Helen Keller once said, “We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.” I would amend that state­ment to include “and if we never got off the beaten path.”

If we try, we can remem­ber our own past brav­ery as a way to help us feel more coura­geous as we con­tem­plate step­ping onto the road less taken.

Some­times, though, when we look back on our life, we can only remem­ber the times things didn’t work out. And those mem­o­ries can get in the way of choos­ing to be brave today.

We say to our­selves: Things went wrong in the past, what if things go wrong again?

Things haven’t always worked out great for me. When I returned from Mex­ico after work­ing with Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders, I had no job wait­ing for me. My hus­band wasn’t work­ing and we had used up all of our savings.

As soon as I got back to the States I applied for every job in the nurs­ing field I could find — even jobs that were way below my level of exper­tise (and for­mer earn­ings). I went 2 months before I received a job offer.

The job was as a com­mu­nity health nurse. It would have required work­ing 5 days a week, with very lit­tle time involved in actual patient care because it required a lot of travel and paperwork.

I knew I needed the income but when offered the posi­tion, I just couldn’t accept it. Every fiber of my being knew that I would be mis­er­able at that job. I thanked the nurse man­ager but declined the offer, hung up the phone, and BURST into tears.

I felt cursed by the warn­ings of my father and so many well-meaning oth­ers who had told me that I was fool­ish for quit­ting my good job to take a vol­un­teer posi­tion in Mex­ico, and that I was crazy to think that I could find an even bet­ter job on my return.

All that is to say that I am famil­iar with the demons of grief, anx­i­ety, self-doubt and despair that can haunt you when you get off the beaten path. Very familiar.

My leaps of faith and acts of brav­ery haven’t always worked out exactly the way I had hoped. In fact they’ve often found me down on my knees in despair ask­ing God how I could have been brought this far to fail.

Another month after that “down on my knees” dark place, I did get my dream job, work­ing as a nurse-midwife for a busy hospital-based birthing cen­ter that cares for pre­dom­i­nantly Latina patients — work­ing 24 hours a week for more pay than I made work­ing 50–60 hours a week in my for­mer mid­wifery position.

I worked that job hap­pily for 8 years before I decided that it was time to leave it for my next leap — where you find me today.

And, yes, one year after quit­ting that job, this par­tic­u­lar leap hasn’t worked out exactly the way I hoped either.

My expe­ri­ence of the road less taken has not always been filled with bright sun­shine and frol­ick­ing uni­corns. And yet, when I finally stopped fight­ing the ques­tions and the doubts and the fears and allowed myself to sim­ply be sad or con­fused, I real­ized that every­thing actu­ally was okay.

Even when things are not at all the way I want and expect them to be, they are still okay.

“Things are still okay”? What does that mean?

What it means to me is that I can focus on what I am doing and-most impor­tantly–how I am doing it, and then I can let go of need­ing to con­trol, or even worry about, the outcome.

I have sur­vived fail­ures before, and I will sur­vive them again.

And I prac­tice remem­ber­ing that things always get bet­ter, eventually.

As a char­ac­ter says in Kate DiCamillo’s children’s story, The Tale of Des­pereux, there are many won­der­ful things out there to be afraid of. But your regrets about the past or wor­ries about the future prob­a­bly don’t make the grade.

In these instances, rec­og­niz­ing your fears for what they are-stories about the past that might not now apply, or sto­ries about the future that might never come true-will help.

The Brazil­ian writer Paulo Coelho has said, “Every­thing will be all right in the end. If it’s not, then it’s not the end.” I’ve con­tem­plated that quote enough in good times that it helps me to keep putting one foot in front of the other when things get tough off the beaten path.

What about you? What helps you feel brave as you travel the road less taken? Please share your chal­lenges and tri­umphs in the comments!

by Stacey Curnow

Whether you call your neg­a­tive thoughts your fears, your inner critic or your Ego, you prob­a­bly think your life would be so much bet­ter with­out those thoughts, right?

Not So Fast…

I don’t think your neg­a­tive think­ing is a prob­lem. In fact I think you can ben­e­fit in a big way if you really lis­ten to it. In fact, I’ve started call­ing my inner critic one of my most trusted and val­ued advisors.

