Coach Ajit (01:38):
Like our heart fuels our entire body. Our courage fuels our entire being. So if we can find courage, if we can find courage to create, if we can find courage to be, if we can find courage to lean into our coaching conversations, a lot more powerfully, we will be able to create greater outcomes in the world. Be able to live with more sense, with more purpose in our lives. So where is it that we could find the courage to create? Now, before I started recording this podcast episode, it occurred to me that I wanted to take a slightly different approach than a psychological approach that we had known our aware of to be able to deal with courage. I've talked about courage in many different ways that are psychological, that give you action steps. But what I believe I wanna talk about today that I think may be more meaningful to you in today's context is a different approach to courage.

Coach Ajit (02:23):
This approach comes from a book called courage to be disliked. The book really explores the ideas of Alfred Adler. Alfred Adler was Carl Young's colleague. There was a trial that was really there at the time when all these more powerful philosophical studies came out and in psychology, we used them even today, but Alfred was different. Alfred actually didn't follow the same school of thought, like his colleagues. He was more with the school of thought which was very different. And I think maybe very, very useful in today's time. It is one of the lesser known and lesser explored philosophies. But I think in today's time, it may be most powerful idea that you could pursue to find more courage in your life. There are three key ideas that I'm gonna discuss from this book today. I'm gonna explore these ideas in context of how they're related with courage and how if you use that philosophy, if you explore that philosophy, it may change the point of view that you have had on courage.

Coach Ajit (03:24):
And it may make you more courageous. This is also applicable if you're teaching someone courage or if you're exploring the dialogue of courage with somebody, the first idea I wanna discuss today for courage is the idea that we as coaches may understand in principle, but are scared to implement in a daily coaching life. We as coaches understand that our job is to help our clients create their future, but more often than not, I always am talking to coaches about how clients constantly wanna talk about their past and coaches wanna constantly talk about the past, because somewhere in our studies of psychology and studies of human beings, we started to believe that our past informs our present and our past informs our future. Alfred Adler actually disagrees with that philosophy. He actually says it is dangerous to believe that our past determinants are future. Hmm, isn't that an interesting idea?

Coach Ajit (04:22):
So Alfred Adler believed that it is dangerous to believe that our past creates our future or our past determinants are future. And here is the reason why Alfred believed that. And actually I kind of concur with him, I agree with him. What Alfred says is that if you look at your past and you analyze your past and you understand your past, and you believe that whatever's happened in the past is going to create your future. You're gonna stay in the loop of believing that everything that needed to happen to define your future has already happened because you believe that your past determines your future. And because you believe that you would believe that if something didn't work out in the past, it's not gonna work out in the future. Well, if we believe that as human beings, and if we operate from that belief, guess what tends to happen?

Coach Ajit (05:09):
We are in an infinite loop of repeating ourselves. If we had a bad relationship, guess what continues to happen? We continue to have a bad relationship. If we had abusive partner, guess who we continuously attract in our life while an abusive partner, if we were broke in the past, guess what we continue to tell ourselves? We are gonna be broke in the future. If we have had a bad health situation in the past, guess what we tell ourselves we are going to continue to be unhealthy in the future. Our cycle of misery never really ends, our cycle of misery for our clients never really ends. And because of that, we continue to create what we had in our past, into our future. How is it that we are gonna have a different life? If we continue to believe that our past determines our future. So what is it that really determines our future?

Coach Ajit (05:51):
Well, we talk about it in certified life coach, multiple times. The only thing that really determines your future is now it's this present moment. It's this moment. When you decide that you're going to have a different future, it's good to have data from the past. So you don't repeat your mistakes, but to believe that your past has already been set, that you need to heal your past to create your future may actually be dangerous because there is nothing in the past that you need to carry into the future. You can always shed your past and start creating a future in the moment that has true control in your life. And that is this present moment. So if you were to seek courage, do you have to reflect in your past failures or do you have to lean into courage right now? If you wanna ask a courageous question, do you have to rely on what worked and didn't work in the past, or you wanna lean more into your future and tune into the energy of the future.

Coach Ajit (06:48):
So you can inform your future of what you're creating. Now in this present moment, the power of this present moment is understated. We have never fully recognized how much power you have. I have, we have as humanity to change. Now, the day we decide we are going to change, the change has already begun. So stop telling yourself that your past is going to determine your future. The past is just there as information, as a matter of fact, that has happened and nothing is gonna change about it. It has happened. What can happen is your attitude towards it. Now is your approach towards it. Now, your action towards your life. Now, the second idea that blew my mind was if you are going to focus on what is wrong with you. You might be looking for reasons to hate yourself on purpose. Now, this is a summary of a big section of the book, and it was such a breakthrough because when this, this book is written like a conversation, the two people are having a conversation.

Coach Ajit (07:53):
And when this idea comes, I'm like, what are you talking about? Why would anyone want to hate themselves? When this idea came in? The conversation that is in this book, my mind was blown away and my mind was blown away because I was like, why would anyone want to hate themselves? Why would they do that? That makes no sense. And as this idea was explored, I realized this is true for us. True for us as coaches. This is true for us when we are working with our clients and for our clients. And as I was thinking about this idea as exploring the book further, I recognize this idea is so true. This idea is so true that we create narratives in our lives so we can continue to hate ourselves. And there's a purpose to it. It's not purposeless. When we are creating a narrative where we hate ourselves, what tends to happen is we try to isolate ourselves, right?

