The Art of Courage Stacking

You have a big dream.

There's something exciting you want to accomplish.

But the thought of taking action scares you to the point of paralysis.

So a year later, you're still stuck in the same place you don't want to be dreaming of the thing you want to do.

Sound familiar?

That was me until I came up with the concept of courage stacking—a way to build the courage to allow you to start and continue taking action.

In this episode I share with you:

✅ what the art of courage stacking is;

✅ how courage stacking helped do all the things; an

✅ how it can help you start creating a life that's lit!

And if you want to go deeper, grab a copy of my book, The Triple C Method®️ and download the free workbook where I walk you through the art of courage stacking so you can start building your courage right now!

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Transcript

Ryan Spence: 0:00

What is the big goal that you have? And how do you talk about that goal? And why do you think you can't do that. And by working through courage stacking, it started to help people see that actually, it isn't that insurmountable. You've just got to kind of break it down.

Rafa: 0:14

You're listening to, The Triple C Project.

Ryan Spence: 0:23

Welcome to The Triple C Project, the podcast that helps you gain clarity, boost confidence, and build courage, so you can live life lit! I'm your host Ryan Spence, the BigLaw dropout, life coach, author, speaker, lover of hoodies, hip hop, and big, hairy, audacious goals. If you're tired of living the life you think you should want, and ready to start living the life you do want, this podcast will help you get from where you are to where you really wanna be. now with friends, I invite you to grab drink, take a seat, and allow me to guide you towards living, a life that's lit! What's up people welcome to episode 17 of The Triple C Project. I'm recording this on a glorious day in the UK. We're having a great week, summer has finally arrived. And I'm here for all of it. I'm definitely someone who thrives in the warm weather than in the cold as anyone who knows me personally will testify. And that's why I love Singapore so much. Like just waking up and not thinking oh, it's a good day, I should do X. I mean, every day was a good day. Apart from when you're right. But the storms are pretty epic. So even just sitting and watching the storm is always a great thing. And it's funny because my my youngest my four year old yesterday, he doesn't often talk much about our time in Singapore. But he just got into the zone where he was really upset. And so he wants to go back to Singapore. And when I was asking him why one of the things he said through his tears was it was want to be in a hot country. And I could really relate to that. So yeah, both the kids were born in Singapore. And so for them that almost still seems a little bit like home. They've been there longer than they've been here in the UK. So they used to that lifestyle. But hey, it is what it is. But yeah, I'm here for this. I hope this son stays here forever. And like I know as a as a personal development geek as a coach that I talk a lot about, we choose how we want to feel we create our own mood. But I'm human too. And I'd be lying if I didn't say that. When the sun is shining and it's warm outside. I feel I feel great. It definitely lifts my mood. So there's a lift yours too. And there's some people love the cold. But yeah, if you are a sun lover like myself, you're my people. English pastime of talking about the weather, what else has been going on. So as I record this, I'm a few days away from heading off for two days to a studio to record the audio book for The Triple C ethod, gain clarity, boost confidence and build courage so you can live life lit. And I'm quite excited. It's been a long time since I've been in a recording studio. If you listen to the show, or you've you've read the book, you know, I used to be in the music business I spent years being in studios, I was really comfortable there. But it's been a while. So I'm looking forward to getting into a studio amongst professionals and recording the but and it's funny because I read an extract of the book. Early on, I can't remember the episode number, I should really do this before we start recording. And what I found is that actually reading your book is harder than it sounds. Even though you wrote the words actually reading them out loud is it definitely takes some practice. So I've been practising that and hoping that I can kind of get them and get this done in the two days allocated in a way that makes sense. And that will entertain you the listener. So yeah, I'm a big fan of audiobooks, having resisted them for years. So I'm really looking forward to recording my own. And I'm a little bit of a geek and that sometimes I even get it on the Kindle or the hardcopy and listen to the audio at the same time. I find I get through them quicker. And I'd like to have the physical copy to kind of mark up notes as I go along. So if you're like me, this is for you. So the audio book should be out sometime in late July. I'll be talking more about it. But if you haven't read the book yet, go and get your paperback or ebook, ebook copy now. available from Amazon and your favourite independent bookshop bookstore, Waterstones, Barnes and Noble as well anywhere else you can get your books. And yeah, go and read The Triple C Method. The art of courage stacking is actually in that book that I'm going to talk about today. And I go a little bit deeper. So So let's just move on to that. And shall we, the topic of today's show the art of courage stacking. So, the Triple C method, as you know, if you've been here for any amount of time consists of three pillars clarity, confidence and courage. Why? Because looking back through my journey from big law lawyer from where I was to where I am now, the big law dropout, life coach, yoga, teacher, author, etc, all the things, they were the three core pillars that I needed to focus on to get me from where I was to where I am. Now, there's a whole host of other things within the personal development pool things I had to work on within myself. But if I had to distil it down, to keep it simple, and to also just get you started as to what you need to start thinking about to move from where you are, to where you want to be, clarity, confidence, and courage are the three core pillars. And I have to say about courage that it's arguably one of the hardest ones, because clarity and confidence you can do in private, you