The Triple C Project

Ignite Your Life with Courage: Small Steps Lead To Big Shifts

• Ryan Spence • Season 2 • Episode 103

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Courage can change the trajectory of your life. By stepping out of your comfort zone, pushing fear to the side, and showing up, opportunities will arise that you never thought possible.

But how do you build courage when every fibre of your being resists the plunge into the unknown? 

Fear not—this week I share the audio from a masterclass I recorded entitled, Cultivating Courage.
I take you through my personal narrative, from initial trepidation over social media to launching a podcast and writing a book, all through incremental, manageable actions using the concept I call, Courage Stacking.  

You'll also learn:

  • What courage is 
  • Why you need it
  • How to build it

Courage isn't about grand gestures of bravery but small, consistent steps that snowball into an avalanche of change. You'll leave this episode equipped with a tangible strategy to amplify your courage and step into the light of your dreams.

So listen in and start shifting your fear and building your courage today.✨

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Speaker 1:

When you start to put yourself out there, whatever it is you want to do, whether you're just looking for a new job, whether you're looking for new experiences in the job that you have, whether you're looking to do something completely different, like I did, whether you're looking to start a creative project, write a book, do a new hobby, whatever it is. If people know what you're doing, you're going to be surprised at where help comes from, at where support comes from, but that can only happen if you are courageous about putting yourself out there. You're listening to the Triple C Project. Welcome to the Triple C Project, the podcast that helps you gain clarity, boost confidence, build courage so you can live life lit. I'm your host, ryan Spence, the Big Law 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 want to be. So now, with friends, I invite you to grab a drink, take a seat and allow me to guide you towards living a life that's lit. Hey, hey, welcome to episode 103 of the Triple Seat Project. Hey, hey, welcome to episode 103 of the Triple C Project. Quick catch up from last week If you listened to last week's episode, you would have heard me talk about the video that I was going to be recording, and I kind of read you out what the script was then going to be, just to kind of feel you in on the power of coaching, and it was also about building the courage to ask for what you want and communicate what you need.

Speaker 1:

That video is now up so you can go ahead and check out the video at IamRyanSpencecom. Slash apply and I'm very happy with it. The script is evolved and morphed, so what you hear in the video is slightly different than what you would have heard on the episode, but the the sentiment is the same and I hope that it resonates with you. And if it does, I invite you to do what the video says click the button below it and apply for your free strategy session. I guarantee the strategy session is how do I describe it? You're going to get coached. Let's put it that way. You fill in the questionnaire beforehand so that when we get on the call, you're going to get some real value out of the call. That's going to help you see things differently. It's going to give you some new habits and tools and strategies to kind of help you change how you do things in your life and hopefully give you a different perspective on a few things too. A lot of people have these calls and they call various things, but this is definitely a call for you one hour for you, focusing on your life and what you want to do and at the end of it, if we work together, fantastic you, we've got a beautiful um 12 plus weeks ahead of us, um. And if we don't, whatever you leave with, it's still going to be hugely, hugely valuable Um, whatever it is that you decide to do next. So I encourage you to head to imrinsportscomcom, slash, apply, watch the video, apply for the strategy session and let's get on the call and have some fun. Right, sweet, okay.

Speaker 1:

Now, this week I am also going to do something slightly different. I'm going to talk about courage and I'm going to share something with you, but before I do, let me give you a bit of a backstory. So courage, as you know, is one of my, the three pillars of my triple C method, and it's one of the ones that I I want to say I struggled with, and I struggled with it because it involves putting yourself out there, which isn't something that I was particularly fond of doing. But in order to do what I wanted to do, in order to fulfill the mission that I'm on, I kind of had to get over it and get over myself and just start doing shit myself and just start doing shit. Now, one of the things which I realised, and I keep realising more and more, and I want to share with you, is that when you start to put yourself out there, whatever it is you want to do whether you're just looking for a new job, whether you're looking for new experiences in the job that you have, whether you're looking to do something completely different, like I did, whether you're looking to start a creative project, write a book, do a new hobby, whatever it is if people know what you're doing, you're going to be surprised at where help comes from, that, where support comes from. But that can only happen if you are courageous to about putting yourself out there, if you don't succumb to that fear, to that voice in your head telling you all the things that will go wrong, if you raise your head above the parapet and you just go ahead and do it.

