In David Hawkin’s book, Power vs. Force, he defines courage as the energy level where a person moves from weakness to strength. In his book, he uses kinesiology testing to show that many other emotions (like fear, shame, guilt, etc.) weaken the body while courage is the first emotion to strengthen the body. This is one of the first energy levels where a person takes responsibility for what shows up in his life instead of being a victim of life around him. He starts to use his life events to see how he can grow and learn. Courage is the ability to look at the situation and accept it for what it is. People use courage when facing a line of fire (e.g., soldier or police). Courage isn’t about taking unnecessary risks in the situation, yet courage is about taking the steps needed to control the situation and not stepping back in fear. With courage, fear and worry do not control a person’s life, but gives him a willingness to face the situation and grow from it.

David also talks about courage being the first energy level that a person gives to the world more energy than he receives. This is important for prosperity because prosperity increases as energy grows. Energy and prosperity is limitless if we give back to the world what we get. When people are just taking without giving back, their prosperity will diminish because energy gets depleted. At these lower energy levels, we tend to drain the energy around us with anger, blame, fear, etc. For example, if you have an angry employee at work, how does he influence the rest of the company? Does his anger tend to affect others and possibly make them angry as well and thus become less productive?

To summarize the lower energy levels in Power vs. Force (from lowest to higher energy levels) taking a situation of someone who is in debt:

No hope for changing the outcome:

• Shame– humiliating disgrace of his situation (e.g., around amount of debt)

• Guilt – beating himself up for the past (e.g., for getting into debt)

• Apathy – giving up on a situation (e.g., no hope of getting out of debt)

With these emotions, people tend to take no action for getting out of debt because they do not see any other possible outcome to their situation.

Seeing different outcomes are possible:

• Grief – sense of loss of what he could have had (e.g., morn loss of a peaceful dinner without being called by a debt collector)

• Fear – anxiety of what may happen (e.g., going further in debt if he loses his job)

Even though people know what they can have, their energy is focused on the loss or potential loss of what they want (inaction) and not focused on action.

Taking action against what we do not want:

• Desire – need to escape where he is at (e.g., wanting to be rich to stop feeling less than others by being in debt)

• Anger – hating where he is at and taking action against others (e.g., yelling at the debt collectors and credit card companies)

• Pride – trying to justify him self-worth by being better than others (e.g., thinking that it is noble to be poor)

Even though these emotions are about taking action it is the wrong action (e.g., cutting others down with anger or pride to feel better or desire to escape the current situation instead of action towards what you really want).

As you can see, these lower energy levels do little or nothing to change the situation. Even desire where it is about escaping the current situation (e.g., of debt), is over looking what the person may really want (e.g., self-worth, peace, happiness) and focus instead on money believing that will change the situation. Courage is realizing that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Thus, if you want your situation to change, you need to change your reaction to the situation. From a financial situation, courage is looking at your situation and learning from it:

• Do I need to find a better job by getting the training that I need instead of thinking no one want to hire me for more than minimum wage (shame) or getting angry at the economy and government

• Do I need to cut my expenses until I can get back on my feet again instead of waiting it out and see what happens (apathy)

• Do I need to see that those who have wealthy are just like me (not greedy or evil) instead of believing that being poor is noble (pride)

There are always going to be reasons why things are not going your way. You can use this as an excuse not to take action (live with is no hope) or have courage to be honest with yourself. You may not be able to change the situation (e.g., incurring medical bills due to illness) yet can change the outcome by managing your spending and debt. Courage is the point where we see that life is not just happening to you (on a roller coaster with no steering or brakes) but where you can take charge of your lives (elect to get off the roller coaster and choose your next step). This is a scary step because it means that everything in your life, you have some degree of control over. Thus, instead of blaming others, you need to look at yourself and the impact you have on the situation.
So take the first step in chaning your financial situation is to see what situation you are in:

• Are you in debt?

• Are you underemployed (should have a better job)?

• Are you saving for retirement?

• Do you have health insurance?

• How else would you describe your financial situation?

Then take a moment as see your feelings about these situations. Are your emotions in the list above (e.g., seeing the situation with anger, fear, apathy, guilt, etc.)? Have you started to stand up and address these situations? If not, take a few more moments and brain storm ideas on how you can start taking action to change the outcome of your current situation. Brain storming can show that there are other possibilities to solve the situation instead of being a victim and giving up.

Courage is the tipping point to a different life. It is easily to revert back to believing that we are a victim to others. Thus, you need to look at your thoughts. One of the biggest traps is thinking, “yes … but …”

• Yes, I can pay down my credit card debt, but not at their outrageous interest rates they charge

• Yes, I got myself into debt, but the credit cards are making it impossible to get out of it

• Yes, I should get a better job, but the economy stinks and government is not fixing the situation

It is easy to say that you can control your life, yet it is harder to stay focused in believing it. Thus, when you have emotions that tell you that you are not in control (e.g., all the emotions listed above, shame, fear, guilt, apathy, etc.) then your emotions are telling you that you have an opportunity to choose courage by taking action to change your situation. For example,

• Instead of fearing debt collectors, be proactive and call them with a proposed payment plan

• Instead of ignoring your investment summary during down months in the market, open them up and understand where you stand

• Instead of ignoring your retirement plan, sit down and map out your retirement strategy even if you currently do not have the money to save for it

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 at 7:12 am and is filed under Energy of Money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.