Hello and welcome to this lesson on courage.
This lesson is going to be about becoming the more brave version of you.
Any lesson about courage is going to turn out to largely be about fear really,
About addressing fear and how we can do that.
So I just want to state the learning objectives for this lesson and those are that we want to firstly we want to understand courage as a skill rooted in identity and practice rather than being just an innate trait.
This is a skill we can develop and I also really want to talk about courage in terms of identity in the sense that I'm a big fan of the idea of identity based change.
So the idea is as you become more courageous or perform small courageous acts you begin to see yourself as a more courageous person and the more courageous you see yourself the easier it is to be courageous because you're of course I do the brave thing because I'm a brave person.
I have proven that to myself a number of times and you get this kind of upward spiral of courageous action affirming the idea that you're more a courageous person and the more you see yourself as a courageous person the more willing you are to take courageous action.
I do love a nice upward spiral.
The other kind of learning objective I guess we'll frame in terms of fear really it's this reframing of fear as a natural manageable response and developing strategies to it despite it.
So I've stated the objectives for this lesson.
Before we kind of get into my ideas about fear and courage and how to go about developing courage I want to take some time here for reflection.
What do you currently think about courage?
Do you see yourself as brave and courageous person?
What does that mean and look like?
Ask yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 how brave of a person do I think I am currently?
And now for a slightly more targeted reflection.
See if you can bring to mind a time in the past where you felt fear but acted anyway.
It may take a moment but I believe everyone can recall at least a single time where they felt some degree of fear and persevered through it.
It doesn't matter if it was not a big impressive external thing.
It just has to be a time where you felt some degree of fear and you did the thing anyway.
And when you've brought to mind an occasion like that,
Feel into it.
Think back to that time and think about what motivated you to act.
How did you feel afterward and what did that experience teach you about yourself?
Fantastic.
So now we've had a little bit of time to reflect on our current ideas and concepts regarding courage and fear.
I will now lay out some of my ideas.
Of course they are just my ideas,
Not the models.
Please,
As with anything,
Take what is useful to you and discard the rest.
What is courage?
Courage is not the absence of fear.
It's acting despite it.
One of my favorite quotes regarding courage actually comes from Game of Thrones.
I don't know if you guys are familiar with Game of Thrones.
It doesn't matter if you are for the purposes of this quote.
There's a character called Bran and he asks his father,
Who's Eddard Stark,
He's a respectable northern lord or whatever.
He says,
How can a man be brave when he feels afraid?
To which his father replies,
Son,
That is the only time a man can be brave.
It's good and it's kind of obvious.
It's not a rocket science what I'm telling you here,
But it's cool to think in those terms.
It is in fact only possible to be courageous when fear is present.
If you're not afraid,
It's not really courage,
It's just something you're confident in doing.
This points to the idea that courage is only really possible in the presence of fear and it sort of necessitates a state of some discomfort really.
So what courage really is,
It's that ability to act in spite of the experience of fear.
The important part of this is to not confuse courage with fearlessness.
If someone was in fact entirely fearless,
Then that would be probably pretty cool for them,
But it would not in fact be an example of courage.
Another thing I want to get out of the way earlier in this discussion is that the kind of differences between fear and anxiety and a lot of what we want to deal with when we're dealing with courage is actually dealing more with anxiety than with fear.
The way I like to think about it is this idea of fear being mostly rational and anxiety being largely irrational.
In the sense of fear is situational and usually I would say fear is to do with an immediate real danger.
So if I walk down the road and I turn the corner and for some reason there's a bear,
I would feel afraid and that would be an entirely accurate fear response where I should definitely listen to you and peg it in the other way or whatever the appropriate action would be.
But a lot of the time we're afraid of things and it's not necessarily rational or appropriate to be afraid and that's more what I would call anxiety.
It's worrying about things that may happen or things that could go wrong.
Anxiety tends to be what-ifs.
It tends to be what if this happened or what if that happened or what if everyone hates me or what if I give this talk and thoroughly embarrass myself and that kind of thing.
The key point I want to make here is there are sometimes occasions where fear is the appropriate response.
I'm walking down a dark road at night,
I realize there's two blokes behind me about 20 paces,
There's one guy ahead,
I think hang on a sec this could be bad.
And that's you know that leads on to something else I wanted to say right there's this biological perspective.
Your body is designed to keep you alive,
Not necessarily to help you flourish or pursue your dreams or become the highest version of yourself right?
The survival mechanism often conflicts with loftier goals of personal growth and self-actualization.
But there's another thing here that's quite potentially juicy or useful whereby in some sense fear is your body trying to keep you alive.
Like it's trying to help you,
It might not always do so but you can,
It's not necessarily entirely accurate,
But you can if you choose to also view emotions as in some sense kind of a biological suggestion right?
