Photo and blog by Sharman Dow
Inside each of us is an inner strength that oftentimes gets blocked or glossed over by the urgent things of life. We allow our fears and anxiety to debilitate our ability to find the powerful source within us. The present struggles we all face everyday make us feel overwhelmed and wonder if we can ever achieve anything.
Your inner strength is having the capacity to sustain and apply your inward power without breaking or yielding to your inherent desire to give up. There is a supernatural toughness in each of us, placed by God, to obtain the capability to overcome adversity and not succumb to failure.
How you draw upon your inner strength depends upon your proficiency to reach deep inside your character and find the resilience you have always had within. You were created with it, but as life progresses forward we many times lose our inward power that was given to us by our Creator. Our strength is from Him.
In order to develop a courageous spirit once again it takes tenacity and a strong desire to succeed. The process starts with small steps each day by creating for yourself a desire to grow this area in your life. Just as your physical body requires a daily discipline of muscle building and exercising, so also does your inner strength. It requires a continuous effort over a period of time to build your inner strength muscle, but your first step starts by asking in prayer for His help, realizing you cannot do it on your own.
For me, I realized this when I took up the sport of skydiving. Fear and anxiety plagued me from my very first jump. Every time I recounted the memory of each jump a sickening feeling came over me, where I could make myself physically ill. However, I continued learning the sport as I was determined to not let fear control me. I had been obsessed about skydiving my entire life and when the opportunity arose to learn the sport, I jumped at it (no pun intended). It was in the student learning stage that my epiphany moment came to me. When I saw another female skydiver make an accuracy jump from 10,000 feet to a disc the size of a dinner plate, I knew then that I could do it, too. She jumped with a remarkable sense of ease and finesse, while I looked upon her from the plane ready to vomit before my jump. As I watched her depart the plane doing a backflip off the strut, my first thought as I gazed upon her was, “If she can do it, then so can I.”
Watching her jump from the plane changed my entire life. In that very instant I realized I could muster up the inner strength and enjoy the sport. I kept repeating to myself, “If she can do, then so can I.” Why not develop your inner strength by watching others before you who have accomplished great things with their life and realize you have it in you, too – and you do!
It was not long after that day that I soon became proficient in the sport and eventually became a professional skydiver, getting paid to make jumps out of Bell Jet Ranger Helicopters overcrowded stadiums to cheering fans. The strength I found within, from God, taught me that I could accomplish anything I set my mind to do – and it can be the same for you.
Sharman Dow is the founder of the Empower Women’s Conference, coming October 22nd to Orange County. Register today!
