What IS courage? It wasn’t until I sat down to write a blog about courage, that I realised that I wasn’t 100% sure how I would define it. And surprisingly, there didn’t seem to be an awful lot of guidance online. However I came across some lovely quotes – by Nelson Mandela, Franklin Roosevelt, Mark Twain and Maya Angelou – that serve as a good introduction:
“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” Nelson Mandela
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Courage is resilience to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.” Mark Twain
And Maya Angelou said: “Courage is the most important of the virtues, because without it, no other virtue can be practiced consistently…, you can be kind and true and fair and generous and just, and even merciful, occasionally. But to be that thing time after time, you have to really have courage.”
What does psychology say?
Over the centuries, most philosophers and psychologists seem to have agreed that courage involves persistence in danger or hardship.
Fear and Courage
FEAR seems to be an important factor in courage – if we don’t feel fear (either physically or emotionally), then it can’t be defined as courage. Psychologist S. J. Rachman in 1990 suggested a definition of courage that takes into account three components of fear:
- the subjective feeling of apprehension
- the physiological reaction to fear (e.g., increased heart rate)
- the behavioural response to fear (e.g., an effort to escape the fearful situation).
The fear that accompanies physical courage may relate to bodily injury or death – say for a soldier in a war zone, or first responders at the scene of an accident. But more commonly in everyday life, we may also be called upon to have a kind of moral courage that is more social or emotional – we want to do what we feel is right – but we dread looking foolish in front of other people. So courage comes from doing it anyway, and facing that fear of the disapproval or ridicule of others.
The fear that can summon moral courage takes many forms: fear of job loss, fear of poverty, fear of losing friends, fear of criticism, fear of ostracism, fear of embarrassment, fear of making enemies, fear of losing status, to name but a few potential human fears. At the very top of the scale, physical AND moral/social/emotional courage was represented by Rosa Parks and Gandhi.
Courage and Vulnerability
University of Houston research professor and popular speaker and writer Brene Brown has spent many years researching into courage – see her Netflix special Brené Brown: The Call To Courage, where she discusses how to choose courage over comfort in a time and culture of fear and uncertainty.
She summarises the value of courage and brings the concept of vulnerability into it:
“The key to whole-hearted living is vulnerability. You measure courage by how vulnerable you are.” She suggests that in order to live courageously, we start every day by putting our feet on the floor and saying, “Today I will choose courage over comfort. I can’t make any promises for tomorrow, but today I will choose to be brave.”
According to Dr. Brown’s research, choosing courage and vulnerability opens us up to love, joy and belonging, and brings us closer to what she calls, “whole-hearted living.” It changes the kind of partner, parent and professional we are when we live brave and authentic lives. Her talk suggests several ways in which we can answer the call to courage in our own lives:
Be intentional about who you accept feedback from
Dr. Brown tells a story about how after her first TED Talk was posted, against her own advice, she started reading social media comments and “I needed peanut butter and Downton Abbey,” Dr. Brown jokes. Spiralling downwards, as she came across the usual line negativity and toxicity, she came across this quote by Theodore Roosevelt – and in fact used part of it as the title of her next book, Daring Greatly:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again…who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”
She then connected courage with vulnerability: “Vulnerability is not about losing, it is about showing up when you can’t control the outcome.” She explains that we are hard-wired to care what others think, but we need to be intentional about who we accept feedback from. “If you are not in the arena, getting your a** kicked and rejected, I am not interested in your feedback about my work.” i.e.the only people I seek feedback from are people who love me, but are honest with me.”
2. Belong to yourself first
Brene Brown says that “we are hard-wired for belonging,” wanting other people to love us and “see” us. But the enemy of belonging is trying to fit in. “The opposite of belonging is fitting in. Fitting in is assessing and acclimating. ‘Here is what I should say/be, here is what I shouldn’t say, here is what I should avoid talking about, here’s what I should dress like/look like.”
Belonging, is belonging to yourself first,” says Dr. Brown. “Speaking your truth, telling your story and never betraying yourself for other people. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are, it requires you to be who you are. And that’s vulnerable.”
3. Choose courage over comfort
After many years of carrying out research in the workplace, she concludes that one of the biggest challenges faced by people working in organisations is how to have the difficult conversations. They do not know how to have them, they’re worried they will say the wrong thing or will be taken the wrong way or that people will make assumptions, so often they do not have these conversations.
“To not have the conversations because they make you uncomfortable is the definition of privilege. Your comfort is not at the center of this discussion. That is not how this works. Of course you’re going to get you’re a** handed to you in these conversations…It’s not a question whether you have a bias or not, it’s a question of how many and how bad and how deep…We have to be able to say, ‘Look, I don’t know if I’m going to nail this but I’m going to try because I know what I’m sure as hell not going to do is stay quiet.’”
More information about courage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYbLjG7u2M0 Daniel Ellenberg and Rick Hanson on Courage
3 keys for courageous conversations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxKR42guq7Y Daniel Ellenberg
https://brenebrown.com/articles/2018/03/13/courage-comfort-rumbling-shame-accountability-failure-work/ Brene Brown on choosing courage over comfort
Brene Brown Called to Courage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykn_uQrCzWQ
Brene Brown the courage to be vulnerable https://onbeing.org/programs/brene-brown-the-courage-to-be-vulnerable-jan2015/
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See also: Live from the Heart, More ways to live from the heart, Fierce Self-Compassion