So it's trying to keep you safe,
That's the positive.
It's not a very nice experience but it's trying to keep you safe from danger.
And one thing I think about sometimes is this idea you can conceptualize fear as being kind of like a sort of well-meaning and loyal overly anxious dog right?
So you have this idea of it being a dog and this dog wants to protect you but it often kind of overreacts.
It's a dog but it's kind of a scaredy cat.
And you think about this,
What would happen right?
Actually I have this lived experience of being in the jungle a number of times in my life and you'd have these places I was staying in quite far out areas,
They'd have these jungle dogs and part of the purpose of the dog was to bark and make a lot of noise and keep away any real predators in the form mostly of kind of large cats that aren't interested in dealing with a pack of jungle dogs.
But this idea is right,
The dog starts barking.
Now there may well be some large cat out there and the dog is just trying to keep you safe.
Oh there's a threat you know that's that's kind of what fear is oh this this could be a danger we're aware of this thing.
Oh bollocks right okay.
So you're like you know kind of good dog okay thanks for telling me this about this danger.
You can now settle down.
The problem with the dog is that it's kind of an anxious dog.
Any kind of any shadow moving out there,
Any stepping on a twig,
He gets a bit overly excitable and you know you as the owner of the dog in other words or you could be in our case the kind of witnessing mind can observe this and you know say oh the dog's just doing its job.
But when the dog's stressing out over nothing you say you know good dog you alert me to this danger.
Now settle down.
Thank you for making me aware of this.
Now please stop barking.
So probably summarise what I talked about here.
Let's just have this idea of courage as being not the absence of fear but our capacity to act even when we're afraid.
We also briefly touched upon there's a difference between fear and anxiety and the fact that fear is actually an appropriate response in certain situations where there's a real and immediate danger to your health and well-being.
But we also have this idea of fear in some sense trying to keep you safe.
Kind of what it's there for.
And I'd like my personal analogy of being a slightly overly anxious dog.
It wants to keep you safe.
It's kind of doing its job but can't let the dog just sit there and bark all day at imagined dangers.
So you've got to say good dog now settle down.
Oh fear thank you.
Please be quiet now.
It's a kind of acknowledge and accept.
Oh the fear is there.
That's okay.
Good dog.
And then proceed to act as you would anyway or do what you're trying to do.
There's something else there I want to touch on similar to this kind of this idea of fear in some ways being a useful thing.
It also sometimes shows up at a moment when you are about to do something great and meaningful.
Like if you're let's say I want to talk about this example more later but let's say you had to give a talk or presentation and you feel you know a certain degree of fear.
Public speaking is a big major fear.
It's also a moment where you're like oh this is definitely a meaningful thing.
Like I care about this.
This is you know fear often shows up when you're about to do something actually really quite great.
This is an opportunity for greatness is when fear will often rear its head.
So it's interesting trying to reframe it in that context as well.
But let's move on.
One of the interesting things about fear is in characters who very well in a quote actually from Dune which is a series I didn't actually I didn't read the books but I watched the movie recently.
My father's behest.
And one of the good quotes about it from it is this repeated mantra of at least one of the characters says I must not fear.
Fear is the mind killer.
Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.
And what this is speaking about is the capacity of fear to shut down your rational mind and your thinking capacity.
Because in your fight-and-flight response to actual dangers what happens is God is directed towards those organs necessary to help you run away really fast right.
You get adrenaline.
In a certain sense your system shuts down in reverse to instinct so you can't mess it up because you need to run away from that bear.
Which is a useful response if there actually is a bear.
Although the bear's probably faster than you but leaving that aside.
It's not a useful response when you have to give a talk or something because your rational mind shuts down.
You're ready to run a mile and you need to deliver a talk which requires a certain amount of your rational mind and thinking capacity.
So this idea of fear this is why fear is is quite so insidious and dangerous because it tends to shut you down if you give in to it if you focus on it if you let it expand it does cause you to shut down.
Which is why it's difficult to deal with some of the time.
And separate to that this idea of fear right?
Fear kills dreams ambitions and the ability to live fully.
And one truth about life is that it's far more common to regret to regret not taking courageous action than it is to regret taking courageous action.
You don't you tend to regret the things you didn't do more than the things you did.
Not to say you can't also regret some of the things you did.
But if there were courageous things you did that's by and large on balance better than passivity and inaction.
So we've got a little bit rambly there.
Let's bring it back into what we actually do about this.
How do we cultivate this capacity to be courageous and to act in spite of the felt experience of fear.
And there are two main methods that I would advocate or it's one kind of main method and the other.
.
.
I guess it's also a method.
So method one exposure in practice as it sounds it's largely yeah it's exposure in practice.
