Courage in our everyday life

Have you ever thought of courage in the context of your everyday life? I know, it seems kind of strange because the way we traditionally think about courage doesn’t seem as if it would apply to our daily goings on.  And yet…parenting, chronic pain, marriage, being gobsmacked by illness, grief, showing up to the running class for the first time. Courage & bravery in motion. The word courage has a deceptively simple definition: the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty.

Difficulty is relative. I get that.

I fully acknowledge that I, as a middle aged, middle-class, white woman born and raised in Canada, have virtually NO difficulties relative to the rest of the entire world. Yet, the very definition of the word courage calls me to develop a quality of mind that helps me face difficulty. I want a mind like that so when the shit hits the fan, in the million different little ways it does every day, I can meet what is happening without being reactive.  It’s a work in progress.

Living with courage is a learned skill we can cultivate to help us get through our days with grace & ease. I believe it’s fundamental to our well being.  Researchers have been able to identify where courage lives in our brain (how cool is that) in hopes of helping those who have insurmountable fear or anxiety.

Courage is like a muscle. If you’ve never lifted weights the smallest weight will feel heavy in the beginning but with frequent lifting that exact same weight will get lighter. Each time you act in the presence of fear you dilute its power and grow your own. I don’t mean you necessarily get to where you walk through the world with no fear at all - although I’m hoping it’s possible with continued inner work. Rather, you grow that deep place inside your mind that knows if you face this difficult thing you arrive on the other side and it’s much brighter over there.

Photo by Oliver Cole on Unsplash

Finding courage to take risks, even tiny ones, demands you be clear about why you’re doing it in the first place. If the outcome you’re going for isn’t evident in your mind it’s less likely you’ll step up to do the difficult thing.  The chance of me saying ‘hey, I think I’ll go have a cold shower’ are exactly zero. The only way I am stepping into that cold water is if I stand outside my tub and remind myself why I am doing something so darn crazy!

A big pitfall of being an adult is we frequently sabotage ourselves by downplaying the cost of doing nothing.  We do this because no one is making us do anything we don’t want to. Things get extra tricky when the ramifications of our actions aren’t staring us in the face…I can spend this money and save later, I will start exercising on Monday, I can have that conversation about my relationship when I feel better. Saving all the hard stuff for another day often means we pay a hefty price down the road.

Often our inner courage seems to get derailed when we look at where we are and where we want to be. There is always a gap there. There will never NOT be space between where we are and where we want to be. It’s in this space that our best self often goes to die because we cannot see our way past it. I find this to be painfully true when I am run down. During those lousy days I need to remind myself that this is not how it always is (take care Sweetie not to paint any situation with the always brush, it tends to be a false picture).

Stepping into the gap between here & there needs some focused action. Stop rolling your eyes at me! I know the term ‘focused action’ has been overused to the point we tune it out. However, as this article is about courage in our everyday life we need to be aware there is nothing more helpful or simple than a small, focused action step when it comes to taking on a challenging task. Dial the phone. Put on the shoes. Go to the library. Do something to narrow the gap between where you are right now and where you want to be. Then do another little thing tomorrow. As far as I can tell it is the only way forward.

Making the situation seem bigger than it is, exaggerating the consequences of doing something difficult, underestimating our ability to handle it and downplaying the cost of doing nothing may result in being so cautious we are unwilling to take the very risks needed to create a meaningful life. There is a tension between living a wholehearted life and a comfortable one and this balancing act is a skill that we can teach ourselves.

Lastly my Dear Friend, in your one and only big, brave life please trust your capabilities. Stand tall, take some deep breaths, know that you have done many hard things in the past and you can do this too. Living with courage does not mean you have no distress or knots in your gut, it is not about being fearless rather it’s about fearing less and the only way to do that is to practice in our ordinary, everyday life.

May you tackle your hard things with grace & ease. I thank you with my whole heart for being here with me, it means so much. If you got something out of this piece please show me your love by hitting the ❤ at the top or bottom of this post!

xoxo Donna