Join author Dan Bolen for an exclusive talk, review and signing of his book “The Courage To Be Courageous”, the personal story out of struggle and darkness into peace and light through transparency and acceptance. Explore how the book has evolved into a larger purpose - to help others overcome their own fears.
+ Thursday, March 2 from 5:00 - 7:00 pm
+ Between The Covers Bookstore
The Courage To Be Courageous
I vetted and hired a professional author to help me write the book. During our eighteen-month process, from first concept to holding a finished copy, something magical happened. I discovered the book was merely a vehicle for my message that had evolved into a larger purpose, which was to help others overcome their own fears. Whether male, female, gay, straight, or somewhere in between, all of us have times when we struggle in life. I’m finally able to breathe, and I want others to experience the same profound shift.
From my own experience I learned that what keeps us in the struggle is fear, which is False Evidence Appearing Real. Trust me, I know about fear because I’ve lived almost my entire lifetime being afraid. I made a lot of money and had a lot of external success markers, but I had no idea who I was. Thankfully, when I was able to develop the courage to accept myself, I started to move out of my shame. What a relief to look in the mirror and finally like who I see. In a word, I was finally able to be courageous.
The Courage to Be Courageous: A Memoir of Struggle, Success and Truth, quietly debuted in August 2022. Again, it was never about trying to sell copies of the book so I didn’t have an official launch or make a big splash to market what we’d created. Instead, I’ve been focused on my new mission to help others.
Living in fear is so common we’ve all become numb to it. To get on a different track we need to tap into the power of courage. Find courage and then you can be courageous. My own memoir documents the losses I experienced and the psychological pain that eventually moved me to summon my own courage to be courageous.
I found my way out of the struggle and darkness through transparency and acceptance. Now I live in peace and light. Everything is different now because I like Dan Bolen. I’ve replaced my old dogmatic religion with a new one: Truth. And when you embrace and commit to truth, all things are possible.
Dan Bolen
I was born in Spokane, Washington, and grew up in Idaho with six siblings, an overbearing father, and a Jehovah’s Witness mother. What could possibly go wrong?
When I was a teenager, our family moved to Alaska where my father opened his own grocery stores where I worked as I finished high school. I spent one full semester at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, but my collegiate experiment ended when my newfound religion encouraged me to become a minister instead. I got married early in life, and we had a beautiful daughter.
When I was 22, I joined a small employee recruiting firm in Boise. I was just looking for a decent paycheck so I had no idea I would spend the next fifty years in that industry, eventually launch my own company Dan Bolen and Associates, and carve out a reputation as a renowned national expert in the field. There was, however, a dark side to the shiny veneer of my outer success, which was that I used addictions, to work and religion, to bury who I was. To the outside world I was the millionaire founder of the number-one executive search firm in the country; on the inside I was isolated and walled off from myself.
Finally, as I retired in my early seventies and paused to face myself for the first time, I found the courage to come out as gay. That was no easy task as I had to confront and process all my emotions without any of my trusty old hiding places in work and religion. Being my authentic self was fully liberating and also cost me everything: my marriage to my second wife ended, my church cast me out, and my family and all the people who I thought were friends, who were all Jehovah’s Witnesses, cut off all contact with me. I had lost everyone to gain myself.
Yes, I was alone, but oddly for the first time in my life I no longer felt alone. I’d finally come home. I have found true peace for the first time in my life by leaning into myself instead of always running away from myself.