One of the biggest misconceptions about courage is that courageous people aren’t afraid.

They are.

Courage is deciding that fear doesn’t get to make your decisions for you.

After being fired, fear can become a constant companion. It was mine.

What if I can’t find another job? What if I run out of money? What if I’m too old to start over? What if I choose the wrong path? What if this is as good as it gets?

I know those thoughts because I’ve had them.

After I was fired from Round the Clock, I spent far too much time replaying everything I coulda, shoulda, woulda done differently. Then my mind would race in the opposite direction, creating catastrophic visions of a future in which everything went wrong.

Neither direction helped me move forward.

Over more than twenty years of teaching courses on courage and fear I’ve discovered practices that can help us move forward even when we’re scared.

Here are eight that have made the greatest difference.

1. Establish a Non-Negotiable Exercise Routine

When your world feels out of control, movement gives you something you desperately need: agency.

You may not be able to control whether someone will call you for an interview today. You can’t control the economy or undo the decision that eliminated your job.

But you can get up and move your body.

You don’t need a gym membership or an elaborate fitness plan. Start by walking for thirty minutes every day if that’s what you can manage.

Exercise gives structure to days that suddenly have too little structure. It creates accomplishment. And at a time when you may feel powerless, keeping one promise to yourself every day reminds you that there are still things you can control.

2. Focus Relentlessly on Now

Fear loves two places: the past and the future.

The past gives you endless opportunities to torture yourself with what you should have done differently.

The future gives your imagination unlimited material for everything that could possibly go wrong.

After my firing, I became quite accomplished at both.

Eventually, I learned to interrupt those spirals with one simple question:

What can I do right now?

Maybe it’s making one phone call. Updating one section of your résumé. Going for a walk. Researching one company. Calling a friend.

Come back to this moment.

The past cannot be changed. The future hasn’t happened.

But this moment still belongs to you.

3. Connect With Something Larger Than Your Fear

During one of the darkest periods following my firing, I volunteered to teach a course called Embracing Courage at New Directions Career Center, a nonprofit supporting women in transition.

The irony wasn’t lost on me.

There I was, teaching other people how to navigate fear while trying to figure out how to navigate my own.

But something important happened.

Helping someone else reminded me that even though I had lost my job, I hadn’t lost my ability to contribute.

The women I met had endured circumstances far more difficult than mine, including incarceration and homelessness. They reminded me that even the most difficult circumstances can contain the possibility of something different.

Connect with something larger than your immediate crisis.

For you, that might be prayer, meditation, nature, volunteering, faith, or service.

When fear makes your world very small, connection expands again.

4. Create a Resilience Sanctuary

A therapist once suggested that I create what she called a resilience sanctuary, a physical or even imagined place where I could retreat when everything felt overwhelming.

Mine became simple: my fireplace, a good book, and the quiet of a room that felt entirely mine.

Years later, while teaching women who had survived domestic violence, one woman told me her sanctuary was her freshly made bed, surrounded by her favorite snacks and a book she was reading.

Your sanctuary doesn’t have to be elaborate.

Maybe it’s a chair beside a window. A garden. A walking trail. Your porch with a cup of coffee.

The point is to create a place where your nervous system can stop fighting for a little while.

5. Practice Radical Gratitude

Gratitude can sound almost insulting when life has just handed you something devastating.

I just got fired and you’re telling me to be grateful?

Yes

Grateful for what the firing didn’t take from you.

The people who love you.

The friendships that sustain you.

Your knowledge.

Your experience.

Your creativity.

Your ability to learn.

The skills you spent years developing.

The possibility of beginning again.

My years working with Pearl Interactive Network’s workforce profoundly changed my understanding of gratitude. I watched people navigate enormous barriers, including significant physical disabilities and serious illness while expressing genuine joy about having the opportunity to contribute through their work.

Their perspective stayed with me.

When everything seems uncertain, take a few minutes each evening and identify what remains good.

And then consider one more possibility:

For perhaps the first time in your life, you may have the opportunity to intentionally create work that aligns with your values, strengths, interests, and purpose.

That possibility is worth noticing.

6. Master the Art of Baby Steps

After losing a job, the temptation is to do something dramatic.

Send out 100 résumés.

Apply for everything.

Do something, anything, to make the fear stop.

Frantic action isn’t necessarily productive action.

My dear friend Cari taught me the extraordinary power of taking one small step at a time. After surviving a near-fatal prescription drug overdose, she began rebuilding her life incrementally, showing up for support meetings, volunteering at a friend’s startup, and simply doing the next thing in front of her.

Eventually, those small steps helped lead her into an extraordinary executive career.

Your next steps don’t have to be dramatic either.

Reach out to five new LinkedIn connections.

Research five organizations that genuinely interest you.

Call three former colleagues and tell them you’re exploring what comes next.

Schedule one informational interview.

Then acknowledge that you did it.

Progress is progress, even when you can’t yet see where it’s taking you.

Small wins create momentum. Momentum creates confidence. And confidence makes the next step easier.

7. Build Your Resilience Community

You don’t need fifty people.

Start with three.

Find three people who have been knocked flat by a career upheaval and eventually landed somewhere better.

Then talk to them.

Ask what they did when they didn’t know what to do. Ask what mistakes they made. Ask what helped. Ask what they wish someone had told them.

These conversations provide something that motivational quotes never can:

Evidence.

That people rebuild. careers can take unexpected turns and that losing one job doesn’t mean losing your future.

The people who have traveled this road before you can also introduce possibilities you haven’t considered and help you recognize opportunities you cannot yet see.

You don’t have to figure everything out alone.

8. Claim Your Response Power

You did not choose to get fired.

You may not have chosen the circumstances surrounding it.

But eventually, you do get to choose what you do with what happened.

Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning has long been one of my most powerful references for understanding this idea. Frankl, a psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, wrote about the human capacity to choose one’s attitude and response even amid horrific circumstances.

His work points toward an extraordinary truth:

There is a space between what happens to us and how we respond.

That space is where our freedom lives.

Getting fired may have been someone else’s decision.

What happens next is your decision

You can spend all of your energy asking why this happened, or you can begin asking what this experience might make possible.

You can choose curiosity over catastrophe, gratitude over grievance and exploration over paralysis.

You don’t have to make those choices perfectly. And you certainly don’t have to stop being afraid.

You just have to keep choosing the next step.

You Don’t Have to Wait Until the Fear Is Gone

If you’re waiting to feel completely confident before moving forward, you may be waiting a very long time.

Take the walk

Make the phone call

Have the informational interviews.

Explore the new career.

Courage is something you practice.

And every small act of courage begins changing the story you’re telling yourself from I don’t know how I’m going to survive this to Maybe I can create something different from this.

Ready to Take Your Next Step?

You don’t need to have your entire future figured out today.

You simply need somewhere to begin.

The free Embracing Courage workbook is designed to help you slow down, work through what happened, reconnect with what matters to you, and begin exploring what you want your next chapter to look like.

Use it to reflect, get curious, and start turning uncertainty into intentional action.

You don’t need to see the entire path. You only need enough courage to take the next step.

Get your free workbook at https://firedtoinspired.com/workbooks/