The Third Option
From Confidence to Courage to New Confidence

by Alan Steinborn

I woke up this morning with a big realization and I wanted to share it with you.

I realized that success depends on more than confidence and skill.

Confidence, when it is real, is wonderful. Everybody knows it when they see it. A person who is authentically confident is powerfully attractive to us. Their presence seems to reassure us. It provokes and inspires us to action. It is the acme of success and satisfaction.

Yet what about those moments when we are not so confident?

If Shakespeare's famous "all the world's a stage" quote is true, then we all have stage fright on one part of the stage or another.

How can we succeed on those parts of the stage where we start to tremble?

And perhaps the bigger question is what does the trembling have to offer us?

When we begin to feel uncomfortable and squeamish there are several things we can do. We can run away and distract ourselves with something else. We can puff up our chests and try to fake it till we make it and get through the moment while maintaining our self-image and the image we project onto the world.

Or we can turn to the third option. It is the most awkward one perhaps, at least at first. When we choose this option, it is generally not with a sense of power and clarity and confidence, but by choosing this option, we become gifted with a COURAGEOUSNESS that goes beyond our circumstances.

When we choose this option, we say YES to our life and anybody who is in our presence at that moment is filled with a sense that we are saying yes to his or her life also.

So what is the third option?

The third option is that we feel the fear, the discomfort, the doubt and we stay in action anyway. We don't let fear stop us. We continue on while welcoming the uncomfortable feeling.

This is exactly what I did this morning.

I woke with a sense of doubt. But I got up as I always do and began to work on my book, as is my habit. In so doing, my doubt eventually went away, but what I gained by staying the course was so powerful. I gained a sense of clarity and compassion that went beyond my usual sense of confidence. My writing became transformational.

This is what tends to happen to any of us when we choose the third option. When we "feel the fear, but do it anyway" we do the magic trick of turning our big fear into our moment of awakening.

For a real live example of the 3rd option in action,

Contact me at 512/306-9446 or alan@speaknow.biz

Yours in Presence,

Alan Steinborn

Alan Steinborn, All Rights Reserved, 2003, 2004