APPENDIX D

Lissa’s Personal Prescription for Courage

To find the courage to leave conventional medicine in order to pursue my true purpose, sell my house and liquidate my retirement account in order to finance my dream of launching a whole new kind of business, go into debt in order to hire employees so I could grow my fledgling business, and end a marriage that wasn’t making me happy, I had to put into practice my own Prescription for Courage. Your transformation is unlikely to consist of life changes as extreme as mine, but the kinds of practices that boost courage tend to be helpful regardless of what you’re mustering up the moxie to change.

• Get out of the big city and move from San Diego to a small town on the Northern California coast in order to be surrounded by nature, which helps me feel connected to the Divine and makes me feel braver.
• Begin a daily sitting meditation practice of at least 20 minutes per day, which includes a variety of meditation techniques, devotional practices, and prayer.
• Hike out in nature as often as possible.
• Practice visualizing a “faith bubble” around me to protect myself from all the fears of other people that are being projected onto me (usually under the guise of “protecting me”) as I make radical life choices.
• Attract, cultivate, and prioritize people who are actively trying to live an Inner-Pilot-Light-driven life, rather than a Small-Self-driven one. Ask these people for help when my Small Self feels scared.
• Set boundaries and limit time spent with those who are committed to indulging the Small Self.
• Write a blog about being “unapologetically ME” to heal myself from my fear of being perceived as imperfect.
• Without traumatizing myself, challenge myself to try things that scare me as a sort of desensitization therapy. For example, traveling solo to foreign countries, riding roller coasters, and doing ropes courses are all scary to me, but the more I desensitize myself, the less scary they become.
• Make a courage-cultivating home altar filled with meaningful objects that make me feel brave. I use this altar as a place for meditation, intention setting, and the practice of surrender.
• Practice yoga several times per week.
• Purify my body, mind, and spirit with a green juice cleanse, developed by Tricia Barrett, every three months. (For instructions on how to do this yourself, see the Resources section.)
• Listen to music that uplifts my Inner Pilot Light, including Karen Drucker, Snatam Kaur, Deva Premal, Rafael Bejarano, Christine Tulis, Michael Franti, classical music, and the “Inner Pilot Light playlist” I made of songs that touch my soul.
• Attend spiritually based dance workshops such as Nia, Soul Motion, 5Rhythms, Journey Dance, and S Factor.
• Gather with my 5Rhythms ecstatic dance soul community on Sundays.
• Meet monthly with a community of like-minded physicians in a “Finding Meaning in Medicine” study group led by Rachel Naomi Remen.
• Attend dharma talks at Green Gulch Zen Center.
• Make peace with my money fears via books, programs, and one-on-one counseling with Overcoming Underearning coach Barbara Stanny.
• When fears, desires, problems, or adversity arise, practice the art of surrender as described in Step 6 of the Six Steps to Cultivating Courage.
• Read Inner-Pilot-Light-igniting books like the ones listed on pages 249 and 250.
• Listen to teleclasses such as Craig Hamilton’s Integral Enlightenment.
• Seek spiritual guidance from a variety of spiritual advisors I trust, including Rachel Naomi Remen, Martha Beck, Tosha Silver, Anne Davin, Elisabeth Manning, Sarah Drew, Sera Beak, Christine Hassler, Jon Rasmussen, Linda Rose, Craig Hamilton, Dennis Couwenberg, and April Sweazy.
• Participate in a monthly spiritual mastermind (“Spiritmind”) group with Amy Ahlers, Mike Robbins, Steve Sisgold, and Christine Arylo.
• Attend workshops with spiritual teachers Adyashanti, Tosha Silver, Byron Katie, and Rachel Naomi Remen.
• Attend Martha Beck’s African STAR retreat and practice the techniques described in Martha’s book Finding Your Way in a Wild New World as a way to collect evidence that it’s a purposeful universe and we are all One.
• Practice saying no to everything that isn’t 100 percent aligned with my Inner Pilot Light, even when it terrifies me to choose soul alignment over security and comfort.
• Whenever fears and doubts arise, practice “being the witness,” as described in Courage-Cultivating Exercise #6.
• Avoid fear-inducing news media.
• Pray for spiritual guidance and courage when my Small Self feels scared.
• Whenever I feel frightened, let my Inner Pilot Light nurture my Small Self, as described in Courage-Cultivating Exercise #1.
• Practice acts of radical self-care to soothe my Small Self when it gets scared. Some of my favorite self-soothing techniques are warm baths, foot rubs, aromatherapy, sitting by the ocean, my homemade raw chocolate, lighting candles and incense, dancing by myself, and singing in the shower.
• Write the Daily Flame, daily love letters from your Inner Pilot Light to your Small Self. The practice of writing this daily e-mail as an act of service has helped me learn to identify with this wise, loving voice within me.