Courage

COURAGE

Mario D’Couto

As a young man, Charles Dickens nursed a great ambition to become a writer. But the odds were against him: poverty and very little schooling. He mailed his first manuscript in the dead of the night so that nobody would laugh at him. However, stories after stories were rejected. Thus finally dawned that great day, when one was accepted. Today in terms of fame and recognition, Charles Dickens is second only to William Shakespeare.    

       

Courage is not the absence of fear but going ahead knowing that you will face it. It could be defined as the state or quality of mind or spirit that enables you to face danger or fear, or the vicissitudes of life with self – possession, confidence and resolution. It is that which helps us to face the daunting challenges both anticipated and unexpected, which will occur on our journey. It is only by going through failures that we emerge courageous. Failure builds up our courage to self – direct our lives. Thus we are motivated to step to the front when opportunities come our way and also step back in order to view our mistakes gracefully.

            However, it isn’t something that happens overnight. It takes a lot of muscle. Just as when one exercises, one is breaking muscle while exercising so as to make it bigger and stronger, likewise, courage is to be developed through facing and confronting failures and defeats. Learning from each experience of failure will go a long way towards bolstering your courage.

            Fear is a natural response to anything you perceive as a threat or danger. But when you perpetually live in fear, it limits what you can accomplish or do. Failure is truly failure only if you fail to take heed of the lessons that were placed before you. It’s essential to realize that in everything you do, there’s always a chance that you’ll fail. Facing that change and embracing it, is not only courageous but it also opens up for you vistas of a fuller, more rewarding life. The fear of failure is deadly. It creates unrealistic scenarios in your mind.

            The fear of failure that you have is often unreal. Your brain as a biological system can’t distinguish between the real and the unreal because it is on automatic. As a result, you become afraid of something that hasn’t even happened yet and you let it ruin your success as Jack Lemmon once said, “Failure seldom stops you. What stops you is the fear of failure.”

            Many of us have difficulty trying to figure out why we get the same or worse results over and over again or no success at all. One reason could be is because of our unwillingness to come out of our comfort zone. There are many reasons to remain comfortable. We fear uncertainty, loss and pain, due to which we cushion ourselves against the challenges before us. Besides, the tendency to do thing the same way often creates a routine that simply puts you in a rut. Comfort and success are opposites. If you want to succeed, you need to get out of your comfort zone and be prepared to face discomfort.

            By viewing your comfort zone not as a shelter but as a prison will help you to embrace constructive discomfort. Never take the safe and known path. Choose challenge over comfort and set goals that force you to get out of your comfort zone. Your willingness to explore new territories and areas outside of your comfort zone is your passport to new possibilities and new success as Leslie Evans once said, “Anything you do to stretch yourself out of your comfort zone will ultimately enable you to take longer risks and grow.”

            Here are a few things to be kept in mind to achieve this practically when you feel hesitant or not confident. To start off, there are 2 things, namely, permanence and pervasiveness. Basically, in simple words, what this means is that, in permanence, as the word explains itself, whatever happens is permanent. It refers to your perception of the stability of an event or condition – how long it will last, how frequently, it will occur, whether it is permanent or temporary.

            Optimists believe that good times will persist and that bad times are only a temporary condition. Because of this belief, optimists are more likely to try harder in difficult times; their past successes allow them to expect that they can repeat their success. Believing that bad times are temporary makes it easier for optimists to bounce back from setbacks, to fight through difficulty times – they believe there is light at the end of the tunnel. In other words, they are resilient.

            On the other hand, for the pessimist, bad times are thought to be long – lasting or permanent. As a result, the individual gives up more easily and often develops feelings of helplessness. In extreme cases, he or she becomes clinically depressed.

            Pervasiveness refers to the degree that people allow setbacks – an injury, the loss of a loved one, a poor sales call – to affect other parts of their lives. A pessimistic explanatory style leads to the conclusion that the setback will affect everything that person does.

            For instance, a parent with a pessimistic style would attribute a daughter’s unhappiness to, “I’m a poor parent.” People who make universal explanations for their failures become easily discouraged and tend to give up or things when they fail. For the optimist, even though he or she may fail in one particular area or may feel inept in a particular task, they don’t allow it to permeate the other aspects of their lives.

            Some practical ways of achieving this is to visualize yourself. Self – confident individuals frequently visualize positive images of themselves, they tend ‘see’ themselves as successful in a wide variety of activities. Athletes, clinical and medical practitioners, salespeople, astronauts, students and entrepreneurs have all used visualization to prepare for a specific task, whether it is kicking a field goal or handling an emergency situation. There are countless explanations as to why visualization and mental imagery enhance performance. One is that they allow the individual to create a mental mode of perfect performance that shows what ideal execution looks like. The individual can use this to guide his or her performance. Another is that visualization reduce performance anxiety, allowing the individual to successfully deal with unexpected or troublesome situations.

            Perhaps the most important explanation comes from some new research in neuroscience which states that when humans mentally rehearse a physical action, they execute the same neural operations that one uses during the actual performance. In other words, the same neural pathways are recruited and the same neurochemicals are secreted when we visualize doing something as when we engage in the actual activity. In one fascinating study, two groups worked with a finger muscle exercise for one month where one group actually did the finger strengthening exercises while the other group merely visualized doing the same exercise. At the end of the study, the group who actually engaged in the exercise increased muscle function by 30% while the other group, who had only visualized doing the activity, increased their muscle strength by 22%. What this study points out to is a way to access a phenomenon called the ‘winner effect’, which is achieving victory without actually stepping on to that particular field of work.

