The Honor Code: A Manifesto for Living with Integrity and Respect 

Hello. Welcome, welcome, welcome to In The Rising Podcast. My name is Bettina Brown, and this is the platform that I talk to you and I talk. About living a life without the captivity of guilt and regret so that you can use your self-worth to live an empowered, independent, and free life. And I always start off by saying, I am not a licensed counselor or psychologist, psychiatrist.

But I am a student of life and a healthcare professional. Loves deep conversation and really wants to figure out what makes us tick and what makes us feel connected. So if this topic or similar topics are of interest to you, go ahead and subscribe and leave a review. Stars are welcome, but I also enjoy receiving feedback, and that's down in the box below.

Today I wanted to start off with gratitude. So I wanted to say thank you. Thank you for every listener, and if this is the first time that you're listening, welcome and also thank you. Thank you for your time. So today's episode will be one of two, a little short series called The Audacity. A lot of us are familiar with the phrase, well, that person had the audacity to call me at such and such time.

That person had the audacity to cut me off. That person had the audacity to say that my child. Got too close to their car or scratched their car or something, had the audacity. So we're pretty familiar with the negative connotation, but audacity also has a positive connotation, and it means to be bold, daring, brave, fearless.

And it doesn't mean that we always have to feel those things or have 'em internalized, but it does imply that we can behave in that. Even without the feeling. So I just finished the book, that's down below by Dr. Henry Cloud and there's this one chapter where he points out something and it was a huge aha moment for me, and he said, every once in a while, we need to be able to upset the right people.

And I put the phrase in, we have to have the audacity to upset people, period. Because there is a huge difference between hurting someone and harming them. And when you upset someone in the right way, upset the right person, there's a difference between that you're not out to harm them because they're definitely words.

Actions, of course, but words that we can tell someone. We will only belittle them. We'll only make them question their self worth. We'll only make them wonder what their purpose is. We'll only be there to serve you, to make yourself feel elevated, and those are words that harm. But when you're upsetting someone because you're telling them the truth, the truth from your perspective, when you're being honest in kindness, and when you are being true and honest and kind and observant of your.

It's observing and upsetting the right person. So for example, I came up with this one. So you say your parents are in the healthcare field and. Your cousins and your aunt and your uncle and your grandparents were in the healthcare field, and probably their grandparents were somehow in the healthcare field and many, many, many, many generations back.

Someone was a shaman or a healer or an herbalist or something. So it is now expected that you will also follow in those footsteps, that you will do the same thing. But what about if you know in your. That's not what you're here for. What if you make up your mind that you really want to do something else?

And this is just an example. We can fill in whatever, but you want to actually muster the courage to tell your family. Now, in some families, that works well in other families. That's a huge slap in. And you know when you're going to tell the news that you're going to upset your family, you're going to upset generations of what's happened, but you choose to follow through anyway.

You know that you're going to follow what is in your gut to do. And if someone is not in agreeance with that and that someone is close to you, parent, sibling, and you are still willing to hurt that person. Because you are unwilling to hurt yourself. That's audacious, that's audacity, and you haven't harmed anyone by this.

You haven't harmed anyone else physically, emotionally, mentally. But if you don't follow through on this and you live a role someone else has decided for you, you do end up harming someone. Someone very close to you, and that's your. So what I really do think, and I applaud anyone that has the courage to follow their own dreams, to be brave and have a sense of daring that maybe you've had for the first time, knowing that you don't live your life by the hopes and dreams of anyone else, but the only the ones from your.

And in upsetting the right people, you're having the audacity to keep your own plan. Even if someone gets mad, even if someone doesn't talk to you for a while. It is not our job on this planet to pull people out of their anger, out of their jealousy, out of their spite, or out of their misunderstanding or their ill perspective.

That's up to them. They need to figure that out. Our job is to have the audacity and courage to continue on with our own goals and keeping our our cool about us so that we have the audacity to honor, honor the life that we have been given. Because you know what? We don't know how long we have it. Honor the way our mind works and know that our imagination is wonderful and it's creative and it will produce a beautiful life.

Honor time as if our life depends on it, because it does. If someone's upset with our choices, we don't need to continue to explain ourselves over and over and over. That's also not our job. But when you have that audacity to follow through with something that is in your gut and your heart, people will come on board your ship or they will get off and that's okay.

You can welcome them on. Or you can say, you know what, I gotta cut that anchor. We got to go honor that you have been blessed to be a blessing to others and that we can best help others. Bless. In, in any capacity that we are within ourselves. So if we are not really wanting to do whatever someone else says is our profession, then the best thing is to be what we wanna be.

And they always think about the creative types with this one, the writers, the artists, the photographers. It had to take some courage to be on the sidelines and do things. A lot of family members don't plan to have their kids do. We should also honor the fact that every choice available does not have to be considered by us.

We don't have to swipe through hundreds of choices every day. We just have to honor the choices that follow through with what we know we want to. And when we say no to something, we can honor our own. No. Because that means we're believing in something more important as our Yes. And that more important can be downtime.

Watching Netflix, having your feet up. It can be whatever you want it to be, but just know that your no is for your. And the last one is having the audacity to have audacity to live life, to really live it and not just exist in one, because there certainly is a difference. So today's a shorty, but. I just wanted, again to say thank you to everyone.

I love this word audacity, and as I was putting this podcast together, I realized that the program I use is called Audacity, and I was putting my own audacity out there to have a podcast. I put the audacity in to actually look up microphones and whatever all this equipment is. I don't even know the name of it, but I put it all together.

Created something. And whether I have thousands of followers or tens of followers, the audacity is that I did it in the first place. That was my reward, and that is my joy, and that is what I'm talking about. Honoring your gift, honoring what you feel is important. The result is not the issue, it's the living.

The process. That is all right. Enough of that. I know all of our time is valuable and I appreciate it. The, the minutes you gave me today, I hope you found this episode valuable and if you did, go ahead and share it with someone. You can drop a line and connect with me down below and I'll see you next Tuesday.

Let's keep building one another up!