How to Live a More Courageous Life
Learning strategies to deal
with your fears can help prepare you to take risks and change your life.
On any given day, many of us wrestle with our
fears. We might be contemplating a career change, telling someone we love them,
or wanting to speak up for what’s right when we see injustice. But a voice
within us pipes up saying that there’s no point, or that we aren’t really
capable of creating the life or world we desire.
Whether you call it “fear” or some other
name—anxiety, stress, discomfort, life challenges—the cycle often plays out in
the same way. We have a desire for change, but our fear of what might happen or
the worry that we are somehow not enough can keep us stuck.
In my new book, The Courage Habit,
I argue that when it comes to dealing with fear, we often go about it all
wrong. Instead of seeing fear as bad and trying to get rid of it when it
arises, we can choose to accept fear as part of the process of change and
instead practice courage. This choice can help you to feel more emotionally
resilient as you make life changes or go after big dreams.
The courage habit
Though courage is often thought of as an
inborn character trait, it’s actually a way of being and a practice that can be
learned for coping with difficulty.
In other words, courage can become a habit.
Usually, we think of habits as actions, like
brushing your teeth or exercising. But habits also consist of our behavioral
responses to different emotions. For many people, fear-based responses are the
natural, habitual response to adversity, because our brains tend to seek the
fastest, most efficient way to relieve stress when we feel it. That means we
rely on solutions that have provided short-term stress relief in the past—like
procrastinating in response to feelings of self-doubt, or putting perfectionism
into overdrive (which eventually ends up sabotaging us through burnout).
Your brain likes predictability, and it’s
primed to “reward” you for choosing familiar responses and routines. So, if you
ditch the plan to go after that dream and instead choose what’s known and
therefore safe, you’ll be “rewarded” as the brain relaxes.
How do you manage fear differently? You can
understand that it’s part of the human condition and aim to work with it rather
than against it. Drawing from research on habit formation and stress
reduction—and my own work with clients facing fear—I have discovered four
useful strategies for dealing with fear and moving closer to courage.
1.
Access the body
Fear shows up in the body, often as sweaty
palms, a sick-feeling stomach, or a vague sense of discomfort. Once our bodies
head into fear mode, we need a way to recognize the signs and work with what
the feelings are telling us. A body-based practice can
help.
Using focused breathing or body scans—both
practices associated with mindful meditation—can help us tune into our body’s
sensations without trying to change them or judge them. In this way, we
can access our fear without rejecting it or being pulled into an old fear routine.
That leaves us freer to better identify the source of the fear and pursue the
things we want in life.
If mindfulness practices don’t cut it for
you, you can also try dancing, running, yoga, stretching, hiking, or even sex.
Just increasing your enjoyment and acceptance of your body can help you listen
to it when it’s telling you something’s wrong.
2.
Listen without attachment
Many of us who are stuck in fear have an
inner critic, constantly feeding us misinformation about our abilities and
telling us we are doomed to fail. Often, we’re not even aware of that voice.
Or, if we are aware of it, we try strategies to quiet or get rid of it—like
ignoring the critic entirely, placating it by trying to do things perfectly (so
there won’t be anything for the critic to focus on), or attacking it directly
by saying to ourselves, “I’m not going to listen to you—shut up and leave me
alone!”
While these strategies can give us temporary
relief, they don’t actually make the critic go away. Instead, we need to
reframe the voice as a part of ourselves that’s trying to get our attention,
and to learn to listen.
If we can take time to listen to our inner
critic without attachment—without the need to ignore or accept what it is
saying—we’re in a better position to learn from it. Expressive writing or
working with a coach or therapist can help us to
understand the origins of our critical thoughts and to glean helpful
information without getting hijacked.
3.
Reframe limiting stories
As humans, we make meaning out of our
experiences by telling stories to ourselves about how the world operates. But
here’s the important part: Those stories might not be objectively true.
They are more like your personal lens on life, coloring your experiences just
as if you were wearing sunglasses. Your stories have everything to do with how
you see yourself and the world—whether you’re a victim or a survivor, whether
an experience is dangerous or an opportunity, and whether you have the capacity
to develop more courage or you are “just not very brave.”
It’s not wrong to adopt stories—everyone has
internal assumptions to orient themselves in the world. But some stories are
more helpful than others. For instance, we’ve probably all met
people who tell themselves that “everyone is selfish and only out for
themselves.” Because they see the world through that lens, they are suspicious
of people’s motives, inclined to tally up people’s wrongs, and have a “gotta
look out for myself” attitude—which isn’t necessarily helpful.
Luckily, we can reframe limiting stories
through various techniques—like challenging overly negative
interpretations of our abilities, or gaining
perspective by looking at a difficult situation as an outsider or
a close friend would—that can help us cope better with
the stress that fear or anxiety inevitably brings.
Rather than seeing reframing as a “Pollyanna”
approach that bypasses very real challenges in the world, reframing is about emotion regulation.
It stops you from ruminating about what’s going wrong to the point of giving
up. Reframes need not be wildly optimistic. For example, instead of saying, “I
can’t,” you might say, “I’m at least willing to try”; “This is too
overwhelming!” can become “Let me slow down, and take it one step at a time, to
get through this.” This reframing process, which involves positive self-talk,
can help you see results in
your life—including a greater sense of capability and more positive emotion and
optimism, which lead to
greater resilience.
4.
Create community
To truly live courageous lives, we need
like-minded people around us who are also trying to honor the values of
courage. Creating courageous communities gives us the support to face challenges.
Sometimes our stories get in our way, and we need people who are doing similar
work to help us see where we’re getting stuck or what we’re truly capable of.
Charles Duhigg, author of The Power
of Habit, writes, “For most people who overhaul their lives, there are no
seminal moments or life-altering disasters. There are simply
communities—sometimes of just one other person—who make change believable.”
Making change is simply easier when
we have support.
To apply this to living with more courage, we
need to examine our relationships and distinguish those that are rooted simply
in convenience (such as meeting up with coworkers for a drink) from those where
like-minded people share similar, courageous values such as kindness, vulnerability,
optimism, and empathy. Relationships of convenience aren’t “bad,” but those
other relationships are the ones that provide the most support to buffer you from
the stress of taking a risk and going after big life changes.
Putting everything together
This
essay is adapted from The Courage Habit: How to Accept Your
Fears, Release the Past, and Live Your Courageous Life (New
Harbinger, 2018, 232 pages).
As you become more practiced with accessing
the body, you’ll find it easier to recognize your fear patterns at work. As you
tune in to your fear by listening without attachment, you’ll find it easier to
see what your fear is rooted in, and then use practices such as reframing
limiting stories. Integrating more courage-based relationships into your life
will help you to both notice those times when you’re getting stuck in old fear
patterns, and remember your bigger vision of stepping into more courage and emotional
resilience.
The more you interrupt the old fear-based
habits and replace fear-based responses with responses to boost courage, the
more you create a “courage habit.” By living your life with courage, you’ll be
more likely to make the changes that will lead to greater fulfillment—whether
that’s embarking on a new relationship or job, or helping to save the world.
BY KATE SWOBODA
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_live_a_more_courageous_life?utm_source=Greater+Good+Science+Center&utm_campaign=fe70dff3b6-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_GG_Newsletter_Oct_10_2018&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5ae73e326e-fe70dff3b6-51482775
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