So the principle is that courage can be grown like a muscle through repeated practice and that small acts of bravery build a self-concept of a courageous person.
So yeah it's exposure therapy.
You want to do something that you're a little bit afraid of that evokes some portion of fear.
Like I can handle it,
I can manage it but I'm uncomfortable.
I'm a bit afraid of this.
I'm a little bit afraid of X Y Z thing.
So you want to do something that makes you a little uncomfortable and then over time gradually take on greater challenges as you build your courage muscle right.
And this this also builds evidence for yourself to your mind that you can handle fear.
Every time you succeed at this it rewrites your self image as a brave individual.
So you know what I recommend doing is writing down some things that you're kind of slightly afraid of.
Some that you're moderately afraid of and a few things that you're terrified of.
For me that would be things like skydiving or dancing in public sober.
It's just me.
So method one it's very it's very obvious and straightforward it's just not easy which is just working your way through things that you're scared of from smaller to greater.
The other thing with this is obviously don't do anything that's going to put you in actual danger.
But yeah pushing out that comfort zone a bit at a time is developing that skill of doing exactly that and it's an extremely important skill.
So the other thing that you can do method two apart from just practice overcoming fear is realizing what's more important to you than the fear.
Anchoring to a greater purpose.
In other words I think I'm also good as a good quote I wanted to say in relation to this which isn't quite it's not perfect but it captures the main idea and the principle is that courage is easier when it's motivated by something bigger than fear.
So there's fear there but there's something more important to me than the fear.
You have to adhere to your values rather than your emotions in that moment at least when dealing with fear here.
The quote I want to share with you regarding this I can't remember where it came from but the quote is something like the good soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him but because he loves what is behind him.
There's different examples we can get.
I think we can get some different practical examples of how to apply some of this stuff in a second.
But it's this idea of okay there's the transient personal experience I'm having right now of fear.
It's not a nice feeling.
I'm not enjoying it.
You quite literally want to run away from wherever the thing is as well as run away from this unpleasant feeling that is fear.
But there's something I'm trying to achieve here.
There's something I want or there's something in this present moment that is actually more important to me such that I will willingly endure this fear and move through it rather than run away.
I'm just going to ground this in some examples.
I think the best way of describing this is just examples.
I'm sure you get it but let's make it concrete and real.
I'm just going to run through some examples.
Example one is very male centric.
It's a common experience that as a young single man you'll see a beautiful woman and you'll want to go and say hi because you'd like to have a wonderful romantic partner.
The problem is that for whatever reason,
There's also good reasons for this,
Approaching beautiful women can evoke quite a lot of fear in men.
Partly because you're being judged by nature herself.
The point is it's a scary potential experience.
I will share some less male centric examples following this by the way.
The point is in that moment you have two choices.
Do I go up and introduce myself to this potential romantic partner of whom I am interested in to some degree or would like to know more about or do I not?
Do I take the inactive approach?
Passive.
Do I sit there and think about it and rationalize how I shouldn't impose myself and lots of other good reasons or she probably has a boyfriend or what?
You sit there and get into that whole mire.
Now in the context of the two methods we've come up with,
Method one in the terms of exposure therapy would be well maybe you can do little things to conquer this particular fear.
You can just start by asking attractive potential romantic partners that you encounter just at the time and then lead them to it.
Or you can work up two more direct ways of introducing yourself and starting conversations and perhaps to begin with you just want a brief conversation and then as you progress you can entertain a long conversation and ask them for their number or social media or whatever it is right?
That's the method one exposure therapy.
You're just gonna have to,
A little bit at a time,
Build up that courage muscle.
The other one is the kind of method two approach is well I'm sat here and I'm feeling I'm feeling afraid.
I'm feeling this awful paralyzing fear that's trying to prevent me from going up and saying hi to this potential romantic partner.
Now what's more important to me,
Avoiding a potentially uncomfortable experience,
Is that more or less important than me trying to earnestly find a wonderful romantic partner with whom to build a meaningful relationship and possibly a life together with right?
It's like well that other thing,
That second one,
That actually now that I think about it is quite important to me.
I kind of yeah that that goal seems important and you have to have your mind on that goal because it's true the actual experience of going up and saying hello and potentially embarrassing yourself can be a very scary thing but the solution of just avoiding that experience and potentially missing out on meeting wonderful people is possibly worse than enduring a certain degree of discomfort.
So that's one example,
It was quite a male-centric example so I'll try and move on to a couple more right?
Next one I want to go for is boundary setting because people find this hard quite often and so you might have a fear of conflict right?
You might find yourself in a social situation where you feel like you've been disrespected or mistreated in some way.
