This kind of "psychological courage" is essential to our health and happiness because it allows us to face up to our lives. To acknowledge and even confront the addictions and lies, fears and mistakes we make so that we can move into them and beyond them.

The practice is to acknowledge our fear and embrace it rather than deny or run from it. To embrace our fear means we are making a conscious choice not to allow it to define who we are or what we can accomplish.

Fear is natural, and it deserves respect and compassion -- don't insult your fear by smothering it with saccharine affirmations. Be scared. And be brave.

Not one of us will know the pressure that Lincoln did, but the lesson of taking a bird's eye view on our lives is priceless for overcoming fear and anxiety -- no matter how small the issue is.

Spiritual awareness often begins at the point where our inner thoughts reflectively seek meaning in the external world of our drama. This search empowers the transformation of unconscious perception into awakened vision.

Like the rest of us, therapists tend to see courage as some sort of mythic power, existing only in heroes who are beyond human fear. Heroes like that exist only in the movies. Real courage occurs in normal human beings -- people with the same fears we all have.