At some point this year, three words began popping up in my mind at random intervals. They werecompassion, courage, and creativity. I was drawn to them as a trio, their collective briskness and the way they fitted together with other favorite words like cozy and comfort and connection. Life in the dependable Cs. Consistency. Completion. Consideration. But it was compassion, courage, and creativity that came around most often. I was seeing and using “compassion” a lot as I began trying to make more ethical choices in my style of living, and I picked “courage” as my word of the year back in January; through my work in therapy I began to understand that “creativity” is my constant mode of expression and conversation, my greatest wish for my own life. It’s a sign to myself that I’m doing okay, so long as I’m creating, because that means I’m continuing to grow and learn.

Eventually, I realized that the three words are interconnected and it dawned on me that each one symbolized a part of my life that I wanted to work on. Not just wanting – these were parts of my life that I was just starting to understand the importance of. They were necessary parts of my life – vital, even. And as the fullness of each began to take shape I recognized in them the refuge and the source of meaning each could hold if I would take the time to tend to them like little gardens of the soul. That would be very important, very lucrative work. It required patience and dedication, and a gentle, hopeful spirit.

The compassion element was first to dawn on me. Compassion means some of the hardest work for me, yet somehow I mistakenly thought it would be the easiest. This is the broadest because it includes self-love, and self-love contains a multitude of struggles. Self-love pertains to body image – a saga of its own – as well as acceptance, permission, and comforting the frightened inner-child. That’s powerful work, and it’s profoundly challenging. Compassion also includes my spiritual practice – whatever that may be – and the acts of giving, caring, sharing. The compassion of the self and the selfless alike. How I treat myself and others, essentially.

Courage is its own small-big practice, but it also serves as an umbrella for its other companions, because the fact is it takes courage to be compassionate and it takes courage to be creative (goodness knows). But on its own, courage exemplifies the taking of action – what I think will be the hardest, and so avoid, but what time and again proves to be not so scary after all. It’s taking the chance, exposing myself to a scary situation. That can be literal (anxiety-provoking), but it can also be hypothetical, as hypotheticals are less scary by nature but sometimes just as big of a deterrent. Courage is the commitment to the whole shebang.

Creativity is the letting out, it’s the expressing and the doing. Frightful business. It’s also about reminding myself that every creative doing is an opportunity for mindfulness, for praying through my hands and finding inner-peace in the stitch of a knitting needle, the pen scribbling on the paper, the stirring of a pot of soup, or the colors layering themselves in the intricacies of a mandala. The creativity is also about the sharing; the act of allowing oneself to be vulnerable by exposing one’s most personal possession (one’s art) to the world. Because if you want to do creative work, you can’t keep it in the four walls of your self. You must put it in the window, at the very least. Sharing it allows you to test the waters of the self-kindness you’ve been nurturing. It helps you to build up your vital truth of being okay with who you are and what you can do, however limited.

Their interconnectedness was what I found most remarkable. It takes the openness of creativity and the diligence of courage to be compassionate. And it takes both gentle compassion and creative expression (for tapping into authenticity) to be truly, effectively courageous. And without the sensitivity of compassion or the daring of courage we cannot reach the apex of our creativity.

None can really be accomplished without the others; at least, not to the level of wholeheartedness with which I wanted to live. So without much ceremony my three little-big practices were born; part of it has been writing down as much as I can, as often as I can, and even going so far as to share my journey. What comes next is anyone’s guess, but I’m convinced that it’s the attention you give your practices that make them successful. That makes it all sound much less frightening, doesn’t it?

We tend to think that the existence of fear (particularly in abundance) means we must have a lack of courage. Despite having heard countless times that courage is always found within, there’s still a governing part of our minds that believes courage has to be acquired. I believed that for most of my life; I believed it a year ago when I decided to finally pursue courage once and for all, and I believed it seven months ago when I really began to put that decision into action. But somewhere along the way I’ve realized two things: one, courage looks different on everyone. Our idea of what courage is, what it looks and sounds like, varies. Widely. And two, that part of me that was misunderstanding courage had a name: that part was fear.

I know fear all too well because it’s loud. It flails its arms helplessly and pleads against the outlandish creativity and its little offspring dreams to stay quiet, stay where it’s safe. It pleads with courage to stay there, too, because as far as fear is concerned you just never can tell when courage will do something foolish and get you into a situation that will cause you untold embarrassment. And once that happens, courage will leave you there, and fear will be the only one to keep you company. Oh, except shame. And regret. And anguish. Its kin.