can sit and journal and write and think and, and do all of that without anybody knowing. But with characters, you've actually got to get out there and do something, take some action, and people are gonna see that it's gonna be public. And so that's what freaks people out. That's what stops people moving forward. That's what lets people get all of this amazing information from books and things that they read, and the things that they watch, get really inspired and fired up. But then fail to implement what they've learned, because they're scared of taking action. And when I was writing the book, I didn't want that to happen. Because I've been there, I have so many half read books or books that I've read and really enjoy, but not really taking anything practical out of them not really implemented, the things that were talked about. And I didn't want that to happen with this book. And that's one reason why the book is relatively short. And it's why the book is actionable. There are actual steps in there that you can take immediately after reading the book, to start to get you moving to get that ball rolling, both within the book itself and within the workbook that accompanies the book that's available for free to download. And one of the actions in the book is courage stacking. There's a whole chapter on the art of courage stacking, and there's a whole section on courage itself. So what is courage stacking? Well, let me take a step back, first of all. So back in April 2020, after I left big law, I knew I wanted to help lawyers and corporate professionals who were like me who had felt stuck, who felt that they couldn't do anything else, but knew they didn't want to do what they were doing. And they wanted to help them move help them see that there was a light at the end of the tunnel helped them see that they didn't have to do what they've always done. And they didn't have to be who they'd always been helping create that life. And so I knew I had to start to put myself out there. And it wasn't something that I was that comfortable doing. I had an Instagram account, which I never used. And I didn't even realise at the time that you can have a personal and a business account. So that shows you how little I knew. And I started a business account business Instagram account. And I wrote two or three posts. And I agonised them over over them for for weeks, I wrote and rewrote and got people to read them and give me their feedback. Because I was scared of putting myself out there. I just had this sort of fear of what people would say, what people would think. I mean, I was this lawyer and big law, and now I was I was trying to be something else. And people wouldn't take me seriously. And, you know, I mean, all of the things that you can think of that would run around in my mind or going in there. Now, coupled with that, one of the things which I really loved was I loved watching TED Talks. And this is related to stick with me here. I just loved watching people share these interesting, intriguing, amazing ideas on this red.on a stage in different places around the world. And, in my mind, wistfully, I felt that something which I would like to do. But again, going back to who I was, at that time, there was no way I was going to sort of do that. But what I had to do was, instead of looking at a TED talk as this big overwhelming goal, which it was, I couldn't start there because I'd spent a long time thinking about that and think looking at it as something that was unrealistic and something that I couldn't do, and therefore had never taken any steps towards actually doing it. So what I had to do was break it down. So posting on Instagram was effectively the first step because I had to put myself out there. I had to at least start to share what was on my mind and see who my people were see who was interested, see who wants to listen, see if I could actually help the people that I wanted to help. And then from there I had to move to showing my face actually getting on camera on Instagram stories or whatever it was, and talking, because people consume information in different ways, and I also had to find the medium which I felt worked best for me. So in September 2020, I set myself a challenge to show up and record myself on video every day. And by that time, if you think I'd started in April posting on Instagram, I'd already built up a few months of getting used to the process of being on social media. So then I was able to take the showing up and video, look back at what I shared already, and effectively stacked on top, because I already had evidence that I could share on social media and I wouldn't die, nothing really bad would happen. So I could then go to the next stage of sharing myself talking to the camera, figuring that out. Then I had a podcast, which launch at the end of September of 2020. And again, I always hated my own voice. I didn't think that people want to hear what I had to say, again, all of those things going around in my mind. But by then I built up a track record of sharing content on Instagram, I build up a track record of showing video on Instagram. So I already knew that I had things to say. I knew that people were responding to what I was saying. And I knew that I had more to say. And I knew that I had more to say because the situation which I had been in back in big law, I knew other people were still in that situation. And I knew that they didn't necessarily have the insights that I had now that I was looking at it from the outside. And now that I'd gone through the personal development quest that I'd already gone down. So I took the podcast, I look back at the information I've already shared, I look back at the consistent posts on Instagram, I looked back at the consistent showing up on video on Instagram. And so I stacked a podcast on top of that. So then I kind of had three things on top of each other now starting to build this wall, which was helping me to get the courage to keep moving forward. So whereas starting a podcast back in April 2020, looks absolutely terrifying, impossible. Now, I already had evidence to back up that I could do hard things that I already done things which was similar. And they could leverage that opportunity to take me to the next level. From a podcast, and there are going to be some steps I miss out here because one, I don't want this podcast to go on for too long. And too, I just miss things out. Coaching, I never planned to be a coach. In fact, I actively resisted coaching when people suggested that I should do that. Because I just wanted to