Speaker 1:

Courage can really yield great I can't remember the word I was going to say there it can really yield great opportunities. It can really yield great, great benefits, and that's happened for me time and time again over the last few years. So today, what I'm going to do, I'm going to share you a courage masterclass, and the way that this opportunity came about was actually through Exhibition Courage. So so, as a photo coach, um, and she read my book, loved the book and was pulling together a um, a kind of group program slash mastermind for um selection of her clients.

Speaker 1:

She coaches um women, uh, female entrepreneurs, is is kind of her, her key, uh, key niche of of practice. And as part of um her program, she wanted to offer some bonuses and she requested, invited, asked me if I wouldn't mind um creating a masterclass for her people. Um, because she'd read the book, she'd loved it and she felt that the people that she works with could really benefit from some of the things I talked about in the book. So I said yes. Then probably freaked out like what the hell? I'd never done this before, but again, the courage of putting myself out there made the opportunity come my way and the courage of just trusting that I'm going to figure it out and going ahead and doing it actually made this thing come together and I did it and I sent it in and she loved it and it's fantastic.

Speaker 1:

And so what I did this week as I was going through I'm doing a lot of work on the back end of my business at the moment, trying to sort of clean things up, see what I have Um and I I found the masterclass and I watched it and I was like I found the masterclass and I watched it and I was like this is this is pretty fucking good. Um, I should share this more. And so I shared it with um people on my email list. Um this week, uh, and I thought I would share the audio um with you guys here on the podcast because I still think I feel there's a lot of value in that. So if you've read my book, the triple C method you're going to hear similar themes in here, but you're going to hear them expressed either in a slightly different way or in a deeper way. And if you haven't read the book, then this is all going to be brand spanking new to you and I'm hoping that you're really going to leave and think, wow, right, I'm going to go ahead and do something courageous today, and I talk about my concept of courage stacking and in the end I also talk about an exercise that you can do and a worksheet you can get hold of.

Speaker 1:

So listen to the masterclass. If you would like to get hold of the actual video as well as the audio, and you would also like to get a copy of the worksheet that I talk about towards the end, to allow you to start practicing courage stacking, then you can do that by getting on my email. If you shoot me an email, hey, at IamRyanSpencecom with the word courage, ryan spencecom, with the word courage, masterclass in the subject line Um, then I will add you to the email list and I will also send these over to you. Or what you can now do which is amazing New thing from my web um podcast host is you can send me a text. So if you go to the show description, you'll see there's a link there and If you click on that, it allows you to send me a text. So you could just text me um, courage, masterclass there. Or any message you want telling me you want the? Uh, the video and the worksheet, uh, and also your email address, cause I'll need to send it to you via email, um and um, you will get hold of that um completely free. Isn't that amazing?

Speaker 1:

Um, and speaking of the text, that text can be used for anything. Well, I'm going to say anything not anything, only nice things. I want you to tell me. Tell me, um, tell me your experience of the show. Tell me what you like about the show. Tell me any insights you've taken away. Tell me anything that you've done differently through something that you've heard on the show.

Speaker 1:

Um, I love this, um new feature because it's a bit more of a conversation. I know I invite you to send me an email, but email can kind of seem a bit meh, whereas when you've got your phone to just shoot off a text is. It's pretty easy and straightforward and it's like a conversation. So that's fantastic, except that I can't reply back to you via text. But I mean that doesn't really matter. I can send you an email, reply back to you via text, but I mean that doesn't really matter. I can send you an email, um, right, so what I'm going to show you now is I'm going to share the courage masterclass. It's called cultivating courage, um, and I really hope that after you listen to it, you get up and plan and go and do something courageous today, right now, after you've listened to it, um, and have some subsequent things planned for the next few days to help you get from lethargy to let, to help you move from a survival mode to thrival mode. Okay, so I'm going to shut up now and I'm going to move to the recording and, um, thanks for being here. Go ahead and build that courage.

