Watch the video above … or read the text below: Your choice.

Sometimes Owning Your Awesome is an internal journey. It is doing something brave. And what’s interesting is that sometimes we are brave without realizing it.

There have been a couple of times in my life that I’ve done something brave, where I wasn’t even aware that what I was doing acting with courage. I just knew it was what I had to do and so I did it. And both of those times concerned a long distance move.

The Courage To Move Out On My Own

The first time, was when in my mid-20s. I was living at home with my mother and I had just lost my job. My options at that time were:

1. Take on a new job that was far away and required me to live by myself for the first time in my life, or
2. I could stay living with my mother without a job.

What would you do in this situation? To me, that was a no-brainer. Just take the job and go live by myself. I was excited at the prospect. But many people around me were asking me, “How how did you have the bravery to do that?”

Frankly, I don’t know. I think it was just that I was instinctively Owning My Awesome.

The Courage To Leave an Abusive Marriage

The second time I did this was when I left my first husband. I had been resisting leaving him, but not because I wanted to be with him. Being with him was really quite unpleasant. Bottom line: I was afraid to go out on my own because between the first time I had gone out on my own and this time, I had spent 13 years in a relationship where I had someone else to lean on. And now, because of a back injury, I could no longer drive.

Could I live on my own without a car?

However, I knew it was the right thing to do. And fortunately, I had some people in my life who helped make that transition a little bit easier. One person, who didn’t even know me, but knew a friend of mine, took a video of the place I was going to live in before I lived in it. Another friend picked me up at the bus stop, helped me shop for new apartment supplies, and get settled into my new home.

And so I bravely stepped out and moved.

On one level I was aware of my bravery. However, on the other level, it was another moment where my options were:

1. Stay stuck where I was, unhappy, or
2. Step into my future.

And so I stepped into my future and that was awesome.

The Moral of the Story

Sometimes owning your awesome is feeling the fear and doing it anyway. And sometimes it’s really scary.

Believe me, there have been many nights that I have cried myself to sleep — or not been able to sleep — because I was terrified of what I knew I needed to do.

But you just have to suck it up and do it anyway.

And what’s amazing, when you step into that scary, scary place, you discover there was no reason to be afraid at all.