But courage doesn’t really leave. It just does what fear, in its blind panic, has trained it so well to do: it gets quiet. The work, then, is to call it back out, gently, and to grow valiant in the knowledge that it’s just as strong and just as reliable even if it doesn’t shake your bones with its volume.

Mary Anne Radmacher wrote, “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes it’s the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.'” I’ve written that down, memorized it, and developed it as a sort of mantra, something of a courage-philosophy. But one thing I’ve learned is that it’s a practice. I don’t say those words to myself and think I’ve won or lost my struggle based on their ability to make me instantly more comfortable. Instead, I say those words as a way to acknowledge courage in its solitude, to call it out a little bit each time, and as a reminder to myself to get to know the place where it lives.

My courage may be a spectacularly well-trained quiet courage, and learning that has brought me closer to it.

Yesterday the world celebrated what would have been Audrey Hepburn’s 85th birthday, and as I spent some time thinking about Audrey’s impact on my life it was, as it always is, a bit of a remarkable and moving experience to recall the many different lessons she’s managed to teach me through her legacy. Some lessons she’s still trying to get me to understand, while others I feel are well-traveled ideas that I keep close to my heart.

She taught me to be unexpected, and particularly to never be swayed by others when your personal path leads in a perhaps unpopular direction. She was a celebrity smash, her name working magic on ticket sales, but she stepped away from films in favor of spending more time with her children. Despite having rocked the fashion world with cigarette pants, ballet flats, and a certain Parisian minimalism she explored wild and wonderfully excessive style aesthetics in her later years. The gamine little European girl evolved into a worldly, spirited woman who had no qualms about donning a crimson feather boa or doing an extravagant cat-eye. Being arguably one of the biggest style icons the world has ever seen, she could have let that define her for the rest of her life, but she didn’t. And despite being a coveted muse, a top fashion insider, and a monumentally famous celebrity, she put it all in its place to lend a helping hand for desperate children in the developing world. One thing I’ve always understood from her is that you have to follow where your spirit leads you, wherever that will be and regardless of what it offers you in return.

She taught me to be a citizen of the world. Belgian-born to a British father and a Dutch mother, she spent her childhood in Holland and lived throughout Europe, from England to Rome and eventually her beloved Switzerland. Her UNICEF work took her across Africa, Asia, and Central and South America. She was fluent in six languages. There was, of course, her very French style inclination, and her very Italian devotion to pasta. When her first son was born she said, “I would like Sean to mix with all kinds of people in all countries so that he will learn what the world is all about. He should take his own small part in making the world a better place.” I’ve always loved the openness with which Audrey viewed the world, as a sort of collective humanity. To me she promoted an idea that you should remember yourself as a part of the bigger picture – and to help out, to contribute to the bigger picture as much as you can, and to understand the equality of humanity in that aspect. John Isaac said, “Audrey had no race, no color”. She had a way of appearing universal in part, I think, because she supported everyone; she valued everyone.

She taught me that no matter how much you long for strength in certain areas of your life, your faults and struggles will never be erased. It’s a matter of simple perseverance in the face of challenge. You won’t suddenly be what you want to be – instead, you’ll be something you never would have expected, and somehow you’ll learn to understand and to love that person despite everything. My understanding is that she was shockingly insecure, maybe a bit of a perfectionist for herself, and she had a lifetime of frightening experiences from the war that followed her throughout her life. She was prone even to bouts of self-loathing, and having to handle something like that with the sort of limelight she found thrust on her must have been staggering. Everyone wanted to be Audrey Hepburn, and she considered herself to be not nearly as Audrey Hepburn-ish as the ideal that was based on her. But I think if there’s one bit of wisdom she would always pass down (besides “Be kind”) it would have been that you mustn’t waste time worrying about what doesn’t matter. Of her own insecurities she learned to live with them, as she said, “by adopting a forceful, concentrated drive.” What I saw in her later years was the image of a woman secure in her purpose and determined in her hopefulness; rather than fixing the perceived flaws there was suddenly more of an understanding that this skin she was living in was hers, and however imperfect it might seem to her it was still a body that could lend a hand, that could take action and make a change. In the face of that, a crooked smile doesn’t seem like a very powerful thing at all.