Speaker 1:

Hello, and welcome to this masterclass cultivating courage with me, ryan Spence. I'm going to start off by just telling you how this masterclass is going to go. I'm going to start off by telling you what you're going to get, because you need to know why you're here and what you can expect from the class, so that you know to sit around, listen and take notes. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about who I am, because you need to know who you're going to be listening to and you want to know that I at least know a little bit about what I'm talking about. Right, I know I would. Then we're going to dive deeper into the objectives, into what you're going to get, talk a little bit more in depth about what they are and why they're important and stick around to the end, where there will be a key takeaway and exercise that I use to help cultivate courage, something that's simple but effective, something I call courage stacking We'll come back to that later. Sound good, courage stacking We'll come back to that later. Sound good, awesome, okay, let's begin.

Speaker 1:

So, courage, entrepreneurship, business the word courage is thrown around a lot in that world and it makes sense, because to go against the grain, to do something different, it takes courage. As an entrepreneur, you're taking a leap into the unknown. You're likely doing something that nobody has done before. You're giving up that relative safety and security and stability that people talk about, that is present in the corporate job in the 95. You're giving up the salary, the benefits, the holidays and all of that stuff to carve your own path, and all of that takes courage. But I think what isn't really talked about enough is why? Why do you need courage? Why is it important and what is it in the context of starting your own business, of being an entrepreneur? So what you're going to get in today's masterclass is this I'm going to talk about what courage is and what courage isn't. Talk about why you need courage, and I'm going to talk about how to cultivate courage and show you how that will tie to the exercise. I talked about courage stacking Great.

Speaker 1:

So now's the time where I talk a little bit about me, and I'm going to keep this brief. I just want you to get a sense as to who I am, the experience that I have and why I'm talking to you today. I have and why I'm talking to you today. So my name is Ryan Spence. As I said at the start, I'm a coach, I'm an author and I'm a speaker. But before I was all of those things, this was me Big law lawyer. So big law just means one of the big international law firms around the world, and we all know what lawyers are right. And this, this was me. You can see I'm a little bit different than I am now. I'm suited and booted for a start. No, hoodies, I'm a little bit fatter in the face and that smile, if you look closely enough, looks a little bit forced. I was actually, before this photo was taken, I wasn't smiling at all and I was, let's just say, encouraged to smile for the photo, as it was for a marketing brochure. So the reason why I wasn't smiling, or wasn't smiling fully, is all of these things here.

Speaker 1:

I felt stuck in the last half of my career. I was there for 11 years. In the last five years I was unhappy, unfulfilled, unmotivated things, which I call living a life of lethargy. I was good at what I did, I was outwardly successful, making good money, have a status of being in a big law job, but something was missing for me. I wasn't living in alignment with my values is what I know now but I was weighed down by limiting beliefs. I didn't believe I could do anything else and, quite frankly, I was a little bit scared to do something else, to leave this so-called safe corporate career that everyone said that I should want. Safe corporate career that everyone said that I should want. And now this is me, the big law dropout no longer in big law. As you can see by the photo here, I'm a lot happier. Okay, that has something to do with the sunshine, but still I'm in better shape, I feel better and I'm All of these things here apply to me now.

Speaker 1:

I'm happy, I feel alive. I wake up each day with purpose, feeling fulfilled, like I'm on a mission to achieve something, something that means something to me and I'm on the path towards living a life that's lit the opposite of the guy in the previous slide, it of the guy in the previous slide. So how did I get from that guy to this guy, to the guy that's sat speaking to you here today? Well, I did a lot of soul searching, a lot of inner work in the process of leaving the two years or so that I got that I was there to where I am now, and three core themes always kept coming up and they're now the three foundational pillars which, I say, helped me get from where I was to where I am now and will keep taking me on the path towards where I want to be. And then the three C's clarity, confidence, courage which I call the triple C method, and I believe so deeply and so strongly in those three C's as being foundational pillars for change. Then I wrote a book and created a podcast about them. The book, the triple C method, and the podcast, the triple C, are all about those three C's and how focusing and being intentional about those three C's clarity, confidence and courage will help you transform your life and get from where you are right now, which is where you don't want to be, to a path towards a life that's lit, which is where you do want to be. So that's enough about me.

