The mechanics behind your courage

Living fully means serving the world. Serving the world means showing a large part of ourselves to the world. That can be scary and we need access to our own source of courage to do the job properly. We feel courage start to flow when we take action but it takes courage to take action. Learn the mechanics of courage so you can take action and move forward at will.

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‘Feel the fear and do it anyway!’ You have probably heard this before. Perhaps you read it somewhere, saw it on a bumper sticker or heard it at a motivational seminar where you came away feeling immortal…for a few minutes until life reminded you that fear is scary.

You find yourself thinking that perhaps tomorrow things will be easier, less scary, more comfortable.  You are hoping that the comfort zone you have lived in your whole life would simply expand to include that fearful thing that once done would make you feel a whole lot better and those around you would look at you with a deep respect for doing the thing they too know to be uncomfortable.

But you know that your comfort zone won’t expand. You know that it will be just as scary to do it tomorrow as it is to do it today. So, what’s needed? What’s the hold up in your mind that stops you from taking action when you know you and everyone around you would be better off if you did?

Courage.

Courage to be imperfect. Courage to allow ourselves to be seen by the world. Courage to make a mistake, learn from it and have another go. Courage to stand for something you have found very useful in your life.

That courage.  

‘But I have been hurt before and if I do this thing now, I am likely to get hurt again’ they say.

The truth is that pain is inevitable. When it comes to our fears, we pay the price for taking action or the price of inaction. And here is the punchline; the price of action weighs ounces compared to the price of inaction which weighs tons!

You have felt this before when you have looked in retrospect and thought to yourself, ‘I should have asked her to dance,’ ‘I should have told him how I felt.’ ‘I should have given up smoking before lying here on this hospital bed,’ ‘I should have gotten help for my emotional eating.’ You know those sorts of thoughts are so heavy. They weigh you down just thinking about them and you can’t seem to move around as freely.

On the other hand when you look back and remember how you felt when you found the courage to lean in for your first kiss, when your kids hugged you back because you told them you loved them and opened your arms even though they were so angry at you, when you stood up to that person who kept talking about you behind your back, when you walked away from the toxic relationship and took control of your future or perhaps you relocated your whole life to another city, state or country to give your family more opportunity to live fully.  You know these things all had their price, but you felt light and joyful because of the action you took rather than missing the moment or staying stuck through inaction.

The idea that we can avoid pain in life by staying in our comfort zone is a lie. A useful question to ask ourselves to save confusion when pain inevitably does arrive in our life is, ‘What pain will help me the most on my journey through life?’ You will quickly see from the scenarios above that when we deliberately choose to act even when it feels uncomfortable, we inevitably come out the other side better off.

Jeff Olsen, author of ‘The Slight Edge’ summed it up beautifully when he said, ‘What’s comfortable early becomes uncomfortable later. What’s uncomfortable early becomes comfortable later.’ In any case we will experience discomfort at some point regardless of how comfortable we make our comfort zone or how high we build the proverbial walls around our sensitive soul. The question is then do we want to pay the price in advance and pay it in ounces? Or do we want to kid ourselves into thinking that delaying our action (choosing inaction) will somehow reduce the price payable and end up costing us a lot after the event? When we make friends with Olsen’s self-evident truth and look a little bit further down the road before avoiding discomfort, our choices become a lot simpler, assuming of course that it is indeed of interest to live a life with the least amount of pain as possible. If you want more pain then delay away!

If you want to learn how to access your own source of courage then listen to how Brene Brown, author of ‘Daring Greatly,’ summed up beautifully and succinctly how we can both demonstrate and access our own source of courage when she writes, ‘Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen’. Going deeper into this concept it, courage really is about knowing that we are worthy! Worthy to live a full life. Worthy to have a beautiful relationship with our partner and our kids. Worthy to contribute our ideas to the team, workplace, community and country. Worthy to receive help from others. Worthy to love and be loved. Worthy to be seen by the world.

Brown goes on to say that ‘You can’t get to courage without walking through vulnerability.’ This is kind of like the chicken and egg scenario. We can’t get to courage without being vulnerable, but it takes courage to be vulnerable. This brings us back to the first line of this blog, feel the fear and do it anyway. You see it’s in the act of doing that we unlock the quality that we desire in the first place. But we can’t wait around for courage to show up before we start to show the world who we are and what we can offer it just like we can’t wait for motivation all the time before we start our exercise. We need to take those first few steps of our morning run before the feeling of completing the run kicks in and takes us the rest of the way.

The key to the act of doing whatever it is in your life that you are aware enough to know makes you either a little uncomfortable or a lot is a sense of confidence within yourself that things will work out ok. It’s a feeling deep within us that the world and the people in it are generally good. That God is not a tormentor and the universe is not against you. When this confidence seems to be lacking and we are rigid in our movements forward in life we can always find guidance in nature. What would your response be to the question; how tall does a tree grow? You may be tempted to respond with a question of your own like, ‘What type of tree?’ ‘How well looked after is it?’ and other similar questions. But is it possible to answer in one simple sentence that makes all previous questions irrelevant? Yes, it is and in hindsight the answer is obvious and self-evident. Trees grow as tall as they possibly can.

Applying this to our own lives to help access our self-confidence we can answer questions like ‘How many friends should we have?’ ‘How much should I love my kids and how much time should I spend with them?’ ‘How much effort should I put into my work?’ ‘How much money should I earn?’ ‘How fit should I be?’ in very simple ways;

Have as many friends as you possibly can, love your kids and spend as much time with them as you possibly can, put as much effort and earn as much money as you possibly can into and from your work and be as fit as you possibly can.

Life doesn’t have to be complex. Look at nature, remember you are a natural part of it.

You belong.

You are worthy.

You take action and your courage will take you the rest of the way.

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Photo by Eddi Aguirre on Unsplash