How to have courage
It’s time to apply courage to your life. Know what courage is, and know how it works in your brain. 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.
Courage is the new Resilience
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. We understand courage a whole lot more and it’s something you can choose every day.
Resilience is the result of choosing courage.
Choosing courage
Who has more courage, lions and crocodiles or mice and rabbits? Lions and crocodiles are fearless and close to invincible. They don’t need courage. Mice and rabbits are vulnerable. They need courage just to step outside and take a breath. As a human, you don’t need a lion’s strength to be courageous, just the rabbit’s skills. Here’s how it works.
With a good idea, you need to choose courage to speak to others about it.
In wanting to get to know someone, choose courage to speak to them.
If you want to win, you need to choose the courage to risk losing.
Each time you choose courage, it gets easier to choose the next time. It’s a skill you can learn and practice. Last post, you learnt how it works in the brain, now here’s some techniques to get it happening in your life.
Choose courage according to brain mechanisms
To help your orbito-frontal cortex (OFC) choose courage and put it into action, you need listen to your frontal lobes, and strengthen your anterior cingulate gyrus (ACG) and right temporal pole (rTP) to keep your amygdala chill:
OFC: Choose courage to put it into action
Frontal Lobes: Listen to your values, goals, beliefs and desires
ACG and rTP: do it for the good of others, and keep good relationships
Amygdala: Fear signals keep you alive but can also stop you doing what you want. Feel the fear, but choose courage to get what you want anyway.
ORBITO-FRONTAL CORTEX (OFC): be aware of the choices you are making. Understand that you are making a choice and understand your options. Hear your thoughts of what you want, value, believe and desire (from your frontal lobes), and feel the fear (from the amygdala). Make a choice for courage when you can, or else it becomes harder next time.
Increase your ability to choose. Always give yourself choice. This will mean practicing saying ‘no’ to things that feel good but are not good for you (drugs, too much alcohol, too much chocolate), delaying gratification (saying ‘no’ now for a bigger future pay-off), controlling impulses, and generally feeling uncomfortable and crap for a while for a good cause and a better future. Click HERE for posts on these.
FRONTAL LOBES: Your beliefs, values, goals and plans, and desires are in your frontal lobes. If you don’t know your beliefs, values, goals, plans, and desire you can’t choose them. They won’t be clear enough in your head to give your OFC strong enough messages. Know your BELIEFS. Be ARMED with your values. Follow your GPS (goals, plans and step to do next). Be clear what you actually want from life, and let your values and GPS guide you in that direction. Make sure your SMART goals are based on your BUILT values.
ACG and rTP: The strength of these inputs to calm your fearful amygdala depend on your connection with other people. Have good relationships with your family and friends. But keep away from toxic relationships and people who do not wish the best for you. Put people before pleasure, profit and productivity. Do this, and you will feel secure and chill. Your amygdala will calm down when your relationships are travelling well.
AMYGDALA: The way to directly chill your amygdala is to decrease stress, fear and anxiety in your life. Learn from the snake-handlers: knowledge is power, practice makes perfect. Knowing about snakes will make you less afraid of them, and practicing handling snakes will make you even less afraid. This is learning and practice.
Learning and practicing skills
Whatever you fear, learn about it, expose yourself, to it and practice the skills needed to become proficient to get what you want. Snake handlers and bomb-disposal experts learn and practice. They don’t shy away. The first time you need to get that snake in the bag or diffuse a bomb, you may be anxious. The fiftieth time, you may need to concentrate to keep yourself from being complacent. That’s learning and practice.
Whatever you fear, face it. Repeatedly. Break skill tasks down into steps. Do them over and over and over again. Learn the skill. Then reward yourself afterwards to reinforce your learning efforts. You can BEAT stress or you can be MINDFUL to keep anxiety under control.
After the learning and with practicing the skills, You can go out there and do what you need to do:
If you’re working on something worthwhile, you will need courage to talk to the right people and action, market or mobilise your ideas.
If you want to be in a relationship, it takes courage to talk to someone, get to know them, trust them and then trust them more and more. Step by step.
FACE the fear to choose courage
Here’s the complete FACE equation to choose courage in your life. Courage =
Feeling Fear +
Aware of All factors +
Choosing Courage +
Effort to Choose your Frontal Lobe over Amygdala in your OFC
Know your frontal lobe values, goals, plans and desires
Help your ACG and rTP (Put People First)
Calm your amygdala (learn and Practice skills to face fear)
Then you may live courageously and live out the life you value.
Cheers
Dr Christian Heim