Speaker 1:

Let's get to the topic of today's masterclass which, as you probably notice, is the last C of the triple C method courage. And I call courage the hardest pillar of the three. Why? Because, look, clarity and confidence are things which you can work on in private. You can sit with your journal at your desk in the comfort of your home, coffee or your favourite beverage in hand, and journal away and think and muse on what you might want and who you might be, and I mean believing that you can achieve all of those things, but with courage.

Speaker 1:

In order to build that courage, it requires action, because only in doing something can you get better at it. And taking action is a public event. People are going to see what you're doing, people are going to have opinions about what you're doing. You're going to leave yourself open to embarrassment, to failure, and that's not easy. And this is what holds people back from pushing further, from thinking bigger, from trying harder, because opening yourself up to failure, to to ridicule, to other people's opinions, is too scary to contemplate and it's easier to stay in the zone of comfort than it is to push into the zone of discomfort. But today's masterclass we're going to help you with all of that. We're going to help you build this courage so you can keep pushing forward and keep getting on to where it is you want to be.

Speaker 1:

So, first things first, what is courage? I like this definition from Merriam-Webster and that is courage is mental or moral strength to venture, persevere and withstand danger, fear or difficulty. And I say it again because I think it's really really powerful definition Courage is mental or moral strength to venture, persevere and withstand danger, fear or difficulty. Persevere and withstand danger, fear or difficulty. So, to break that down a little bit further, you need strength, both mental and moral. So the mental strength to keep pushing forward, to shut out the noise around you, to shut out the opinions, the agendas of other people and to focus on your own path, on where it is that you want to head to. The moral strength to do the right thing, to do the thing that accords with who you are, accords with your values, because it's hard to sometimes to stand up and do what you know is right when everyone else around you is doing what you think is wrong or doesn't agree with what you believe. So it's having that strength and then it's taking that strength to venture forward, to persevere in the face of danger, in the face of fear and in the face of difficulty. So courage is taking action in the face of fear, it's putting yourself out there and it's accepting the inevitability of failure. So I'd like to share an example from my own life, my own experience.

Speaker 1:

When I stepped out of the big law, I was excited by the possibilities ahead and I didn't really know how I was going to get to where I wanted to get to. But I knew what I wanted to do and I wanted to help people who had been in the situation that I had been in and at that time, 2020 pandemic. Of course, everything was online, so I had to get my social media game on point, and social media was not a strong point of mine. It was something which I had used and dabbled in, but I was what you would call a lurker. I never really started a huge number of conversations or posted a lot of my own things. I would occasionally comment and join conversations, but I was never the one to instigate, to put myself out there, to put my head above the parapet because I was scared. I was scared of what people might think. I was scared of people not thinking anything at all and seeing tumbleweed as a yes, another post bombed and nobody said anything, and so I allowed that fear to hold me back.

Speaker 1:

But I knew that if I wanted to help people, I had to be visible and I had to put myself out there and they had to get over that fear. I had to as it down and start with one post, get one post out and take it from there. And I agonized. I agonized for days, if not weeks, over that one post. Does it look right? Does it set the right tone? What will people think? Are the colors correct? Nonsense, all of that stuff. And all of that procrastination was just because I was fearful of the outcome and I was scared. I was really scared, and even when I pressed the button to post, I was scared to the point of sickness, waiting to see what the response would be, what the reaction would be. And you know reaction would be, and you know what. Nobody died. You know everything was fine. The world kept spinning and everything continued as it was, and so that fear was, in a way, a little bit unfounded. And so I kept going and I utilize the process of courage stacking to keep moving forward, and I've mentioned it a couple of times now, but I promise you I am going to explain a bit more about courage stacking as we progress through today's masterclass.

Speaker 1:

So what? What courage isn't? And there's a misconception that if you're courageous, you don't feel fear, and that's wrong. Of course you feel fear whenever we're doing something new, whenever we're stepping into the unknown. There's an element of uncertainty, of trepidation, of discomfort and a fear. But courage allows you to, as I said again, feel that fear and do it anyway, to keep going forward, recognizing and accepting that fear, but not letting it hold you back. Courage isn't reckless indifference. It's not jumping off a cliff with no clue and no idea at all and to see what happens just for the fun of it. Yes, there is an element of cliff jumping as an entrepreneur, as I spoke about at the beginning, but it's jumping with a purpose in mind, with a goal in mind. Courage isn't just jumping for the hell of it. That's reckless indifference.

