Courage Is Built By Moving Toward Your Fears
At one point in my life, I used to think that courage was an innate trait, which was bestowed onto the lucky few people in this world.
I would say that I was a pretty confident and courageous child. Or maybe I might use the words crazy and reckless… but if embodied in a child I’d say that the words mean pretty much the same thing.
I was a rebellious, adventurous, and rambunctious child. I had no trouble getting myself into trouble and found myself reprimanded by my parents at every step of the way.
There was a folk tale about a little green frog who never listened to his mother and always did exactly the opposite of what she told him. The folktale has a sad ending, which I won’t necessary get into, but my mother would bring up this story every time I was being disobedient.
(Which was 95% of the time, so let’s just say I’m quite sick of this story)
But as a child, I could care less what my parents thought of me. My mission was to follow whatever called out to me at any given moment, which usually presented itself in the unknown.
So during my youthful days, I was a confident young boy who didn’t care about what anyone thought of him.
I wasn’t “thinking” about how I should be confident. I was just being who I was. I was living life in the present and doing what came naturally to me. I only knew how to be authentic and never felt that I had to act in some other manner.
But perhaps maturity is a process that awakens young children from this paradisal state. As we grow up and enter the social world, we learn over time that it is not always acceptable to be who we authentically are.
Our authentic selves might have been charming to our family and close friends, but they are not necessary or even welcomed in systems that need order and conformity.
I was taught, implicitly and explicitly, to create personas that guarded who I truly was. My experiences with school systems and encounters with various social groups during my formative years as an adolescent produced fragmented versions of myself.
And I’m not necessarily blaming everyone for this occurrence. In fact, I know that I had a big part to play in building personas to hide my true self. Perhaps there were many insecurities and inner conflicts that I was not emotionally ready to confront.
Whatever the reason was, I became a shadow of myself during high school and college, and lost the courage that I once had when I was a young boy.
At another point in my life, I believed that courage was something that was taught by your parents, so if you didn’t have the fortune of having parents who instilled and nurtured the idea of courage into your mind, you would not have it for the rest of your life.
My parents were actively supportive throughout my life. Even if I achieved something trivial, my parents would congratulate and praise me for my talents and accomplishments. This practice was probably an important piece of my “innate” confidence while I was young.
The fact that I received encouragement for everything I did made me want to go out and achieve more things. I wanted to be praised continuously, so I ventured out every day and pushed myself to my limit, hoping that I could come back home with more great news.
It’s too bad that I never thought this way when it came to academics (which I sometimes regret, but also realize it is not something that is useful to mull over)
While this practice was great, I also gained an over-inflated ego. The more my parents praised my innate talents and intellect, the more I believed it myself. I felt that I was naturally good at many things, and was able to get good grades even if I didn’t study much.
The over-inflated ego does not serve the individual well across time. Why?
Because the over-inflated ego makes the individual believe that everything should come easy to them, and if it doesn’t come easy to them, it would rather sacrifice the activity rather than humble itself enough to think like a true beginner.
The over-inflated ego would rather destroy everything that threatens it rather than sacrifice itself to be born anew.
When my grades started to suffer because I couldn’t rely on my innate knowledge structures, I stopped caring about grades. Because if I had to study, that meant I wasn’t innately smart, which meant I had to put in the EFFORT. The cursed word that humbles the superiority of the arrogant intellect.
I started doubling down on the things I knew I was good at, which was video games and sports, but even in those realms, I saw the threat of humility. So I removed myself from any form of higher-level competition to guard my ego. I inhibited my competitive nature so that I did not have to take on the responsibility to TRY. Another forbidden word to the arrogant intellect.
I would feed myself this nice little piece of insight: “If I gave my all, I would be better than everyone here, but I don’t think it’s worth my time. That’s the only reason why I’m not engaging in this competition.”
When it came to protecting my ego, I came up with all kinds of tricks. I came up with rationalizations and justifications so that I could stay superior intellectually and secretly wallow in my mediocrity.
If I never try, then I can never fail. If I fail, then I won’t be the innately talented person that my parents and I think myself to be!
While this thought may serve you for a bit, it is extremely dangerous as you continue to grow older. It can keep you in a safe bubble for the time being, but it will inevitably burst and you will be in for a rude awakening.
If you’re lucky, you may be able to recover, but there are some cases where it truly may be too late to bounce back.
At this point in my life, I believe that courage is something you can always muster within yourself. It is not fully determined by nature or culture. You have the ability to embody the spirit of the archetypal hero and transcend your limitations. You have the ability to go beyond what you know and face what you fear most.
The two theories I believed when I was younger were based on unalterable factors.
If I led myself to believe that my current capacity to be a courageous person was based on immutable characteristics or parenting styles, I would come to the same conclusion:
I can’t do anything about it now. This is just who I am and I must accept it because it’s hardwired/ingrained deeply within me.
But with most things in life, the answer is somewhere in the middle. There are experiences and things I can’t change in the present. Things happened in the past that affected me in various ways. That doesn’t mean I am therefore doomed to be a victim of circumstance.
Courage is something that is deliberately practiced. All humans, no matter how brave, feel fear when they step into the unknown. It is an innate experience that human beings experience, because chaos is a realm that has no stable footing.
Veteran comedians still feel nervous before they go up on stage. Experienced writers still blank out and struggle with anxiety and self-doubt when faced with a blank sheet of paper. Professional sports players feel nervous before stepping out onto their respective competitive arena.
The feeling of fear is innate and will always be with us forever.
What differentiates courageous people from the rest is that they know that feeling will never go away and choose to confront it rather than cower from it.
As the courageous people watch themselves confront the unknown, they become more self-confident. Because they know how dangerous it is to dance with chaos. They know that the fears can be realized and they could get hurt and fail and suffer.
And the fact that they have the ability to face their fears not once, but every single time they manifest themselves, flares up their spirit to a burning inferno and moves them forward.
They watch themselves confront their fears, and they get braver because they know they are capable of withstanding and defeating them.
And witnessing the heroic battles that wage within every courageous individual’s soul, all other individuals are inspired and determined to confront their demons.
In your battle to find the courage to face your fears, humanity itself is encouraged and emboldened to move forward.
