Recently, we gave some workshops on resilience and courage. I’m here to tell you that courage is where it’s at. Stuff resilience! Go for courage! Courage is the new resilience. The way science talks about resilience it makes you think that you either have it or you don’t (not true) and that we understand resilience (we don’t). You can’t be taught resilience but you can be taught how to be courageous.

It’s time to apply courage to your life. Learning and practicing courage is a truckload of work and there is no quick fix. It will take effort; but this effort will be worthwhile and it will get easier.

Imagine you’re part of a study: you lie down in a functional MRI machine which looks at blood flow inside your brain. You’re staring at a live snake on a movable trolley not too far away. The snake moves; it eyes you off; you eye the snake off. Your task is to force yourself to do what you fear: move it closer and closer to your head. You can push the snake away anytime you want, no hard feelings, experiment over, but you’re asked to be determined.

Courage means ‘of the heart’. It is not something you are born with, it is something you learn and practice. Unfortunately, many people think courage means not feeling fear even in the face of danger. Then the rest of us feel judged and defeated because no-one can do this.

Whenever we speak, we share our thoughts and feelings as well as raw information. Through feelings underneath the words, we literally give others a piece of our mind. Written words are very different to spoken words. Written words are next to lifeless on a page, but when someone speaks to us, there’s always emotion and intent; we feel their ‘feelings underneath,’ we feel their presence. There’s always a small possibility of aggression when two humans meet, so the impact of spoken words can immediately be comforting or confronting. Spoken words are loaded not only with information as in a text-book, but also with the intentions, desires and emotions of a living mind. These convey acceptance and goodwill, or rejection and ill-will. (And you thought “hello” just meant “hello”.)

We humans are sly, and can use this to our advantage. Through the social brain, we transmit ‘feelings underneath’ which can be loaded with subliminal messages: I like you, you disgust me, I want to have sex with you, you’re being unfair, that hurt, I’m bored with you, and more. These messages can be felt by others but can be denied by us because we didn’t use words. This saves our reputation but hides our real intentions.

In our current cultural climate, there’s a conflict between people who value free speech and people who value political correctness to avoid “micro-aggressions”. Laws can be passed which protect one over the other. It’s a balance. Our ideal is to preserve free speech while minimizing micro-aggressions.

Do the culture wars have you walking on egg-shells? Does political correctness leave you too anxious to talk to anyone? Have you ever had a situation where you thought you were being helpful but ended up offending someone? Has anyone ever taken offence at your jokes? But I didn’t intend to insult you! You took it the wrong way! I didn’t mean it!

Not all “friendships” are good friendships. Many involve networking, social climbing, mutual ego-stroking, or just plain circumstance. If you can take these away, what is left, may be genuine friendship. A real friend always wants the best for you.