Courage - Mindset
“Without courage, one becomes cognitively and behaviorally paralyzed in the past or present.” Tom Lombardo – Wisdom Facing Foward
“I’m anxious about my health and my heart.” Those were the words of a friend who had recently had open heart surgery and was now nervous about death. He was and is one of my dearest and most important friends. He has a way of bringing joy, laughter, and fun to every element and moment of life and yet, facing his on immortality was paralyzing for him.
I get it. I’ve nearly gone down twice. My latest response to people who ask me about my health is this, “I’m just trying to outrun the reaper. He’s caught me twice, but I’ve managed to get back up.” Life looks a little different when you can see death so clearly.
Yet here are some things that I’ve learned about courage.
1) Courage is more than physical. –
To have courage is to endure, persevere, and overcome. Courage is in the eye of the beholder…it is what people think it is. – Rate C. Clarke J., Lindsay D., Sternberg, R. – Implicit Theories of Courage
We often think of courage as the action of someone who takes on the bully or ultimate physical challenge, but courage is really about the mind.
Courage can take on all sorts of forms, looks, and feels. Courage, for some, is about carrying a weapon into battle and for others it is standing at the edge of the abys and still moving forward. Courage is about overcoming, persevering, and enduring the most significant challenges in your life.
I have another friend who describes the most difficult (courageous) thing she’s ever done was leaving her first husband. He was abusive, mean, and an addict, and she had no real path out of the relationship, but refused to stay in it. Leaving that kind of relationship takes courage…real courage.
2) Courage requires a different view of the future –
Courage requires hope and optimism allowing us to face our fears and challenges of an unknown and uncertain future. (Tom Lombardo – The Evolution of Future Consciousness and Contemporary Futurist Thought)
Ultimately courage is about hope. It is the ability to see the world for what it could be. It is a vision of the future that looks different than the current situation. It takes courage to look out across the horizon and see something different.
Only the hopeful can have courage. Only those who believe they can overcome their fears are courageous. Courage looks the unknown in the face and says, “No further.” Courage believes the sickness or obstacle can be overcome. Courage is hopeful!
3) Small steps of Courage become giant leaps of faith –
“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill
One of the best ways to learn courage is to take the small steps needed and necessary to overcome your fear. When we face our fear, we learn that we can overcome life’s obstacles and we become fearless, courageous people.
4) Courage is the BEST way to live –
According to Socrates, courage and wisdom are closely linked. In this view, wisdom is much more than expert knowledge. For Socrates and other ancient philosophers’ courage is a way of living life at its best and highest level. – Shigeru Yonezawa – Socratic Courage in Plato’s Socractic Doalogues
For the ancient philosophers (Socrates) and Plato, the best people lived courageous lives. Remember that in ancient times, war, sickness, disease, and famine were common elements of life. Life was cheap and death was easy. So, for men like Plato and Socrates, the best way to live was with a courageous hope that believed the future could look different.
Please hear me today, whatever you circumstance, situation or context, you don’t have to live without courageous hope. You can see a different future if you simply begin to take a different view of life and the horizon in front of you.
“Courage is fear that has said its prayers.” – Anne Lamott – Traveling Mercies – pg. 239
Keep praying for the needed and necessary courage. You are not alone and you can overcome. All is not lost and death doesn’t have to win (I Corinthians 15:55 “Where O death, is your victory? Where O death, is your sting?”). You can find the courageous hope to see the world and your future in a different way. Keep up the good fight. Seek the best and see the BEST in your future. It takes courage but you can find it.