Steve Hardison

Dont cure me. Sickness is my me.

My terror was youd set me free.

Frederick Seidel

Acknowledgments

To Steve Hardison for the ultimate experience in coaching.

To Kathy Chandler for editing and guidance all along the way.

To Byron Katie for the school and the work and the great undoing.

To Maurice Bassett and Julie Blake for their tireless contributions to the MindShift project.

To Angela Hardison for the art and beauty.

To Sam Beckford and the members of the Creators Landing event.

People say we got it made,

don't they know we're so afraid?

John Lennon

Chapter 1

They say never push a coward

They say never push a coward.

They say if you push a coward far enough, he will snap like no other. Like no brave man will snap. Push a brave man, and the brave man will push back. He wont allow himself to be pushed.

Push a coward and he wont push back. Push him more, and hell still take it. But push him too far.well, then you have to watch out.

Because a coward will come back out the other side. He wont just be a brave guy, hell be insane. Youll be introduced to a wild animal.

Im a coward myself.

Chapter 2

Searching for the courage code

My work as a coach and trainer gives me opportunities to study courage and cowardice at close range. Success begins with desire. People all desire success but they dont always know how to achieve it.

When I work with you on the subject of success, I begin with the question: What would you like to create? And once you can identify that for me, my second question is Whats in the way of that right now?

As if I didnt know.

Because its always the same thing. Even though Ive had it described to me a thousand different ways. Its the same thing. Its not money or circumstance or time. Its fear. Fear is all thats in your way.

Im afraid if I did my dream, I would lose my security. Im afraid my family wouldnt understand it if I did this. Im afraid I dont know how to do it. Im afraid I wont have time.

Those were my words, too! Most of my life I wrestled with these same fears. My own cowardice stopped me. Ive written about this before. Courage has been my obsession because of my lack of it. Even as a little boy I remember that I always longed to be Mighty Mouse, then popular on TV cartoons and in comic books. It was becoming clear to me when I was young that I had no super powers myself. There was sadness and pain and large doses of fear around such threats as wild animals and bullies. So watching heroes like Mighty Mouse and, later, Superman, lit my little boy's heart right up.

Things would go wrong and people would be in danger and just when you thought things couldn't get worse, Mighty Mouse would fly in singing, Here I come to save the day! Even today, when I see a picture of Mighty Mouse, I feel a little shiver of good feelings.

Later, as I collected comic books, I also became a fan of Atomic Mouse. Atomic Mouse had no superpowers until he took his U235 pill! I always wondered if my later addictions could be traced back to Atomic Mouse... one pill and he was invincible!

It could be that my whole life has been a search for superpowers. So I could fly. And if a bully ever struck I would feel nothing. Most of my life I felt like someone searching the world for a secret... a secret code to break so that courage would be available.

I remember oncemany years agobragging to friends in a bar in New York that I was going to write a book called The Courage Prayer . But I didnt believe it for a minute. Not down deep. Fear was in my way.

I had gotten the idea for that title while I was going through recovery from addiction. While going to meetings, I was frustrated by this prayer we all recited called The Serenity Prayer. Serenity? Who needed serenity? I thought, this isnt a nursing home, this is re-entry into life. The prayer said, God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

I always secretly called that prayer The Courage Prayer. What I wanted from that prayer was the courage . The courage to change the things I could. How would that be? Forget serenity. At least for now. That could come later when I was enjoying the benefits of elderly living.

Courage is all any of my clients have ever wanted, too. Though they call it a million different things. Courage is always what is missing. (For example, even the solution to the time management problem is the introduction of boldness .) In all quests for success, what people really want to be is fearless.

So Ill tell you how I get them there.

Life shrinks or expands

in proportion to ones courage.

Anais Nin

Chapter 3

Death is like the rose

I was sitting in Byron Katie's nine-day school and we were about to go on a field trip to conduct some very brave experiments. Many of us, including me, were scared. As we were about to board the buses Katie said to all 300 of us, "Remember, the worst thing that could happen to you is a thought."

I burst out laughing! It wasn't the first time I laughed or cried in that school. But the laughs were always joyful and the crying was sweet and grateful. Like crying at a wedding. Finally experiencing the marriage of mind and spirit.

Of life and death.

I'd been listening to Katie for a few years prior to the school on audio recordings played in my car as I drove around or in my headphones as I drifted off to sleep at night. She said one night, as I was falling into a dream state, that if she were to throw me out of an airplane without a parachute the worst thing that could happen to me all the way down was a thought. I slept well that night.

Our fear of death is staggering. Sometimes I think if we could simply erase that fear, everything would be okay.

Death even causes us to fear how our bodies change as they get older. We judge the bodys changes to be a bad thing. Yet the rose I bought you fades and dies beautifully. You save it, even. You thumbtack it above our bed. It is dry now, and even what some might call dead. But it looks so beautiful and natural.

All form changes. All pain comes from fear of that. Fearless is the rose that fades and dries and falls from the wall, beautiful all the way down.

Some say that all fear is fear of death. But why do we fear death? Do we fear sleep? Deep, peaceful dreamless sleep? Where does the world go when I disappear into dreamless sleep? Why am I not anxious about going to sleep and losing everything there? After all, a day is ending... a day that is always my life in microcosm. Asleep now, I am happily dead to the world, and feeling no hint of trouble as I lie fearless beneath the faded red rose pinned above the head of the bed.

You have done a good thing by putting the rose up to die so beautifully right before our eyes.

If you realize that all things
change, there is nothing you will
try to hold on to.

If you aren't afraid of dying,