Courage is a Practice

When people face something big and scary, they’ll often say “I need to muster up the courage to tackle that.”

Kind of like courage is something that’s scattered around the place in small bits, and they just need to gather up all of those small bits and create a big courage ball. Then they’ll be OK, and they can lean into the big thing and do what it takes.

Kind of like courage is something you need to draw on only occasionally. Like this:

The rest of the time you just cruise.

You wish. Life doesn’t work like that.

What if you viewed courage as a daily practice? Like going to the gym? Where you focus on building up your courage muscles so you can be ready to use them anytime something scary comes across your radar. Like this:

Daily living offers us heaps of opportunities to be courageous:

• Saying ‘no’ when you usually would say ‘yes’ (and vice-versa)
• Letting go of the need to control things so tightly
• Approaching the person that makes you nervous
• Speaking up and speaking out
• Making a decision even when you don’t have all the information
• Letting someone know bad news
• Challenging your story about what you believe life is all about

When these types of challenges are thrown at us, we often let them go through to the keeper. If we do take them up, they can feel like hard work, and we shake in our boots. All because we haven’t developed our courage muscles enough.

Develop your courage muscles through daily practice, and when the big gnarly ones come along, you’ll be ready. The big decisions won’t feel so big anymore.

Eleanor Roosevelt said, “do one thing every day that scares you.” She was on about what I’m on about.

So, what will it be today?

For more on building courage, check out a couple of my other posts:

• Do You Need Confidence or Courage?
• The Source of Courage

Illustration by Elizabeth Scott

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