Coach Ajit (08:46):
What happens when you feel that you're not good enough? You're not sexy enough. You're not hot enough or whatever that is that you tell yourself, right? You go, oh, because I am not blank. I shouldn't do blank. So you isolate yourself. Do you know why we isolate ourselves? So we don't get hurt? So we don't get disappointed. And because we don't want to get hurt, because we don't wanna get disappointed. We continue to tell ourselves what is wrong with us. So we can stay away from all the hurt from all the pain that may happen, which we have come up with as a story, because we think what happened in the past will happen in the future. So we continue to tell ourselves this bullshit story that holds us back in not being able to create our future. And so we continue to tell ourselves what's wrong with us, continue to hate ourselves so we can stay safe, so we can not get hurt.

Coach Ajit (09:37):
There are two categories for somebody to be able to say that they are not good enough at something, or they think less of themselves in a particular area. One is objective. Objective is a matter of fact. Matter of fact is somebody says, I don't like myself, or I'm less than because I'm brown skinned. Well, that's a matter of fact, I am brown skinned. Now it's a different conversation to say, do you need to hit yourself or think of yourself as less off just because of color of your skin, but at least that's objective. You can say, okay, that's a matter of fact that you are brown. What is not a matter of fact is you're less than because of it. But that's a matter of fact, you are brown. So it's a fair criticism. If that is a criticism at all. Now, the second thing is subjective. Subjective is when you say things that are comparable to something which is in, in context of something, and there's no true reason to really be able to say that.

Coach Ajit (10:24):
So say, for example, if somebody says, well, I' just not very good at striking conversations. Well, how do you know that? What is the conversation? Is there a real reason why you're not good at striking conversations? Is it just a defense mechanism? Right? And that's really what we are getting to at is that most of these other created beliefs created dialogues, created narratives are created. They're not true. There's no matter of fact, proof to prove it, that you are not good at conversations, or you cannot get good at conversations. They are all subjective experiences. There's no objectivity to it. So while my example was definitely very poor, what you wanna understand is objective reasons are real reasons. And these real reasons, again, we can discuss and debate and we can actually ask why somebody believes that to be true. And there may be some data information that suggests off that.

Coach Ajit (11:14):
And then we can come up with techniques to surpass that objective beliefs that they might have, but subjective beliefs can almost always be dismantle with just a few questions, because most of these beliefs are created falsely in somebody's mind, mostly as a protective mechanism to protect them from the world, to protect them from fears, to protect them from other people's judgment and opinions. So if you're looking for the courage to create you wanna question, whatever makes you believe that you are not good enough, or that there's something that is wrong with you, because there's more likely than not that there's a subjective experience, a subjective fear, a subjective suggestion that you've created, that you can dismantle yourself by coaching yourself through that. And if that is possible to do, if that is something that you can inquire within and question within, you'll find yourself that as the truth reveals itself, you will find more and more courage to create.

Coach Ajit (12:12):
And that brings me to the third key principle. The third thing that you want to consider for you to be able to find the courage to create. And it is to understand that most of what we think as competition are just made up things and these made up things actually hurt your happiness. A competitive mindset does hurt your happiness. You see the reason why competitive or competitive mindset hurts. Your happiness is because when you are competitive with something, you would see yourself as a loser, right? And if you see yourself as a loser, well, you're sad because you're a loser. But even when you see yourself as a winner, you're constantly in fear of losing one day. So in neither of the scenarios, you're truly happy. You're never in a state of satisfaction, a state of joy. And when you're not in a state of satisfaction, when you're not in a state of joy, well, it becomes harder for you to create anything because you are always just chasing, not being loser, or even if you have become successful to not losing in the future.

Coach Ajit (13:15):
So competitive mindset, especially compared to somebody else, always do offs your current joy. Always takes away from your happiness. Always takes away from your ability to create you. See, we don't find courage because we find ourselves trying to fit some unrealistic expectation based on this competitive or competitive formula that we have come up in our minds. It's like, okay, if I do this, if I have more money, I will finally be successful. Or if I have more likes, I will finally be successful. And all it really creates is anxiety and fear. It doesn't really create creativity. And when you don't have creativity, it's hard to find courage to express creativity that doesn't exist. So for us to be able to be creative, to create from a place of courage for us to find that courage, we must suspend competition. We must suspend comparison. So if you find yourself comparing to somebody's beautiful post or a podcast episode, and that is stopping you to create your post and your podcast episode, maybe it is time for you to question why you compare, why you feel competitive and philosophically find a path to its courage to create.

Coach Ajit (14:26):
So if you are looking for courage to create, I invite you to practice these three philosophies. See if you can bring these three philosophies in your life. The first one, that it is dangerous to believe that your past creates your future. It does not. Your present creates your future. The second principle is, if you focus on what is wrong with you, you might be looking for reasons to hate yourself on purpose. And the third principle is most of what we think is competition are just made up and are hurting our happiness. Competition mindset, competitive mindset hurts our happiness. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you find more courage in your life. This is Coach Ajit and you're listening to Master Coaching with Ajit.