If you’ve ever done yoga, you’ve probably gone to a class where they happen to talk about the one theme you needed to hear that day. It happens to me often.

Sometimes my blog posts do that for someone too. I hope this one arrives on a day you need it.

Several months ago, the day my hair started falling out, I randomly went to yoga, and the teacher spoke all about what happens when it seems like our world is falling down around us. Literally a part of me– my hair– was falling down around me by the handful, creating shock and intense sadness. Indeed, it felt like my life was falling apart.

While it was hard to believe everything would be okay in that moment, I felt a tiny glimpse of hope from her message. She encouraged us throughout class, explaining that when it feels like everything is falling down around us, everything is actually falling into place.

How did she know I needed that message that day?

Since then I’ve avoided the gym for months. The chemo drugs lower my immune defenses, so I didn’t want to risk catching a cold that I otherwise might be able to fight off. However, every so often I felt I needed to get back to my normal routines. After the New Year I went back to yoga. It was the first time back since the day her words so profoundly mirrored my life.

And she did it again.

In my last post, I discussed how choosing a reflection instead of a resolution may feel like the best choice for us in that moment. Along those lines, my yoga teacher chose her own word for her new year.

The word was brave.

As she guided us through our practice, she prompted us to cultivate the inner tools to be brave in everything we face.

It got me thinking about how often I have heard that word, or a version of it, over the last 6 months.

Many people have called me courageous, brave, and even a warrior.

It’s amazing to know you’re brave when you feel completely terrified.

That reminded me of a discussion I had with a client from last year. As she worked though her career challenges, she acknowledged that fear and courage always occur at the same time.

There are no truer words.

When I moved to Spain by myself with no plan in place just after graduating college, that felt like the scariest thing I could do in my life. It was frightening, and it took courage to do it. As I think back to my own career change, it was courage that pushed me through. If you think I wasn’t afraid of uprooting my entire life, think again. It was the scariest thing I’d ever done. Once again in my life, I am faced with another terrifying challenge. This time, I don’t really get to choose. I don’t get to choose to be brave, but instead bravery is just part of the package. And once again I’m scared at the same time.

In fact, courage cannot exist without fear.

We can choose to stay paralyzed by our fear, or we can choose to dance through the fear with courage as our partner.

It doesn’t matter what your personal circumstance is. If you’re stuck, hoping for something to change, or confronting a new challenge; you’re probably scared too. Of course you’re afraid, but just because you have fear does not mean you cannot find the courage to act.

What is the one common denominator that has pushed me through my scariest life events?

Unexpectedly, it is the lack of choice.

I didn’t have a choice any of the times I chose courage. When I moved to Spain, I knew in my heart I needed to do something exciting before I “settled” into my responsible life. When I left dentistry, I knew I could not continue to live the rest of my life in the wrong career. And most recently, it was literally a life or death decision.

So, you see, I had no choice. Whether it was something I needed to do or something I needed to stop doing, I had to find the courage I needed to be brave.

How do we find the conviction to do what we need despite how scary it feels?

We must think of the big picture.

Each time I faced a life change, I imagined the “future me” looking back years later and telling the story of my life. I knew there were parts of my story that I wanted included and parts that I wasn’t willing to accept. I couldn’t imagine waking up at 65 and looking back on each day of my life knowing that I suffered through it or wasted my days away because I settled.

The quality of my life was so important to me that I had no choice.

Where are you right now? What is that one element of your life story that you know you can’t live with or without? When you create that image, you’ll see that you, too, have no choice.

The only thing left to do is to be scared enough to be brave.