How Do We Live a Life...Full of Bravery?

How do we live a life… Full of bravery?


When most people think of living a life filled with bravery, they think of standing up for the underdog, defending someone against a bully… Or maybe even going to war.


And these are all examples of bravery, but there are many more examples that you and I can benefit from to start to create a life filled with not only bravery but success, motivation, and more.


I look at bravery as one of those words rarely used these days, but it’s very important to bring it back into our vernacular because it describes so many people that I’m going to talk about below.


These stories will include so many characteristics of individuals who are extremely brave and extremely successful and extremely happy in life!

For the past 40+ years, as a counselor, number one best selling author, and more, I have worked with thousands upon thousands of extremely brave people, who have radically changed their existence, who have radically changed their life, from one of trying to survive to one of absolute thriving.


As an example, my client that was raped and left for dead came to me approximately eight years after the experience and we worked together for a complete year to help her overcome this incredibly tragic almost life-ending event.


Why do I consider her so incredibly brave? Because she faced her greatest fears during our sessions. She did every ounce of homework I gave her, which is very intense when we’re dealing with overcoming something like rape, incest, etc.


She is definitely one of the bravest people that I’ve ever met.


Or how about Evelyn Keiling, who was weighing in at 420 pounds, and had herself wheeled into a health club in a gymnasium to begin her weight loss program.


Now that’s bravery!


Or how about the alcoholics in the world, that finally reach out for help, and stay consistently in a humble mindset so that they can get rid of this addiction for life.


I happen to fall into that category, and yes I consider myself extremely brave for being able to call a treatment center, even as a counselor, to admit that I was an alcoholic and I needed help.


That one step of bravery, checking in to a 30 Day Treatment Center, radically changed my life… So much so I don’t even look at myself as a recovering alcoholic, I simply look at myself as David Essel, the addiction is in the past there’s no need to even carry it forward in any way whatsoever.


Or how about if I mention the name Rosa Parks? Pure bravery.


Or what about one of my clients, an emotionally abused woman in a marriage, who finally agreed to go to a women’s shelter, that not only saved her life but also save the life of her children.


Pure bravery.


Or how about my friend, who I’ve written about in several of my books, Ray Higdon, who was facing foreclosure as a single dad of two young children, and decided to go after 20 rejections a day, selling a network marketing product which ended up creating an incredible new life for him filled with financial freedom!


When I first met him, he was absolutely broke, and over the last number of years has reached up to an income of over $1 million per year!


It took bravery to pick up the phone and actually go after 20 rejections a day. Bravery.


I could go on and on with all the clients I’ve worked with, the people interviewed who have overcome huge challenges in life, but they could only do it by choosing to be brave!


Let’s look at three traits of extremely brave people:


Number One. They asked for help. They are so humble, so vulnerable, that they know that there’s no way they’re going to get themselves out of their jam by themselves, so they reach out and humbly ask for help from a professional who has experience with the challenge they are facing.


Number Two. They just don’t give up! It doesn’t matter how much weight they’ve lost, and maybe they’ve slipped back and regained a large portion, they keep moving forward.


Or when friends may say to someone who’s not drinking, “come on you can just have one, join us you’re missing all the fun!”, And that person decides to pass on the drink and stay on the path of sobriety.


Number Three. They carefully began to select the people that they want to interact with, their core friends, their core associates, who will support them during their major challenge regardless of what it takes.


Very brave people are not afraid to start to spend less time with individuals who doubt their ability to overcome their challenge, and start to look to fill their life with incredibly supportive people, maybe many people who have gone through the same challenge they have in the past!

Today is the day for you to be brave.


Today is the day for you to reach out and ask for help.


Today is the day for you to celebrate your strength, your bravery, by walking into the pain, by walking into the challenge versus trying to escape it.


Are you ready to be brave?


If you are, let’s work together to create a plan, a pathway to immense bravery and success in your life today.


