In July of 1998 my wife and I left the safety of North American living to start a new adventure living Brazil. There is nothing that really prepares you for arriving in a place where your language, which you are so competent in, has no value in day to day living. When we arrived in Brasilia, I did what I normally do in a new city, at least back then, which was to go out for a run to explore the city. 1998 is still pre GPS. There are no Google Maps. I am relatively good at remembering landmarks, but on the first day in Brasilia, a city that has no street names and where the apartment blocks all look the same, it wasn’t long before it got dark and I was totally lost. It is scary being in a place where you cannot speak the language and you have no idea where you are. Finally I saw a place that looked like a police station (really it was a station for battered women). I went in trying to say I was lost, but saying something like forgive me. I got some pretty strange looks. It took about an hour to find the telephone number of my supervisor who eventually came to rescue me from the ordeal. Welcome to adventure! Some other time I will write about being lost in Cambodia.

There is only really one virtue that helps us when we are facing that amount of newness. It is the virtue of taking initiative, the courage to dive into new waters over and over and over again. Without initiative our lives are pretty much stagnated into the rut of expecting someone else to provide for us, to save us. Having the ability to take initiative opens doors. It makes things happen, but on the path towards learning how to dive in, there are several internal enemies that we all sooner or later face. The biggest one is fear, but shame is also a formidable foe that rears its head. Embarrassment also keeps us back. Diving in requires having a vision of a positive possibility, setting aside the negatives, and then making the plunge. When we sit on the water’s edge in hesitation, something we all do, contemplating whether or not to dive in to the positive space, it is because our beings are being held back by one of the big three, fear, shame, or embarrassment.

Fear

Much of what we fear in taking initiative has to do with failure, in performing poorly, or being in last place. If, for instance, the fear of failing or being in last place strikes us, it is because it has already happened. We have already tried and already performed poorly. The mind remembers the failure, protects more failure into the future, and then we sit on the shore, which means that we sit in our fear and hesitate. The problem with holding the memory of having done poorly, of being in last place, is that it keeps us from doing the thing that will bring success, diving in and then diving in again and again. When I entered the battered women’s station in Brasilia, I was in last place in terms of competency in the language. Two year olds were much more accomplished. Diving is not the only thing that makes us successful in learning a new language, but it ensures that we will be in the middle of the action, in this case. Lots of mistakes happen in learning something new. It is a requirement. Hesitation slows down the achievement.

Shame

Shame is an attack on a person’s true self, their true identity or character. When our inner spiritual selves are attacked repeatedly, then we feel shame which distorts our self image. Instead of being big and full of life, for instance, we become small and listless. We engage in coping behaviors to survive instead of doing positive initiatives that come from our true beings. It often comes from repeated humiliation in the form of constant criticism or violence or sexual abuse. The goal of the person doing the attacks is to actually make us less than, smaller than, even invisible. If we feel like we are invisible in our life, it is because of shame. When we dive into new things easily is comes from a healthy sense of who we are and what we are capable of. We see yourself as positive beings. Then taking initiative is easy.

Letting go of shame is not necessarily an easy process and often requires a lot of help. What is helpful is having the fundamental belief that who we are as human beings is positive, full of unlimited capacities.

Embarrassment

Whereas shame is an attack on the self and identity, embarrassment is an attack on one’s enthusiasm or up energy. It keeps us from being enthusiastic about diving in. It often comes in the form of put downs or being laughed at in public for what happened to us. When people laugh at us or put us down for a mistake or poor performance, our tendency is to want to hide away and keep our up energy down. Enthusiasm makes us more visible in public. When embarrassment strikes, it is hard to feel up and then full dive in or engage. It makes it harder to be in a public place where learning or action might take place.

Letting go of embarrassment requires turning off the memory of the negative voices of others. Diving in is facilitated by replacing the negative voices with positive ones inside. Then enthusiasm can appear like a bright shining day. It is like having your mind full of positive cheerleaders.

Jealousy

Jealousy is not an obstacle to taking initiative, but it is the motivation behind others trying to inhibit initiative. Jealousy in the person doing the attacks arises when they feel that someone’s positive initiative threatens their position or material advantage. It happens because the jealous person has not developed the ability to be close to others, to be spiritually intimate. Instead of having a large part of their up feelings come from closeness, they rely on position and material advantage to make them feel up. Jealousy happens because they are always feeling threatened that someone who takes initiative is going to take their position.

Dealing with jealous people is akin to dealing with a venomous snake. We have an advantage, for instance, with dealing with jealous leaders who feel threatened all the time, when we have already developed love and closeness with other human beings or with the environment. It is what they do not have. In previous generations jealous leaders had much more of an advantage, especially in cultures that were authoritarian or patriarchal in nature. In the current world the ability to take initiative is much more universal especially with the advent of worldwide instant communication. Our systems are much more decentralized. One person or one central government trying to control everything doesn’t work because it doesn’t take advantage of the virtue of initiative.

How would more initiative help your life today? Can you see yourself taking beginning steps to let go of fear, shame, or embarrassment? Let’s all dive in.