If you are questioning your strength and ability to pursue something important, then this guided meditation for courage is for you. It is for anyone who needs a reminder that you are capable of achieving your goals and dreams.
Sometimes we forget how much courage everyday life takes, whether it is the courage to get up in the morning or the courage to speak up about something important. Asking someone, especially a loved one, to respect your boundaries can take a tremendous amount of courage.
Your struggles are valid, and the amount of courage it takes to face them is also valid.
One of the biggest barriers to courage is a feeling that we are incapable. This guided meditation for courage is a reminder that you are capable, and that you have everything you need to move forward and achieve your goals.
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Guided Meditation for Courage: Don’t Give Up the Fight
How Feelings of Incapacity Hold Us Back
When a dream or a goal begins to take root, the initial feelings about it are those of excitement, hope, and courage. New ideas are essential to fresh starts, and when we start thinking we start dreaming.
After the thinking and dreaming comes planning, and that is where the trouble comes in. Planning involves questioning, and somewhere in the process of questioning what will and will not work we start to question if we will or will not work.
We start to ask if we are smart enough, strong enough, brave enough, put your own word here enough. You know how it goes.
Instead of asking what is in the way, we start asking if we are in the way, and then we stop thinking, dreaming, aspiring, and achieving.
Of course, it is not like this for every goal and dream. There are likely areas in your life where you have done well and achieved what you set out to achieve. But there are also areas where you have decided to quit before you started because you decided you were not capable.
No one likes to fail. No one wants to fail. The thing is, we spend so much time analyzing our failures that we do not spend enough time studying our successes.
Why Would I Study My Successes?
This guided meditation for courage is meant to help you study your successes. Wherever you are in your life, I can almost guarantee that you have spent more time questioning where you went wrong than where you went right.
We do this because we want to be better; we do not want to keep making the same mistakes. The thing is that it is far easier to build on your strengths than your weaknesses. As you do so, your strengths give you more of an ability to work with and handle your weaknesses.
Not to mention that criticizing yourself over and over tears you down. That is not to say that you should not try to improve yourself–we all have some room to grow. Accepting that is one of the most powerful things we can do.
However, there is a difference between acknowledging you can improve and setting goals and convincing yourself that you are worthless and incapable. If this is an area where you would like to grow, check out this Guided Meditation for Acceptance.
Studying our strengths allows us to believe in ourselves, to move forward. It is not always easy to keep going, after all. Life takes its toll and we all need some help sometimes to continue on.
How Can I Keep Going?
We cannot keep going at 100% all the time–this is where the exhaustion sets in. It is important to take a break from the struggle every now and then, even just a small little meditation break. This is not giving up the fight, it is giving you the mental and emotional resources you need to keep going.
Work smarter, not harder. Brainstorm some different ways you could go about meeting the end goal you are struggling to reach. Notice I said different, not better.
If you can involve other people in the brainstorming process, all the better. The intention is to think of as many ways you can to reach your goal. If none of your strategies involve getting help from other people, figure out a couple of strategies that involve other people. Those who get help from others are much more successful than those who do not.
Once you have done that, evaluate the strategies you came up with.
Which ones make more sense than others? While evaluating, check for ease of implementation and effectiveness. Cross out anything that breaks laws or puts anyone’s life in danger.
How Will This Guided Meditation for Courage Help Me?
The aim of this guided meditation for courage is to guide you through past or current success. By the end of this meditation you should have some reminders of how you have been successful before and how you can be successful in the future.
It will also guide you through your motivations for your current dream or goal of focus.
You may not be perfectly capable, but no one is. The point is, you are capable enough to problem solve and figure out how to move in the direction you want to go.
Courage is impossible without some degree of belief that what we do is worthwhile. This guided meditation for courage is meant to help you regain your sense of being worthwhile.
How to Prepare for This Guided Meditation
When preparing for a guided meditation, generally you want to be as distraction-free as possible. Typical distraction-free places tend to be bedrooms, bathrooms, and closets. Sometimes even vehicles can be a good place to try some meditating if it is pretty simple.
This guided meditation is a bit of a longer one and requires some intensive reflection, so it is recommended to find a place to be alone where you can focus for about 15 minutes.
Wherever you are, take a few deep breaths to help settle your mind. If you can, straighten your spine so that you are not slumped or slouched. Close your eyes, or focus your vision on one spot so that you are not distracted by the world around you. Breathe, breathe, and begin.
Guided Meditation for Courage
Begin
As you breathe, notice your breath. Notice the way it flows in, and the way it flows out. Let the rhythm of it settle you, the way rain settles the dust of a blustery day. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe.
Perhaps you are having a bit of blustery day, or perhaps it has been a blustery month. Maybe it has been a blustery decade.
That is alright. The wind will blow, the clouds will form, the rain will fall, and the dust will settle.
You, my friend, will settle as well as you breathe. Breathe in, breathe out. Settle.
Along your dusty, blustery path, there have also been moments of sun. Times when life had a silver lining, a sigh of relief, a moment of triumph. Find a moment in your life when you felt the elation of triumph.
Do not worry about big or small, impressive, or overshadowed. Think triumph. Victory. A moment when you knew in your very core that you had succeeded in doing something worthwhile.
A moment when you knew that your rain would come and your dust would settle.
Deepen
Find your moment, and think on it for a little time. Think of the way you hoped and dreamed. The way you worked.
Your moment might have lasted for a day, or it might have lasted for a second. But for at least that second, you tasted victory.
Feel again how that victory felt. Did your heart rush, or your stomach flip? Did you feel so elated that you could have burst?
Or was it a soft sort of euphoria? A weight off your shoulders, an ease in your breath and your step?
Feel it again, that happy, serene, wonderful moment. Embrace the way it changes the way you feel physically as well as emotionally. You know how it feels now as surely as you knew how it felt then.
This triumph, this victory, this celebration of achievement is part of you forever.
End
Focus on your triumph for a little longer, and when you are ready, return your attention to your breath. To the settling of your mind, the settling of your heart.
Whatever winds arise to stir the dust in your world, you have felt the rain. That rain is part of you now, and so is the sun that comes after.
Your path is not easy, with all its wind and clouds. But it is your path, and the rain is yours too.
As you breathe, remember your goals and the reasons you made them. While you cannot always control your storms, you can always create goals to guide you forward.
Think on this for a moment. On the direction you want to go and the goals that will bring you there, that will bring the rain.
You have felt the rain before. You will feel the rain again. It is part of you.
Breathe, breathe, settle, and awake.
Comments
I really like this one. It’s really well thought out.
This is a great meditation! We would like permission to use this in a book we are writing about mindfulness for schools. We saw your comment about sharing. Our publisher has a permission form. Please let me know how you would like to proceed.
Thank you for your interest! I will email you to discuss it further!