Courageous Living: Margie Warrell on Embracing Challenges

I’m thrilled to interview a powerhouse in the world of personal development, a bestselling author, and an expert in courage and leadership. Margie Warrell‘s passion lies in empowering individuals to lead more purposeful and courageous lives by challenging them to step outside their comfort zones and embrace life’s challenges. As Margie told me, “Courage is uncomfortable. Courage is also learnable, but courage is also contagious.“

Listen or watch our interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or your favorite podcast platform

Transcript of our interview is below:

Lisa Niver:

Good morning. I am so excited to be here with Dr. Margie.

Dr. Margie Warrell:

Good morning. Good to see you too, Lisa.

Lisa Niver:

One of the things that I’m so excited to share with everyone who’s listening to us is I have a new book. My book is Brave-ish: One Breakup, Six Continents, and Feeling Fearless After Fifty. And the first of your books that I found was called Brave, and it talks about 50 acts of courage. I know that you have seven books now, but I appreciate in all of your books how you’re really talking about the importance of courageous conversation and courageous acts. How did this get started? You are from Australia, you’ve lived around the world, you’ve raised children, you’ve done so many impressive things, but what made you focus on bravery and courage?

Dr. Margie Warrell:

Well, Lisa, I grew up on a dairy farm in the Aussie bush. I had very limited horizons. My parents both left school at 16 and most people actually where I grew up still live where I grew up or many do. I just knew I wanted to expand my own horizon and that required an act of courage in its own way, overcoming all my own doubts and fears of have I got what it takes and am I good enough. I set off and moved four hours away to go to university. I feel like I have been living outside my comfort zone for much of the time since, which was quite a few decades ago. I also traveled around the world, as you said. One of the things that struck me the most as I’ve met people across so many different countries and cultures and lived in some of them for a period of time myself, is that as humans, we’re so often held back by our fear of failure of not having what it takes, of not being good enough, of being exposed as inadequate or unworthy or unlovable in some way.

Courage to me, it is not the absence of self-doubt or misgivings or being afraid of being found out. It is just deciding that something more important lays at stake in being willing –to quote Susan Jeffers “feel our fear and move forward anyway.” Even writing my first book many years ago, I had four kids who were age seven and under at the time, which was an act of courage. I never studied writing, I didn’t know where all the apostrophes go, et cetera, but I feel really called to do this. If I look back on my whole life story, so much of it has been me practicing walking the path of courage over fear in so many different ways.

Lisa Niver:

I know for myself, when I was leaving my marriage, people kept saying to me that I was brave. I kept looking the word up in the dictionary because I did not feel brave. I felt anything but brave. I actually really appreciated in your book talking about the doing things anyway and trying to figure out the life that you want to have. In you book, you have 50 courageous acts. How did that come about? What inspired those 50 courageous acts?

Dr. Margie Warrell:

In my book, Brave, which was my third book, the reason that book came about, I’d written two books at that point, Find Your Courage and Stop Playing Safe. People said, fantastic, very helpful, but how do I actually do some of these things? How do I say no to someone because I hate letting people down. I’m a bonafide people pleaser. How do I give someone feedback? How do I set a vision? How do I deal with rejection? How do I pick myself up when I’ve had a fall? 50 Brave everyday acts of Courage came about because sometimes we want to be brave, but we just don’t know how to be brave. That book was very much inspired by that. 50 is the number of different ways that I could readily categorize different ways we can be brave.

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Learn more about Margie and her climbing adventure in Kilmanjaro with her family: Click here

“Growth and comfort can’t coexist. Just because something is hard and uncomfortable doesn’t mean its bad. Embrace the discomfort; look for the growth.“