Courage is the Best Leverage

Whereever you are at in life, you are probably under-leveraged. Unless you are in a very elite club that trades on the dreams of 3rd-world factory schemes, your financial position is probably exposed to a large number of unforseen risks. Anybody recall 2007-2008? I wonder how many of you believe in the possibility of a worse depression than that, within the next 5-10 years.

This article is not about money, which is really a symbol that’s traded in for other things. Besides, you can always run out of money. You can never run out of courage. If you were to get rich, and then settle down and decide to relax on a beach for the rest of your life, you would ultimately be basking on the deck of a sinking ship. In a sense, you would be poorer than the immigrant who just arrived in America washing dishes and determined to get his family out of a one-room shack and out of poverty. He’s got a special kind of leverage -- would you agree?

You are your greatest investment. But it takes energy to invest in yourself. And it means you have to do things for yourself and your family that may not pay off for a long while. You must handle critics and peers and family who may question your going against the grain of conventional work ethic or personal development. Said another way, it takes COURAGE to invest in yourself. It’s a high price to pay -- but it cost you nothing except energy.

Ladies and gentlemen, this commodity called courage is in short supply, and it has been for a long time. Why did the Middle Ages last an entire 1,000 years? There were 9,999 peasants for every 1 member of the royal family (approximately). Instead of revolting, they saved their pennies.

Your greatest asset is not your bank account. It’s not even your job title or your career. How willing are you to take on the next challenge in your life? Rather than waiting for a challenge to present itself, how willing are you to actually go out and find a big, juicy problem and solve it? How willing are you to imagine something, like a better world, and then work to turn that into a reality?

Perhaps it’s old-fashioned chivalry, but courage is unlikely to ever go out of style. Whenever you’ve used it, you’ve probably felt like a supernatural being -- because you are! Human beings can do amazing things. The secret sauce called courage is inevitably there when we do.

So where are you creating courage in your life, and where can you create even more? 

Dave Escamilla