I travel around the country doing talks on stress and motivation. There are a lot of people doing that. I don't think however that most speakers and writers talk about courage when they talk about stress and change. It takes courage to be a person who sees his or her power and accepts responsibility for his or her life. It takes courage to say, "I define my life." On a more day to day level, it takes courage to resist the efforts of so many others to pull you into their thinking pattern. If you don't think so, the next time people at your lunch table are whining and complaining, you be the one to say, "Hey, let's not be negative. Let's be positive," and watch your friends turn on you like sharks at a feeding frenzy.
If you begin to think you have to make some changes in your life, even small ones, make sure you understand that a great deal of courage will be needed, not just to make the changes, but to deal with your friends during the change process. Don't expect a lot of your friends to say, "Oh, you're trying to better yourself. Very good. We're so proud." In fact, I'll bet a bunch of you reading this have had the experience of trying to better yourself, maybe by changing careers or quitting smoking or getting your life together after going through a divorce. And as you were struggling to deal with that situation someone said to you, "I liked you better the old way."
Many people get frightened when they see someone actually being an active person in their own life, a multidimensional person and not a cardboard cutout. They also get frightened when someone else is actually trying to do something to change their bad situations. Do you think that if five alcoholics were sitting around a table drinking and one of them said, "You know, I'm starting to think this drinking is affecting my life in a bad way," that the other four would respond, "Geez. Good point. Let's catch an AA meeting tonight." Yeah, right. Instead they would probably say, "Shut up and have another drink. It'll pass." In other words don't be surprised that all the resistance to change is not coming just from you but that a lot might be coming from your friends.
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