I have coined the term “courageability” to remind you that you may not have realized. Courage is an ability. It is the practiced ability to move past your fears. You either use it or you lose it.
Did you know that you can first fail to face up to something and then feel fear afterwards? It’s not always the case that first you feel the fear and then shrink from facing something unpleasant or distasteful. Maybe it’s just laziness or apathy. Whatever it is, it can happen that the emotion of fear is adopted as a reason why you didn’t face up to something to begin with. It is often NOT the reason you avoided doing something in the first place.
Courage is doing what you’ve got to do, when you’ve got to do it. It is with willingness to face something without flinching. Notice: the first step to handling anything is gaining the courageability to simply face it. Then you can decide what needs to be done. And then do it. You have to exercise your courage muscle or it will atrophy and waste away.
Courage is not the absence of fear or insecurity. It’s being willing to face what needs to be done and going ahead in spite of your fear.
Never let your life be led by fear, worry or dread. Fear is self-limiting. The need for safety keeps the doors shut when courage opens them. Fear is a natural emotion. Everyone experiences fear at some time. The only difference is the size of the challenge. Fear diminishes your willingness and ability to face anything. Fear is hiding, avoiding, evading, anxiety and apprehension. All of these negative emotions stop you from growing.
Courage is the reverse; it increases the size of the obstacle you can tackle with impunity; it is nerve, guts, valor, daring and audacity. It is also the open sesame to happiness, success and expansion. Never fear to be courageous.
Eleanor Roosevelt said, “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’”
Have you retreated to your comfort zone so often that your life is ruled by avoiding fear? If so, begin an exercise regime: Stretch your courageability muscle every day; seek out circumstances that allow you to exercise it at very opportunity. Soon you will find yourself expanding without effort or fear and actually inviting new things to test your mettle.
Only those things which you cannot face will control you. Face your fears and they will no longer control you.
Exercise your “courageability” everyday, at every opportunity. It will grow and your fears will fade away like the shadows that they are.
daniel w. Jacobs
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