7 steps to find courage in difficult times

Courage is “action in the face of fear”, therefore, without fear there can be no courage.

Others have talked about how you reduce the amount of fear. The idea is that if you feel less fear, you’ll be more capable of action.

This is true – by reducing fear, you’ll have the capacity to act more rationally. However, let me offer you another strategy, which is through the emotion rather than around it.

the greater the fear, the greater the opportunity to learn how to be courageous

Essentially, this process involves sitting with discomfort and feeling it. The more thoroughly and nuanced you are able to experience your own emotions, the quicker you will move through them. By the way – the capacity to experience fear – and not to react to it – is a by-product of meditation.

How to Tame Fear and Build Courage

1. Find a quiet place to sit, relax yourself, and become stiller.

2. Conjure up the situation in which you are experiencing fear.

3. Now carefully scan your body noticing how the fear is manifesting physically. For example, I get a tightness in my diaphragm, and I tend to clench my jaw, and squint my eyes. It will be different for you. Notice how fear turns up in your body.

4. Relax into these feelings. I know that sounds counter-intuitive – but really “breathe” into them. Let yourself feel every single nuance. Does the physical sensation or feeling have a rhythm? Is it dense or sparse? Is it hot or cold? Where do you feel it? What does it feel like?

5. What other feelings are present? Todd Kashdan, the US psychologist, recently did some research where he discovered that the more subtle emotions you can identify – the better your chance to recover from them. So: what other emotions are present? Anger at being in a situation? Hope? Despair? Name them all.

6. Now, relax and ease the feelings by physically relaxing the parts of the body where you are experiencing the emotion. Imagine them being soft, or warm, move a little and release them.

7. Repeat until you feel your feelings around situation easing.

Notes:

1. Once you get the hang of this you would do this process “in situ” – that is in the actual situation without having to stop and sit still. Stopping and sitting still, might not work when you’re threatened with a gun, a bear, a car accident, or that angry colleague.

2. Keep an eye on your breath throughout – long slow out breaths will help you to soothe your parasympathetic nervous system, and reduce your reaction to the fear.

3. You can also try other techniques such imagining the fear shrinking, or reducing, and yourself becoming braver in the face of it.

If all these instructions are too detailed – the main thing to remember is to be present with what you’re experiencing emotionally, and the best way to do that is through your physicality. Trying to do it all through your mind, runs the danger of you getting swept up in the emotion and overcome by fear.

This technique is not unlike what the Navy Seals use to help them deal with frightening situations.

Fear is Normal & Useful

And finally, fear is a normal and useful emotion – make friends with it, and it will have less control over you. :-)

What makes you afraid and how do you deal with it? Drop me a comment and I will send you a copy of the Resilience Compass (c)