We work with people from all over the world via phone and Skype, just reach out to us at http://www.talkdavid.com and we will make sure, along with your bravery, that we add the tools, habits, and beliefs to make sure that you achieve your greatest goals in life.“


David Essel‘s work has been endorsed by individuals like the late Wayne Dyer, and celebrity Jenny McCarthy says “David Essel is the new leader of the positive thinking movement.“


His work as a counselor and minister has been verified by so many organizations like Psychology TodayTherapy Tribe, Theravive, and marriage.com has verified David as one of the top counselors and relationship experts in the world.



For more information on all that David does please visit https://www.davidessel.com



By David Essel September 11, 2025
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By David Essel August 20, 2025
Codependency destroys lives. Codependency destroys self-confidence. Codependency, destroys self-esteem, self love. Codependency creates extreme procrastination. Codependency can occur with a love relationship, family members, friends, coworkers, bosses… It comes from everywhere! In 2002, we labeled codependency as “the largest addiction in the world“, And today I stand by the same statement that I made in 2002. Codependency is so insidious, it can be so hard to see, to label, to identify, and then obviously it can be very difficult to remove. I spent 46 years in the world of counseling and mental health and relationships and addiction, recovery and attitude and spiritually, and everything you can imagine, and in the world of addiction recovery, and codependency is one of the trickiest to overcome. Why is that? Because it comes laced in pretty colors, it shows up with good intentions… But the end result is always negative. So when we jump and do something for a friend or a lover or family member time after time after time, and it puts us behind our schedule, or it takes time away to be with our family, or it takes time away to finish work… That is just one example of someone who is codependent. There are over 2000 spokes, in the world of codependency, which means there’s over 2000 different ways it can appear, which is why it’s so tricky to label identify and get rid of. Codependency can be looked at as walking on eggshells around people in your life, you’re afraid to be yourself or you’re afraid to have an opinion because certain people will put you down, so you become half of who you truly can be. Codependency can be a form of peer pressure, buying the latest pair of shoes because your friends have them is an outrageously strong sign that you are a codependent person. Codependency easily occurs in the world of alcoholism, where you might have friends that encourage you to come out and have a few drinks and you know it’s gonna end up with more than a few, but you go anyway because they’re giving you kind of a hard time they’re teasing you… And the minute you walk out the door, you are a flaming codependent. Codependency can occur with money, where we want to impress people, so whether we can afford it or not we buy clothes or jewelry or cars or houses to impress others, and it always backfires, because when you’re trying to impress or buy people‘s attention, you are going to lose. We have helped people who are extremely codependent to alcohol for 30 years become extremely independent to not only alcohol, but any other addiction. One of my clients who is now clean for about four months, cannot believe that he hasn’t had a sip of alcohol in four months, and that his life is radically changing. He has shattered his codependent relationship with alcohol. Another client, a woman, was extremely codependent to sugary type foods at night, which not only made her gain weight, but interfered with her confidence, her self-esteem, and eating sugar at night will definitely disrupt most people sleep... Continued Below ********************************************************************************************************************** Don't let the economy limit your healing! NEW LOWER FEES and MONTHLY PAYMENT OPTIONS, AVAILABLE TO WORK WITH DAVID! We have had so many requests from people who want to heal but, with inflation, they need to spread the fees with David over longer periods. Or, needed lower prices. We understand and agree! And, until the economy rebuilds, these new prices and payment options will stay in effect. If you need help with codependency, visit “codependency kills“ ... https://www.davidessel.com/co-dependency-kills If you need help in any other area of life, please click here… https://www.davidessel.com/executive-coaching You have been with David a long time and we are happy to assist everyone to higher levels of health, success, and peace. Love, Team David and David ********************************************************************************************************************** Since the age of 10, she had been calming her own internal emotions with sugar, instead of dealing with them. Within six months, we had completely eradicated the 40 year addiction to sugar, which allowed her codependency with this substance to be completely obliterated, her sleep improved dramatically, as well as her confidence and self-esteem. Another client, a woman had a very rough upbringing, not a lot of support