“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.” ― Mark Twain
There are times over the last few months where we have all felt a higher level of anxiety than normal. That sense of fear that permeates deep within us, the worry that can make our stomach feel like it’s doing back flips and the feeling when we are staring at a list of things to do and not being able to start.
Things are a bit scary at the moment; uncertainty is scary. Most of us like to know what is going to happen, what our options are and generate some kind of plan, however loose it is. We also like to feel in control (a subject we’ve discussed in another of our blogs) and this lack of control can make us feel like we want to crawl into a corner and give up all sense of control.
However, the courage we can have is to step up and step forward and say, “I don’t know what’s going to happen but I want to feel like I participated.” Now if that sounds too big a jump of courage, let’s start small:
- With so much focus on home cooking right now, try a food or meal that you’ve never had before. So what if you spit it out, you’ve tried it, you’ve managed the fear and you’ve shown courage.
- Sign up to a class that you would never do at the gym. Use the comfort of your own home to do something that you would normally be too nervous, self-conscious or too busy to do. This small tweak in your experiences might open up a new sense of opportunity of all the other things you could try and embrace.
- Stand up for yourself. If you are in a position/organisation where you don’t feel that people are getting the best out of you and you want to give more or give differently. Be brave, embrace the fear and show courage. You might just end up with a promotion out of it!
Write a list of the things that you are scared of doing. It could be speaking to that employee about their time keeping, the presentation on monthly figures that you now have to do on Zoom or even taking your first ever run. Write them down and pick one of them to do. Then break it down.
First step, put your workout clothes on.
Second step, step outside your front door.
Third step, run for 10 seconds.
And if you want, that’s you done. You’ve shown yourself you can do it, you might want to do more, you might want to do it better but you’ve shown yourself (and others around you) that you have the courage to overcome the obstacles in front of us.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
― Winston S. Churchill
Churchill was a great orator. Listen to him and then listen to yourself saying those words out-loud. Courage is about continuing on every day, trying to make each day that bit better than the one before.
Once you’ve managed to do this, you are ready to continue navigating this Crisis. We have now reviewed all the 7Cs of Crisis and we would love to hear your thoughts!
Be brave, embrace the fear and show courage.