What you think is courage is only courage "standing on one leg"

 

I often hear the complaint that choosing courage is hard. In fact, when you fully understand the distinction of courage, you will find that choosing courage is easy and the more you choose it, the easier it gets.

 

Courage includes four legs (four cornerstones) in order to qualify as full courage. The reason we often believe choosing courage is hard is that we are trying to choose courage using only one or two of its three legs.

 

The four legs

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As a reminder and memory aid for the four legs, remember these four letters: EHAH.

 

EHAH!

 

1. E = Embrace and breathe into the fear.

2. H = Honor and appreciate yourself for the courage you’re about to choose.

3. A = Act (take the action, or sometimes the non-action).

4. H = Honor and appreciate yourself for the courage you chose, regardless of the outcome.

 

Understanding each of these four legs

 

E = Embrace and breathe into the fear (leg 1)

 

Most often, the best way to do this is to take some very deep breaths and speak/shout (slowly, silly, and loudly, given the environment) “Holy cats and jeepers creepers, I'm so scared that...!” Add your own ending according to the fear, as in, "...I'm so scared that they are going to be angry with me!"

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Continue taking these deep breaths and repeating “Holy cats and jeepers creepers...” until you can feel the energy of the fear flowing through you, instead of blocked up inside of you. Do this a minimum of four times and up to eleven times or more, if needed. Even in a public place, you can always do deep breathing and say the "Holy cats...” under your breath. It will still have good effect.

 

Consider the “FOE” formula: Fear + Oxygen = Energy and excitement.

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See Undoing fear.

 

H = Honor and appreciate yourself for the courage you’re about to choose (leg 2)

 

Most often, it is not the adult you who is frightened. It is your five-year-old within you who is frightened. From an adult perspective, the thing to be frightened of is not taking the action. But from the five-year-old perspective, the idea of taking the action stimulates fear, fear that we habitually resist, creating Dufear.

 

Get in touch with that five-year-old. Use a young picture of yourself if that is helpful. Then say to him or her: “I can see and feel that you are frightened. It’s okay to feel frightened. And I admire and appreciate you for accepting and embracing the fear and for thinking of taking the action anyway.”

 

Keep expressing this admiration and appreciation in different ways until you can see and feel that he accepts and appreciates your admiration, honor, and respect.

 

A = Act (leg 3)

 

Only after the first two legs of courage have been chosen do you proceed to the third leg, the leg of action.

 

The actions of courage can take many forms.

 

• The action may be a physical action: picking up a package that a stranger dropped to give it to them.

• The action may be a request: asking for a salary raise or a date.

• The action may be saying “no”: declining an invitation to be with a person you really don’t want to spend time with.

• The action may be sharing your thoughts or feelings: “I really like you” or “I noticed that I automatically felt hurt when you said that.”

• The action may be just listening deeply, without defense or trying to argue back.

• The action may be keeping silent: not opening your mouth to try to control something you can’t control or that you will most likely worsen by your attempt to control.

 

H = Honor and appreciate yourself for the courage you just chose (leg 4)

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H = Honor and appreciate yourself for the courage you’ve just chosen. Again, get in touch with your five-year-old, honoring and appreciating him or her for the courage they just chose.

    

Do this regardless of the outcome. Whether or not you got the desired result does not affect the importance of the fact that you choose courage. Prioritize that over whether you got the result you intended. Most often, we can only influence the chances of getting the result. But we always have some access regarding the choice of courage. 

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Take your main focus off the result

 

Put your main focus on the process of choosing courage. Not only will taking action be easier this way, but you will also feel better about yourself. And, in the big picture,  you're likely to get even more desired results!

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Add to that: you will be building your "courage muscle" so that choosing courage gets progressively easier.

 

EHAH!

 

Embrace, honor, act, and honor.

 

Each of the four legs of choosing courage is essential and important in order to make the process of choosing courage fully effective, consistent, and easy.

 

Start experimenting today by rigorously including all four legs in each choice of courage, whether that choice is big or small.

 

Notice how this makes choosing courage much easier!

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