teach yoga. For me yoga was the thing that really helped me deal with the stress to start to look inward. And I felt that by bringing people to the mat, bringing lawyers bringing co professionals to the yoga mat teaching them yoga, meditation breathwork that would allow them to look within themselves, and then to start to believe that they could do the things that they wanted to do. But I learned through the podcast through conversations and responses I was getting from people that having more of a sort of one to one connection with people. And spending that more time talking through what was going on for them was actually going to be more powerful and more beneficial in conjunction with yoga. So even though they're all the ideas like who am I to coach, again, all of the mind trash, I took time to just sit down and dump everything down, that I had to go through to get me from where I was, is that big law lawyer who had no clue that he could do anything else. And he was weighed down by limiting beliefs, to where I was at that time, teaching yoga, loving it, loving discovering this whole new world a loving helping people figure out what it was that they wanted to do and get And I dumped it all down. And I tentatively just mentioned it to after it. a few people and without any expectation and it was immediately met with that sounds great. I'm really struggling. Will you coach me, I want to go through this. And again, if I had left in February 2020 and sat down in April 2020 and decided that I was going to be a coach. I never would have done it because again, who am I to help people who am I to talk to people, nobody wants to hear what I have to say nobody is interested in my experiences. But I already had the Instagram captions that I'd written and put out the videos that I did and the all the responses to all of that the podcast and the guests that I've connected with and the responses and support and have people saying about the podcast that really resonated with me this really helps me to go on. So I already knew that I had something I was already putting myself out there. So I could then stack coaching on top of the podcasts which are stacked on top of the videos, which are stacked on top of the Instagram caption. So you see that I'm slowly building this courage to push the envelope to take a further step out of my comfort zone. And there are a whole host of other things then in between from sort of coaching moving forward. But I guess the next big milestone I want to move to is writing the book. Because as I've said before, I always said, I'd like to write a book one day, but never actually committed to doing it for various reasons, time, interest, people not caring what I had to say not feeling I had anything to say. But I already knew through working with people as a coach, there was some common themes that were happening, both in terms of what they were struggling with, and also in terms of what I saw could help them. And clarity, confidence and courage were three central pillars, as I said, they had helped me and I could see now that they were also helping other people as a foundation to the work that we were doing together. So then it just became a case of okay, well, taking all of that information out of my head and getting it down into a coherent form, whereby, even if somebody wasn't sat in a coaching session with me, they could pick up that information, and utilise it to start to change their own life in the way that they wanted to change it. So that's what made me then commit to writing the book. Because again, I had all of this information before. Going back, I'm gonna run through it again, I had the saying of the business account on Instagram, posting on Instagram, posting video on Instagram, launching a podcast started coach people, real, live human, awesome people. So the book was able to them stacked upon that, because I knew I had stuff to say, I knew I was comfortable putting myself out there, I knew I was helping people, because people were telling me that. And so all of these things, again, just allow me to step to that another to that other level of courage. Then putting the book out, writing the book is one thing, but then actually putting it out, you deal with a whole nother level of mind trash. But again, I already had all of the evidence to sort of build upon. And then I spoke at a virtual summit earlier this year, the summit for lawyers, which again, was a another stack of stack in my wall of courage, I could stack on top of the book, which I could stack on top of you get the picture, I don't need to go through it all again. And then this week, as I'm recording this, I hit another milestone, I actually spoke to a group of people in real life, no zoom, you know, after all of these years has actually sat in a room with real live awesome human beings, actually talking about the book and talking about my story and my journey. And I talked a bit about courage stac. And as well, which is what gave me the idea to talk about it with you today. Because I know from sharing that it really opened a few people's eyes, and you've got them sort of thinking differently. I asked them at the start of the talk, what is the big goal that you have? And how do you talk about that goal? And why do you think you can't do that. And by working through courage, stalking, it started to help people see that actually, it isn't that insurmountable, you've just got to kind of break it down. And so that takes me to TED Talk. Starting from April 2020, to do a TED talk was far too overwhelming. But by breaking it down stacking each of these actions on top of each other. Now it's I've got all of this evidence to support the fact that I can do I have a lot of the skills and all the experience already. It's now about refining that for doing an actual title, finding the people that I need to reach out to to help me solidifying my topic for the talk. The actual getting up and talking. I've done it, the actual sharing an idea and the message with people. I've done it and I keep doing it. So I already have all of this evidence and all of his courage that I've stacked up to keep taking action. So whereas doing a title just looks absolutely ridiculous a couple of years ago, now it's something that says, Yeah, I can do that. And whereas posting on Instagram in April 2020. It just was absolutely terrifying. It's now one of the easiest things in the world for me to do. It doesn't even register. I just feel I have something to say I'm going to say I'm going to post it and it happens just like that. So this is