A boundary has been crossed and you weren't okay with it and it's in some way incumbent upon you and your own self-respect to let this person know or express the fact that you don't accept being treated in this way or that boundaries been crossed and actually that was unacceptable to you.
But it would be easier again to drift towards inaction and you can justify any kind of way oh you don't want to cause conflict or start an argument or disrupt what might be a pleasant social occasion and you can justify and rationalize all kinds of excuses and they could be very good and legitimate ones but some part of it is you're just afraid of conflict you might there might arise from you trying to assert and maintain healthy boundary.
Again so method one is just getting better over time at expressing healthy boundaries people when you feel that you're slightly mistreated to some degree.
So you can address small conflicts and work your way up to more confronting situations right?
Method two is it more important to me that I am someone who maintains healthy boundaries with others or that I avoid this transient feeling of fear and conflict and if you want to avoid the fear and the conflict that's fine you can go ahead but it comes at a cost right?
You become more constricted you know that you didn't stand up for yourself you know that in that moment you submitted to fear and fail to be courageous and the cost as well is that you don't get to maintain healthy boundaries which are quite important for individual well-being as opposed to you spark some conflict you definitely have to deal with a certain degree of discomfort but you did the courageous thing we're true to who you are you maintain healthy boundaries and that outcome is I think worth the transient discomfort.
I'm sorry if I'm banging on about this but I really want to hammer this home we'll go for one more example.
Public speaking we touched on it earlier for some reason fear of public speaking is like what is that probably the biggest fear apparently often gets raised in terms of severity as being even more fear-inducing than the fear of dying so people are literally more afraid to speak publicly than to actually die which is crazy but yeah it's a common fear and I think it's rooted in this idea that evolutionary if you spoke up and the tribe didn't like what you said you were exiled you actually would be toast right but it's largely irrational people don't like what you say they're very unlikely to actually harm you in any meaningful way but the point is it's a commonly scary thing but there are all kinds of very valuable rewards and benefits to public public speaking and doing it well whether that's a sort of presentation or a talk that you're giving either like put in a professional context to advance yourself towards professional success or even just socially like telling a story to a group of people or whatever it is right so the idea really do you want to be someone who is capable of speaking to a group and all the rewards and benefits that come with that and the success that can be attained by doing so or do you want to give into the fear back out of doing it or constrict yourself you know do you do you want all the benefits that come from being able to do that or would you rather be comfortable and safe and play it small and give in to fear this is a choice it's just only a choice for anyone who engages in that kind of thing again we've kind of jumped into method two here right the idea of what's more important to me the transient experience of fear or the thing I'm trying to achieve method one obviously would be working your way up right so I'm gonna tell a story to a group of friends and then I'm gonna work my way up to maybe I'll tell a tell a story or give a short talk on something to a slightly larger group of friends or maybe a speech all the way up to giving a talk to a lot of people or a speech at a wedding or whatever it is right you can there's levels to that kind of thing and you can work your way up right so this is I've done a warble on for too long but one thing I would recommend is creating a kind of personal courage identity statement the idea is you want to create a statement which encapsulates the sort of vision of yourself as a more courageous version of yourself and you want to refer to this and I would suggest actually reading it to yourself something like 21 days in a row self-program yourself as a courageous person example of them how would begin be something like I am someone who takes action in alignment with my values even when it feels comfortable I'd go further I'd write a good kind of paragraph describing how you want to be in the world as a courageous person I should one of my recommendations feel free to not do that but I would recommend it the key takeaways that I'd like to impart from this talk is that courage means acting despite fear not its absence which is very obvious when you think about it but it's not always obvious in the moment takeaway to fear is natural but it's often exaggerated it's often bigger in your mind than reality the trick in a certain sense is to accept and acknowledge it without letting it dictate your actions number three you want to build courage through repeated practice and anchoring your actions to your greater purposes to your objectives to what's more important than the fear so take little steps at a time build your way up and just remember what is more important to you than the fear last key takeaway is the mind killer but it can also be a dream killer if you let it dominate your decisions the reality is that every time you let courage win you expand in some way to become a more full version of yourself unlock a slightly greater portion of who you really are and every time the fear wins you become a little bit more constricted and bear in mind it's probably more important the direction you're going than where you are now so see what you can do to consciously orientate yourself towards a greater degree of courage and every little step you take will build momentum in that direction you can start with things that seem even really really small and build your way up and before you know it you've become rather courageous and I think life's more enjoyable when you can embody a greater degree of bravery and courage thanks for listening I may have missed some things yeah anything you want to add to this that you feel I might have missed any key takeaways that you have from this talk or things you disagree with feel free to put them in the review and yeah with all that said have a wonderful rest of your day and good luck on your journey to becoming the bravest and most courageous version of who you are
