Forget Fearlessness, Courage Is Key

In our culture, fearlessness and bravery are greatly lauded, even revered.

The odd thing about fearlessness though, is that it doesn’t exist. To be fearless is to have no fears, and it’s a fact that everyone alive has at least one fear.

Bravery is a quality you’re more likely to see in a person from time to time. To be brave means to face frightening circumstances without feeling fear. For example, if someone found a gigantic hornet in their kitchen and proceeded to trap it inside a cup before releasing it outdoors without being afraid to do so, that person demonstrated bravery. Bravery exists, but it’s quite rare.

So, if you are not fearless and a lot of the time you don’t feel brave, do NOT feel bad about yourself! You don’t need to be brave and you actually can’t be fully fearless, but you CAN be courageous. You can even learn how to be courageous if you haven’t been in the past.

Unlike fearlessness or bravery, courage is confronting something that frightens you even though you feel very afraid throughout the experience. While the person who extracts a hornet without fear is acting bravely, a person who extracts a hornet despite her horrible fear is acting courageously.

Here are two effective tips to help you live courageously:

1. Do one thing every day that scares you!
   Courage is a muscle, so the more we exercise it, the stronger it gets. If you do one thing every day that scares you, as was originally advised by Eleanor Roosevelt, confronting your fears will become something you’re easily (even excitedly) willing to do.
2. Get out of a self-centered perspective
   When standing up to a fear, you’ll find that making it about someone or something other than yourself makes taking action a lot easier and less scary. For example, sixty-five-year-old Marianne G. was terrified of flying for as long as she could remember. She lived in New York, and her new grandchildren lived in Los Angeles, so the time came when she would have to choose: get on an airplane or never see her daughter and grandchildren. The decision was easy, but getting on the airplane was NOT. Instead of sitting through the flight gripped by fear, she shifted her attention to the reason she was on the plane, the people who she was doing this for. When she stopped focusing on herself and her experience, her fears went away. When the reason you’re doing something is bigger than your fear, you’ll officially have the courage to tackle it!

Fear is one of the most natural instincts we have–it helped us survive, after all! So, don’t be resentful of your fears when they come up, and don’t despair if you can’t summon the bravery. Try working with these two tips, and over time you’ll develop all the courage you need.