            Studies have shown that when we experience a victory or what we perceive to be a victory, no matter how small or big, the probability that we will win our next contest goes up significantly. In one study, researchers had two mice fight. One mouse was drugged so that it was a less aggressive opponent. Not surprisingly, the drug – free mouse won. The researchers had the winning mouse fight another mouse that was its equal in physical size. In fact, the other mouse which the ‘winning’ mouse fight against was more aggressive. However, what was surprising from all this was that despite the ‘winning’ mouse fighting a more aggressive mouse that was its own size, still won. The ‘winning effect’ has been found in several species – including humans.

            A study by John Coates, a professor of pure mathematics at the University of Cambridge along with his colleague, Lionel Page, who is the head of the Queensland Behavioural Economics group at QUT, use a very similar protocol to test professional tennis matches. The researches done identified matches where the opponents were very close in ATP rankings – only one seed apart at the time of the match. They next identified a subset of matches that went on to a tie break in the first set. In other words, the players had been evenly matched over the course of the year, based on the ranking criteria and they were playing evenly in the match itself, based on the tie break at the end of the first set. Focusing only on the matches out of the very long database the researchers found that players who won the first – set – tie – breaker had a much greater probability of winning the match. The player who won the first set went on to win the match 60% of the time.

            Thus creating that positive mindset is crucial because that is what gives the confidence to go ahead. However, not always would we get the opportunity to just jump right into a positive mindset. Sometimes we just have to create it, maybe even forcefully, or to put it more mildly, more ‘consciously’. So how do we achieve it? Here are a few further practical ways by which we can attain it,

1)      Adopt the belief that the world is fair

Optimistic people tend to believe that the world is fair and that, as a result, hard work will pay off. They believe the environment will yield to their efforts and this belief makes individuals try harder. Students, for example, who believe in a just world give more effort because they believe they will be graded fairly. Belief in a just world helps us see that life is a series of exciting and interesting challenges to master rather than a precarious environment where we are constantly in peril. This positive perception reduces stress on many fronts in addition to helping us do our best where it matters most.

            To develop the habit of believing in a just world,

Ø  Make a list of the truly bad breaks you have experienced. Now make a list of the good breaks that have come your way. This should remind you that, all in all, life is pretty fair.

Ø  Every time something bad happens to you immediately think of something good that has recently happened to you.

Ø  Be aware of how your motivation and practice impact your results.

            The goal of these techniques is to help you keep in perspective that life is positive and challenging and that hardwork is the key to success. Belief in a just world will prompt other reasons that keep you optimistic and prevent you from engaging in pessimistic and counter – productive behaviours.

2)      Appreciate the world around you

As the subtitle goes, it refers to appreciating the good things around you and all the positives that have happened in your life and just be grateful for it.

            Take five minutes a day to think about the positives in your life. The more you do, the more you will begin to perceive your glass as more full than empty, a perception that will make you feel good and push you to more optimistic thinking and resilience. Studies with physically handicapped seniors and clinically depressed individuals show that spending time focusing on the positives in one’s life creates positive feelings and optimistic thoughts. Appreciation is a pretty powerful strategy for becoming more optimistic.

3)      Develop an optimistic vocabulary

One reason optimists accomplish so much and distinguish themselves from others is that they do not engage in statements that discourage them from building that better is achievable. The transcripts of pessimists are filled with statements such as “I can’t”, “I should have”, “It will never happen”, “It will never change”, all fuelled by belief in permanence plus global, negative internal attributions. These self – sabotaging statements hold an individual back because they are inherently limiting. Positive psychology or optimism, increases opportunities for growth. Hence instead of using or saying statements such as, “I can’t”, “I should have” or “there’s nothing I can do about it”, change it to, “I can” and “I will”. These phrases focus your attention on your options and increase an optimistic outlook.

            Robert Kiyosaki in his book, “Rich dad poor dad”, writes on similar lines where he speaks about people who create a roadblock for themselves when they say, “I can’t afford it.” Using such a statement already cuts the possibility or the potential of what they can do. Instead using such a statement such as “How can I afford it …” opens up a world of possibilities. Similarly, you can change the statement from, “It’s hard to achieve …” to “How can I achieve it …” This brings me to the next point which is explaining your life optimistically.

4)      Explain your life optimistically

Start explaining your life as an optimist would, so you can reap the benefits. A good exercise to practice would be is to take a half hour and write your life story as a pessimist. Then rewrite it as an optimist. Reflect on the difference and you will gain self – awareness on how you interpret and have interpreted your significant life events. Note how each story makes you feel and you will see the benefits of an optimistic explanatory and style.

            Step back and note how optimism works. Then with an optimistic mind – set wake up believing the day will be positive. Positive expectations create positive feelings which can translate into being more pleasant and co – operative with others. When a positive event occurs – from the boss or finding a parking space in a crowded mall – optimists attribute it to hardwork and experience. On the other hand, if a glitch or a setback occurs, optimists remember that it is only temporary, a challenge that they can handle. It reaffirms their ability to be realistically optimistic when encountering the next challenge. Throughout the day, be aware and grateful for the quality of life you enjoy. You’ll go to sleep believing that when the sun comes up tomorrow, it will be the dawn of another great danger.

            You may probably be thinking that my life is pretty sorted and it’s all figured all out but trust me, I’m on the same journey as you are. We are all works in progress. I do hope what I have shared may be fruitful and beneficial in your lives as in mine as I strive to implement it in every possible way to the best of my ability. God love you! Stay blessed!