Speaker 1:

And I don't know about you, but when I used to think of courage, my impression of courage is always taken from the fairy tales that were read as a kid. You know, lancelot slaying the dragon, or the white knight saving the damsel in distress, and that's not courage either. I mean it can be, but courage is so much more than that. Courage is found in everyday life. It's found in the small things that you do each day. So I want you to leave not thinking that well, I'm not doing these big, grandiose things, so therefore I'm not courageous. I want you to try to find those bits of courage in the small things that you do each day, because that threshold will be different for different people. I don't particularly like speaking to strangers on the street, you know. So for me, saying hello and having a conversation with someone I never met before would be an element of courage, whereas for somebody who is more gregarious and more of an extrovert, that may be easy for them, okay, ok, so on to the next stage.

Speaker 1:

Why do you need courage? Well, I guess the easiest, most straightforward answer is that you need courage to get you from where you are to where you want to be, to move forward, because to move forward obviously takes action, because to move forward obviously takes action, and you need courage to allow you to take that action, to allow you to recognize the pitfalls, the dangers, but to keep going forward. It's knowing that what you're striving for is bigger and better than what you have, and it's building that courage to allow you to move forward towards that. So without courage, you're going to come to a standstill. I like to talk about there's a loop which I see in lots of people these days and it's called the IIA loop and it's a loop where you acquire information and we're in an age where you can acquire information so easily and so freely and then you get inspired by that information. So that's the second eye. But that is where a lot of people stop, because the final part of that loop is action. And getting from inspiration to taking action is a difficult bridge to cross for a lot of people, because information, inspiration, you're still within that zone of comfort, but taking action is crossing over into that element of discomfort, that element of the unknown. And so you need courage to allow you to complete that loop, to get from the information, the inspiration, to the action and then to keep going around again. Without courage, you're going to get stuck at the inspiration stage, which means you're going to get stuck in that zone of comfort and you're not going to move forward and you're not going to get from where you are to where you want to be.

Speaker 1:

Okay, here is what I promised how to cultivate courage. So, to cultivate courage, I like to employ a process that I call courage stacking. Courage stacking it's simple, but it does take a little bit of time to do and put it into practice. What courage stacking means? It's taking the bigger goal and it's breaking it down into smaller steps, and then it's taking those smaller steps and stacking one on top of the other, effectively building a courage wall or courage tower, so that the thing that seems hard will eventually seem easy and the things ahead of you that seem hard you'll know you can overcome, because you've overcame so many harder things before. You'll be able to look back at your progress and see the stack that you've built, and that stack will give you foundation to keep pushing forward.

Speaker 1:

So to go back to my social media endeavors and my uh, my sort of attempts at increasing visibility, as I said, I agonize and agonize over that first post on social media, and you would have seen in the earlier part of this masterclass that I've obviously started a podcast and written a book. Now, if I had left Big Law and immediately gone and tried to start a podcast and write a book, my nervous system wouldn't have been able to take it. I would have freaked out, I would have been overwhelmed, because going from zero to a hundred is just, was just too much to bear. And some people can do that, but typically we can't. Our brain, our nervous system, is there to keep us safe and if we're pushing too far, too quickly it is going to freak out. And that's where the mental blocks come in. That's where the negative self-talk comes in and that's where we start to listen to that self-talk, because we don't have any evidence to back up the opposite of what it's saying.

Speaker 1:

Courage stacking helps to do away with that, because we're starting small. We're starting with something that is relatively easy to do. So for me it was making that first post. It was challenging and there was fear there, but it was a relatively easy thing to do compared to anything else. And then I kept posting. So I was building the act of posting one on top of the other, and I did that until I got to a place that I was comfortable enough to push to the next level, which was showing up on video.

