About Courage Blog Post AC.007 Are you courageous Rectangle.jpg

Summary

We all have an idea of what takes courage and what doesn’t take courage and what someone who is courageous looks like. These pre-conceptions could be destroying your own self-image and your capacity to embrace who you are and what you are truly capable of.

Many people I have spoken to over the years believe that they aren’t courageous. I don’t think that it is true at all. I believe that everyone is courageous, and I believe that everything we do takes courage. I know that may sound like a big statement, but I strongly believe it. Every decision you make and every action you take all takes an amount of courage. We don’t attribute courage to many things in our lives because we do them easily.

We all do things every day without giving much thought to them, that for someone else would take a lot of courage. It all comes down to comfort zones.

You see, we see courage as this thing that we either have or we don’t have. This is because we are only faced with our own levels of courage when we are facing something that is scary for us.

For me, courage is one of the greatest assets that you can foster and build in your life.

This week we’re talking about courage. Understanding courage can help you to redefine who you are and expand what you are capable of. I’m going to discuss what courage is, why it’s important and how we can build more courage in our day-to-day lives.

END SUMMARY

Full Transcript

We all have an idea of what takes courage and what doesn’t take courage and what someone who is courageous looks like. Today I am going to take a deeper look at courage and why these pre-conceptions could be destroying your self-image and your capacity to embrace who you are and what you are truly capable of.

INTRO MUSIC

Many people I have spoken to over the years believe that they aren’t courageous. I don’t think that it is true at all. I believe that everyone is courageous, and I believe that everything we do takes a degree of courage. I know that may sound like a big statement, but I strongly believe it. Every decision you make and every action you take calls for an amount of courage. We don’t attribute courage to many things in our lives because we do them easily. If we find them easy, then it doesn’t take courage to do them. Right?

In my life I have often looked across at other people and thought of them as courageous. They did something that would have taken me an extremely huge amount of courage.

In that same moment I’ve looked at myself and not believed that I am courageous because I didn’t feel I could do what they are doing. But I have had other experiences in my life that have revealed to me the truth about courage and the fact that it is a deeply personal thing.

We all do things every day without giving them much thought, but for someone else doing those same things would take a lot of courage. It all comes down to comfort zones.

Once at a conference I was surprised to receive an award. I stood up from my chair and in the time that it took me to get to the stage I thought of a few things to say on accepting the speech. After giving the speech and receiving the award I walked back to my seat at my table. My friend turned to me and asked: “Did you prepare that speech?” I was taken aback. I told him that I had definitely not prepared it, and that I had come up with what I had said in the time it took me to get to the stage. He turned to me and said: “There is no way I could have done that. I would have had to practice and rehearse it before I felt comfortable enough to get up in front of all of these people to do what you just did.”

This taught me a valuable lesson, because I didn’t even think about it. I just got up, thought of a few things to say that might resonate with the group and did it. It didn’t even occur to me that it took any courage because for me it didn’t take much. It was well within my comfort zone. Whereas my friend saw it as an immensely courageous act because for him it was way outside his comfort zone and it would have taken him a lot of courage.

This is an important lesson, I think, for everyone to understand: We all take for granted what we do naturally. You see, I don’t think that many, if any tasks, in life categorically take a lot of courage or take very little courage. It is just whether it takes you a lot or a little courage.

That’s the beautiful thing about courage. There is no courage scale. No person can compare themselves to another person when it comes to what takes courage.

I think that there is a general consensus on certain things like swimming with Great White Sharks or walking across a wire that has a fifty-meter fall. This would take most of us a lot of courage because it is outside all of our comfort zones. So, as a group we agree that those things take a lot of courage because doing either of those things frightens us. But there are many things in everyday life that many of us do all the time that we don’t acknowledge as taking any courage at all.

You see, we see courage as this thing that we either have or we don’t have. This is because we are only faced with our own levels of courage when we are facing something that is scary for us. We don’t recognise the many things that we do every day that would require a lot of courage to do from another person.

For example, I believe that being in a relationship takes an enormous amount of courage. Having someone that close to you, seeing all of your wrinkles and foibles, being that vulnerable in front of another human being. Many of us are either in a long-term relationship, or have been in a long-term relationship, and I am sure that you can all agree that sometimes it is incredibly hard. There have been times where you felt so raw and exposed and vulnerable, and there was your wife, husband or partner are seeing it all from a front-row seat.

And yet, most of us who are currently in a relationship wouldn’t attribute us being in a relationship as being courageous.

So, does that mean that the single people in the group are NOT courageous? Certainly not! Being single often means that you don’t have necessarily much support. You are on your own and having to depend almost entirely, if not entirely on yourself. You have to face life’s ups and downs on your own and then there is the solitude. This also takes an enormous amount of courage.

And yet, the single people out there wouldn’t attribute being single in the world as being courageous.

For someone who is single, being in a relationship might seem incredibly courageous and for the people who are in a long-term relationship being single might seem equally courageous. Again, courage is a deeply personal thing and is tightly related to our comfort zones.

As many of you know, the word courage comes from the Latin word ‘Cor’ which translates to ‘heart’. Over many years the definition of courage has developed into the ability to do something that frightens you, or strength in the face of pain or grief. And so, courage is not the absence of fear, but rather, doing something difficult for you in spite of feeling fearful.

When we talk about courage it often conjures up images of knights in armour riding off into the sunset to fight a dragon. The knight receives so much praise and adoration for his conquests. I’m not saying that going off to fight dragons doesn’t take courage. It takes a lot of courage. But what I am saying is that it also takes a lot of courage to come home at night, to stop fighting, to sit down and face ourselves, face the state of our relationships, our own thoughts, the day-to-day challenges of living life. Sometimes riding off into the sunset to fight is easy and takes less courage than staying home and facing ourselves, our relationships, and the lives we have created.

I believe that courage is central to living life true to ourselves, growing as human beings, and facing the challenges that life throws at us. What I want for all of us is not to compare ourselves to other people and measure ourselves as human beings against what we think is ‘really’ courageous. For my friend at the conference, if he had to speak in front of a room full of people, that would have been incredible courageous for him. He does not need to compare himself to me. As I have said before, courage is a deeply personal thing. It is an internal accomplishment. My comfort zone does not need to be your comfort zone, and your comfort zone doesn’t need to be mine. This is where we can learn from one another, but this is also a place where we can appreciate each other’s accomplishments, irrespective of whether we have done it many times before or find the task easy. By simply being able to acknowledge that it was courageous of our friend, or spouse, partner, colleague or child. By doing this we are a part of building people up and supporting each other to become more and more courageous in our everyday lives.

When we can celebrate our own moments of courage is when we can begin to form a clear understanding of just how courageous we are and how often we take leaps in our lives that grow us and develop us as human beings. And this can only be a good thing.

If you liked this video then please like it and share it with your friends and family.

As always, live courageously.