from her mother or father, and had become codependent on finding men with money to take care of her financial needs. Of course, most relationships like this are going to implode, and by the time she got to me after six really terrible ending of relationships with very wealthy men, she understood completely after about four months of working together that she had become codependent on wealthy men so that she did not have to level up, get a job, maximize her potential, instead she was codependent to men so she did not have to work! 10 months after we started working together, codependency with wealthy men was completely destroyed, and she entered her first healthy relationship in her life! A major professional athlete, former client of mine, came to me because he was outrageously limited, in his ability to maximize his talent in his given sport, just four years earlier he had been rising and rising, and rising… He hit a massive plateau. He had been feeling depressed, he had experienced thoughts of depression, but because this would’ve meant reaching out to a counselor, the peer pressure from other professional athletes, telling him that he didn’t need any professional help. He just needed to get over himself… Kept him depressed much longer than he needed to be. And even with so many professional athletes today, making television commercials about mental health, there still is this underlying current amongst professionals that you just don’t talk about your personal life. You just don’t admit you have any kind of mental health issues because it might shorten your playing career. Thank God, my client finally reached out and admitted that he needed help, that he knew he had waited a little longer than he should have, and he broke that peer pressure in that moment! Six months later, we had totally taken care of his depression and he was back to playing at an exceptionally high level. A male client of mine came to me, discussing the fact that he may be leaning on sexuality too much in his relationships, and he felt it was the driving force of why he would be with any woman was just to be satisfied. How did he come to this mindset? As young boy, he saw his father in one affair after another, and he noticed that his mother never said anything, didn’t wanna rock the boat, and so he looked at his father‘s behavior as normal. As he grew up, he thought that you know it’s just great to have several women on the side that he can have sex with whenever he wants… But then it started to backfire. He started to have women catching onto his intentions, and for the first time in his life, he was rejected three times within about three months because these individuals knew that he was just there for sex. So he came in, and as we discussed why he got into this pattern, he was absolutely blown away that he was simply modeling his father from childhood. This is another form of codependency, when we follow the role model of someone when we are young, that is not showing us the healthy way to live, we just repeat. The patterns we're seeing because we believe that if my father or my mother or this person of this age is doing this, it must be OK! And another client, a woman, was role modeling her mother‘s behavior when she was a child that was codependent as well. On weekends, when her father worked, her mother would take her shopping for clothes, and hide them in the closet not letting her husband see the price tags. As you can imagine when this woman got older, she started repeating the same pattern until her husband caught her, which sent her to me. And yes, we shattered that codependent pattern that she had picked up from her mother and childhood as well. As you can imagine I could list 1000 different forms of codependency, with examples from clients over the last 46 years. I had become codependent to workaholism. A long time ago, I was also codependent in my intimate relationship by not really sharing as much of my emotional honesty as I do now, and all of this changed in 1997 when I spent 12 months working with another therapist who was an expert in codependency. She educated me in a way that was absolutely stunning, and from that year on this has been one of our greatest topics to help people heal with, codependency, because it comes in so many different shapes and sizes. For your free 20 minute session on the phone to discuss how you may be codependent, or maybe you understand your codependent and you’re looking for a little help to get out of it, just text us 941.266.7676 and our office will set you up with that call. This addiction can be defeated! Never give up hope ever! Too many people we’ve worked with have shattered codependency, our program is outrageously effective, and part of it is outlined in our book, “Love and relationship, secrets… That everyone needs to know.“ Now is the time to level up. If we can help you in any way whatsoever, I would love to. Sending love, David and Team David.
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WE HAVE CREATED A POWERFUL AND INCREDIBLY DISCOUNTED PROGRAM TO HELP YOU DEEPEN YOUR SPIRITUAL PATH FOR ONLY $75 PER SESSION!
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Join me for 8/30-minute sessions at 50% off, and we can begin to see the path moving faster than you might think.
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