“All you need is a plan, a road map, and the courage to press on to your destination.” Earl Nightingale
Courage happens anytime you face your fears. Every day we face fears of varying degrees and we have to reach inside of ourselves for courage. I had my yearly checkup at the University of Minnesota. It’s always daunting because it takes the whole day and they take 15 vials of my blood. “Ve Vant to take your blood.”
They built a beautiful new facility but for some reason every time I visit there, I find myself lost in the parking garage. This year was going to be different I checked everything, I remembered E because I love elephants and told myself you won’t forget 6 because that is like 666. I proceeded to the stairs with confidence. As I was descending that there were so many flights of stairs I thought, ‘This is making me dizzy’.
After a long day I returned. I was going to E6. “Wait, wait, wait wait, wait! What floor was I on?” I felt like the words were hanging over my head.
I tried to reason through where I might have been. I descended so far maybe I was on the next to top floor. I went there. My car wasn’t at E6. I went down one more, not at E6. Down one more, not at E6. What do I do? Do I call someone to drive me through this whole parking garage. I wanted to scream. AHHHHHHHHHHH! I really wanted to sit and cry. Then I had an epiphany. I was going back to the floor closest to the roof one more time and look, not just at E6 but the whole area around E6. It was there! At F6.
After the excitement of finding my car wore off I started to berate myself for being so stupid for losing my car. Then I thought of my resiliency skills. I thought I should look at this positively. I was resourceful in knowing that it might be around E6 and it took courage to go through all those floors and process the whole thing out and not just crumble in a heap on the floor in fear and frustration after that half day clinic visit.
We must give ourselves credit for our wins. We must realize there is courage in small things as well as in the big things. We must have the courage to live our lives every day in ways that are best for us. We must have the courage to follow our heart and intuition.