But it is tricky, because it often wants to talk with you at the most inop­por­tune moments. You know the ones, the times when you’re already feel­ing bad about your­self, you’re tired, and you just plowed through a pint of ice cream.

But what if, in that wretched moment, you were just to say to that voice, “Not now”? And what if later-after a good night’s sleep, say-when you were feel­ing more calm and cen­tered, you held a dia­logue with it and truly got at what it had to tell-and teach-you?

Here’s the thing: the “neg­a­tive” think­ing is a tem­po­rary chal­lenge, and like all chal­lenges you can address it in a way so that you come out of it stronger and smarter.

If you face the fear, and fig­ure out how to set things up so you don’t feel immo­bi­lized by it anymore-for exam­ple, by devel­op­ing a strat­egy to do some dif­fi­cult thing like quit your job-well, that would be a good thing, right?

Really! Even the most attain­able goal is still just a day­dream unless there’s a plan to get there. And yet when ques­tions crop up about how we’re going to achieve our dreams-when our minds prompt us to do some plan­ning, we too often dis­miss them because it’s painful to feel the fear that comes up-it’s painful not to know the answer imme­di­ately. (It’s even more painful when you don’t even know how you’ll fig­ure the answers out). But ignor­ing the neg­a­tive self-talk is only a tem­po­rary fix.

Your fears, in fact, will speak louder and more often the more you ignore them. So what if, instead of dis­miss­ing your doubts as with­er­ing criticism-the echo of some over­pro­tec­tive par­ent or unap­pre­cia­tive teacher or unsup­port­ive friend-you paid atten­tion to them and started to dia­logue with them? Do that, and you’ll dis­cover that there are very few inner crit­i­cisms that can’t be put to rest through action.

Here’s what you do: Imag­ine a dia­logue as if you were writ­ing a play. Write Fear or Inner Critic or what­ever you call that voice with the neg­a­tive thoughts on one line and then add a colon and then write a ques­tion or a state­ment that you’ve heard it say.

Then write your name, colon, and your response. When you write your response, write it as if you were tapped into your high­est self, or as if you were play­ing the part of your wise and kind best friend or a spir­i­tual leader, like the Dalai Lama.

You may be tempted to think that you’re just “mak­ing this up,” but stick with it. You are actu­ally access­ing that part of your­self that really does know.

This may feel strange at first and that’s fine, because it is like any prac­tice, like learn­ing a for­eign lan­guage or how to play the piano, and you will get bet­ter at it with time, prac­tice, and patience.

To be clear, you are prac­tic­ing self –knowl­edge and self-trust, and becom­ing pro­fi­cient at it is absolutely price­less. Noth­ing is worth more than this.

And this process doesn’t just apply to plan­ning for the future. Know­ing and trust­ing your­self grows when you choose to slow down and notice what you are think­ing. And if you get good at this process I’ve just out­lined, you’ll break the habit of hav­ing a neg­a­tive thought and sim­ply feel­ing bad. Instead of say­ing, “I don’t want to feel this way!” and “Why is this hap­pen­ing?” you’ll begin to ask your­self, “What is this here to teach me?” and start the dialogue.

I started this dia­logue around the frus­tra­tion I was hav­ing about my lit­er­ary agent and the fear of what it would mean if I ter­mi­nated my con­tract with her. The fear of “You’ll never find another agent!” always shut me down quickly in the past, but I decided to dia­logue with it one morn­ing when I was feel­ing par­tic­u­larly well rested and ready to take charge of any­thing, includ­ing my fears.

Very quickly I real­ized that my fears of never find­ing another agent or get­ting my book pub­lished any­where may be well founded, but they didn’t need to keep me stuck in a rela­tion­ship that I felt was no longer in my best interest.

After that dia­logue, a thought I had dreaded-writing the email to my agent and inform­ing her that I appre­ci­ated all of her help, but that I was ter­mi­nat­ing our contract-turned out to be easy. After I sent the email I was over­come with a flood of relief and my fears and doubt have never resurfaced.

Have you ever had an expe­ri­ence of let­ting go of good to make room for the great? What helped you make the leap?

by Stacey Curnow