Speaker 1:

I couldn't have presented this masterclass to you back then without having done the work to get here, without having gone through the process of courage stacking to show up on video Again. I needed to take all the experience and all the evidence I had from posting on social media and look and realize that I could do that. That was hard, but now that was easy. So doing video would be exactly the same process if I kept stacking. So I set myself a 30 day challenge, every day showing up on camera with my phone and just recording myself. Didn't matter what, didn't matter how. I just had to do it every day for at least 30 days. And again, first time I felt physically sick. Probably the second and third time too. But progressively, over time I became easier and by the end of the 30 days it was just habit, it was just something that I did. So I'd gone from being terrified of social media to being comfortable with posting every day, to showing up on video every day.

Speaker 1:

And then the next stage was create a podcast, and again I had to build on the experience I already had, knowing that I could write content, knowing that I could speak on camera, knowing that people were listening to what I had to say, taking all of that evidence and building on top of that by creating the podcast and then the podcast. I could then use that evidence and that bit of the wall to then lead towards writing a book. So if you're a visual person, you can imagine that you're stirred on the ground and you place that first brick on the ground, on the foundations. Then you get another brick and you place that on top, and then you keep putting another brick and another brick, and then you keep climbing higher and you keep climbing higher and looking back, lifting and putting down that first brick, getting the foundations right, was very difficult. It's something which you probably never thought that you could do, but now you have so many other bricks stacked on top of it that the idea of laying foundation now is easy. It's not even an issue.

Speaker 1:

So now all you're doing is looking at the next brick ahead, the next brick in the wall, and that's courage stacking the next brick in the wall, and that's courage stacking. That's something which I have found immensely helpful in my own life and my own experience, and which I think you will too. I call it building courage without the overwhelm, without the big freak out. It's having little mini freak outs, but ones that you can quite easily push through. What I suggest with courage stacking is this you take the big goal, you break it down into smaller steps. You rank each of those steps by what's easiest to what oh my God, this is absolutely insane. And, yeah, you rank them from one to ten. Then you look at that ranking and you set yourself a deadline I say pretty quick deadline, within 48 hours to do the very first thing on that list, the thing that is the least scary of them all. And then, once you've done that, you sit with it, you journal, you recognize how it felt, what went well, what didn't go well, and you really get yourself into that space, into feeling all the emotions that came up when you were doing that one thing. Then the next stage, which I suggest, is you take the next three to five things in that list and you schedule when you're going to do them, because what you don't want to do is do the first thing and then forget about it and then have to start from scratch again.

Speaker 1:

The idea of courage stacking is that you're continually stacking, you're continually moving forward, so by scheduling when you're going to do each of these things. It helps you to keep that momentum going. When you've done the next three to five, you then schedule the next three to five and you keep going and periodically you keep looking back at the progress that you've made, recognizing how you feel, recognizing the emotions that come up, and it's a continual process. You keep leveling up. You need to keep building your courage, because the courage that got you here is going to be a good foundation for what will get you there. But you still need to keep fueling that flame. You still need to keep building and exercising that courage muscle. Okay, that's it for today. Thank you for joining me for this masterclass on cultivating courage. There'll be a worksheet available for you to go through your own courage stacking exercise and I hope that it helps you level up. I hope that it helps you build your courage and I hope that it helps you move towards living a life that's lit.

Speaker 1:

I'm Ryan Spence. These are all the ways that you can find me and contact me and if you like the class, I'd love to hear about it. Just let me know. Say what you liked, say what you took away, what insights you found and, yeah, it'd be great to continue the conversation. Thank you and I will see you again.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for tuning in to the Triple C Project. In the spirit of the Triple C, here's three things that you can do to support the show. Head to ratethispodcastcom. Slash tripleC or over to your favorite podcast app and leave a review. Reviews really help people checking out shows to see what they can expect and how the show can help them. Second thing you can do share. Share this episode, share a previous episode with a friend, someone who you feel could benefit from what I'm throwing down on this here show. And number three, head to IamRyanSpencecom. Get on the main list. I'll be sharing news about the show, news about what I'm up to my new book start writing soon. So to be the first to be in the know, you need to get yourself on the list. Really appreciate you being here and until next week, stop living a life of lethargy. Start living life lit.