This week’s episode includes a great interview with Kate Swoboda on The Courage Habit: How to Accept Your Fears, Release the Past, and Live Your Courageous Life. Kate (who is also known as Kate Courageous) is a life coach, the founder of Courageous Living Coach Certification, and Your Courageous Life. I hope you enjoy this interview with Kate Swoboda on The Courage Habit:
Kate’s work has been multifaceted around courage and fear, and her path to becoming a published author is inspiring. After having her book proposal accepted, she came to the realization that she wanted to go deeper on the questions of how we develop courage, and what holds us back from acting courageously. She asked her publisher if she could change up the focus of the book (they said yes!) and she created a book that brings in neuroscience, behavioral psychology, and other fields to develop the framework for The Courage Habit.
Kate explains that “courage isn’t something you’re born with, it’s something that you practice.” It is human nature to rely on habits, and up to 60% of our waking actions rely on habits we’ve created over time. It’s more efficient for the human brain to set itself on auto-pilot and so most of what we do becomes routine. In order to break free from the habits (that make us feel stuck), you often tap into courage – courage to break free from the safe and familiar, and courage to work on things even when you feel fear.
In this episode, I talk to Kate Swoboda on The Courage Habit and more:
- Her new book, The Courage Habit
- Her road to becoming a published author, along with her advice to anyone wishing to get a book published (keep trying)
- How she proposed a new angle on the book, after the proposal was accepted
- How to start practicing courage based behaviors and get “unstuck”
- Experiencing fear, and practicing mindfulness to recognize that you’re experiencing fear, while also stepping back to observe your own “stress responses”
- The Inner Critic, and the ways that the Inner Critic counteracts courage:
o Perfectionism
o People Pleasing
o Sabotage
o Pessimism - That we need to work with (instead of against) the Inner Critic, by meeting him/her with unconditional love and acceptance
- The role of community in developing courage
- The question of “what if courage could be easy.”
Resources
The Courage Habit: How to Accept Your Fears, Release the Past, and Live Your Courageous Life by Kate Swoboda on Amazon
Courageous Living Coach Certification – CLCC
Kate Swoboda’s site: Your Courageous Life
Kate Swoboda on past Jump Start Your Joy episodes:
Kate Swoboda on “Courage as a Path to Healing (Episode 8, Season 1)
The Crossroads of Courage and Creating Habits with guest Kate Courageous (Episode 80, Season 2)
Season Two Finale: A Roundtable on Joy, Finding Inspiration, and Self Care in Difficult Times (Episode 101, Season 2)
