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Three Tricky Ways to Cultivate Courage
The "If X, Then Y” plan
- IF my team grumbles or pushes-back because I’m not working on the weekends anymore,
- THEN I will forward them Leslie Perlow’s Harvard Business Review article about how ‘Predictable Time Off’ improves both work quality
- AND quality of life, even in client-oriented businesses.
Fear is the thing that in truth makes actions hard, not the action that we think we are afraid of.
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Key Ideas
Make fear your friend
Your fears will never completely disappear, and you will never win the battle against them.
When you can finally accept fears and invite them in, it makes courage more accessible.
Courage as a mindful response to fear
Fears can propel us to new heights if we choose to respond to them mindfully instead of reacting to them blindly.
Doing this allows us to become bigger than our fears and act thoughtfully despite them.
Commit to action
The first step is not actually taking action, it’s setting the intention to act.
Announce that you are committed to taking action. Own it, and have others hold you accountable and inviting them to lift you in support.
Type T individuals
Nature definitely plays a role in determining who has courage. Research in neuroscience shows that some people have a thrill-seeking or “Type T” personality.
But even if some of us have a greater capacity for risk-taking (genetically speaking), it doesn’t mean that they will necessarily display more courage.
Courage: The non-biological factors
Non-biological aspect such as our psychological makeup, values, and beliefs, along with conditioning by early role models, can compel us to act at risk to ourselves in the interest of protecting other people.
From individual to context
Research links our capacity to act courageously (or the opposite) to measurable and controllable personal traits such as self-efficacy, self-esteem, the presence of anxiety, and the openness to experience. All these characteristics can be developed and shaped with practice and help.
Of course, the environment and context in which you are operating will also have a big influence.
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Key Ideas
Your lack of courage may cost you
Our brains are wired to:
- Discount the cost of inaction,
- Overestimate the probability of things going wrong and
- Underestimate ourselves.
However, researchers have found that bravery is a skill, and like all skills it can be learned, strengthened and mastered with repeated practice.
Three big obstacles
... help people get unstuck when building their bravery:
- Appreciating why stepping outside their comfort zone is so important to begin with (i.e. No clear or compelling why).
- Setting the intention to consciously and consistently practice acts of courage.
- Knowing which acts of courage to start with – after all, being brave isn’t always predictable or straight forward.
Bravery habits
- Speaking Up: Every act of courage is about laying something you value on the line for something you value even more. Speaking bravely takes no less.
- Making Big Requests: If you don’t ask, the answer will always be no.
- Confronting Long Held Fears: Most people suffer more from their imagination than they ever do reality.