Kate Swoboda believes that "courage can absolutely be cultivated,” just as we improve other skills with habit-building principles in mind. The problem is that sometimes we apply the cue-routine-reward to our fears instead. We get triggered, fall into familiar patterns, then gloss over it with a reward that's a pale replacement for what our heart really wants.
What's the alternative? Listen to this week's Pivot Podcast conversation to learn Kate's four-step process for avoiding common fear routine traps—perfectionist, saboteur, martyr, or pessimist—and building your courage muscles instead.
Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned at PivotMethod.com/podcast/courage-habit. Enjoying the show? Make my week by donating just $1 and episode at Patreon.com/pivot.
More About Kate Swoboda
Kate Swoboda is creator of YourCourageousLife.com, Director of the Courageous Living Coach Certification at TribeCLCC.com and author of The Courage Habit: How to Accept Your Fears, Release the Past, and Live Your Courageous Life. She helps individuals, teams, and companies see where old, fear-based habits have kept people stuck or started to limit what’s possible, and then start creating more courageous lives by getting into “the courage habit,” a four-part process for behavioral and organizational change.
Topics We Cover
Fear as a habit that has worn a groove into your brain; how to learn to recognize fear-based habits and replacing them with courage-based habits
Four steps of The Courage Habit: access the body, listen without attachment, reframe limiting stories, create community.
Critic response modes: avoiding, pleasing or attacking
Four common fear routines: perfectionist, saboteur, martyr, pessimist
Related model: Drama Triangle: Perpetrator-Victim-Rescuer
More subtle fear…hiding out, preventing others from seeing us fail or flail
The Power of Habit: cue-routine-reward loops, even around feeling afraid
Kate’s conscious crying practice
Courageous parenting, how she set-up a cue-routine-reward process with her daughter’s bedtime rituals
Liberated Day exercise to get in touch with your most courageous self: if you woke up tomorrow and your entire life went exactly the way you wanted it to go, from morning until night, what would that day look like?
100% fully alive living as a courageous act
Resources Mentioned
Kate on the web:
Kate’s book: The Courage Habit: How to Accept Your Fears, Release the Past, and Live Your Courageous Life
Kate’s Liberated Day worksheet
Jenny’s Ideal Day Mad Lib
Michael Bungay Stanier’s Box of Crayons and The Coaching Habit
Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
The Fitness Marshal on YouTube - 5min video
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