carriage stacking. Courage stacking is the art of taking that big goal. The big thing that is so scary and terrifying and like it should be if it's big enough, it should scare you. It should excite you. It should feel a little bit terrifying. But then it's breaking that goal down into its component parts. And you don't have to know all the parts at the start, but just brainstorm initially and start with what you do know. And as other things come up, you can slot them into the process. And then you want to rank on a scale of one to 10 each of the components of the process. So, one will be the least scary, and 10 will be the absolute scariest, where, oh, my God, I feel I'm going to die, I just can't do this. You know, and components, you can have multiple components at the same level, that's fine. But then once you've done that, once you've got that workflow that that chart, that visual diagram, whatever works for you, then the next stage is to actually do something about it. So the first thing you do is take the least scary thing on your list the thing that's a one, and you schedule a time to do that, as soon as possible. I say within 48 hours to kind of give you a sense, but no longer than that shorter is better, but no longer, because you want to get that ball rolling as soon as possible before you back out. And then I want you to take the next few things, I'd say probably between three and five, and schedule those into your calendar for the next 10 days, let's say. And they can be small things, it doesn't matter. But what we're doing here is we're getting you used to putting yourself out there we're getting you used to taking action, we're getting you slowly, building your courage, stacking one action on top of the other. And then you repeat the process. As you work through the ones that are one or two, you can move on to the threes, you start to schedule those. And you should keep scheduling these within relatively short spaces of time so that you don't have a big gap. And then you have to start from scratch again, you want to keep that ball rolling so that you can remember. And you want to keep looking back doing a review at the end of each section. So at the end of say the first three, you look back at what you've done, how do you feel? What what did the worst thing that can happen or the things that you thought had happened materialise, you know, did some great things happen, which you weren't expecting. And what you're doing here is you're basically you're building your courage, you're stacking one step on top of the on top of each other. And when you look back, the thing, which seemed absolutely terrifying and hard, will now just be easy, or at least easier. And the thing that seems so far away, and achievable and attainable, you'll be getting closer to and more than that, you're gonna have this whole body of work the all of this action you've already taken to support the fact that you can actually get to where you want to get to you can do the next hard thing in front of you. So that's the art of courage stacking. It's the process which I say I use to get me from walking out a big law being elated and then being like, What the fuck? How do I do any of this to the stage now where I committing to getting a tattoo before the end of the year, whether that's scheduling more, no actually delivering more just depends on what's going on. And I'm taking the steps to do the things I need to do to make that happen. So it can be done. I know unicorn, I have no special superpowers. I'm just a geek about personal development. And I just take action. And once I commit to something, I just do it. So that's how I know that you can do it too. And that's why I share it. Because I want you to win, I want you to succeed, I want you to create the life that it is that you want to live. So I'd love to hear from you about whether courage stacking has worked for you, I'd like to take what I talked about in this episode, and apply it. Start with one goal, start with one thing. And, again, break it down to its component parts and start to schedule when you're going to do the things in order of from least scary to most scary. And see if that gets the ball rolling. You've probably been sat on this dream or this goal for for months or for years, I actually implemented this process, you're going to get yourself much further ahead in a matter of days and weeks than you ever otherwise would have done. As I said, you can read more about building courage and the art of courage stacking in my book, The Triple C Method. Go ahead and grab yourself a copy and then download the free workbook and that will also give you the prompts and the questions to actually work through this process. Again, you can do that if you're a more visual person as well. Building your courage. It's not hard. You just have to commit to doing it and Courage stacking is a process that works that I've used. It's a process that my clients have used to start to implement boundaries when they thought it was impossible to decide to go off and start new courses to go off and get new jobs to decide that they're not going to put up with what they've been putting up with, and to actively do something about it. So I wanted to share that with you today, the art of courage stacking, let me know how that works for you. And until next week, I want you to think about what it is that you want in life, think about how you're going to get after it, and start to build the courage to get it to that you live life. Thanks for tuning in to the triple C's project. Before you go, I want to share something with you. When I was in big law, I struggled with limiting beliefs. I didn't have the confidence to believe that I could change my life, that I could leave big law and do something different that I could move from a life of lethargy and create a life that's lit. That's why I created confidence for people like you are in the same position that I was, who's struggling and need a boost to allow you to believe that you can do the things that come from this journal is seven journal prompts that I've used, and I still use to help me get from the guy who's too scared to post on Instagram, to the guy who is now committed to giving a TED Talk. The guy who wrote a book to the guy who loves podcast, you can do any of this to where you need to do stop boosting. So to do that, head to iamryanspence.com. Download the confidence journal. It's free, it works and it's gonna change your life. Thanks for tuning in. See you next week. And remember, stop living a life of lethargy and start living