Often, we feel very small in front of the courage that some people can show. We tell ourselves that we are not made of the same metal and that bravery is perhaps a matter of nature. There are natural tendencies in our character, sometimes introverted, sometimes fiery, but courage can be developed like most character qualities.
Courage means overcoming our own fears. So someone who has many fears has many opportunities to be courageous. All he or she has to do is choose one of his or her fears each day and take on the challenge of facing it. Of course, some fears are bigger to overcome than others, so it’s best to start with the fears we can handle and work up to them. The more we are used to facing our fears, the easier it will be to overcome the following obstacles. This will create a kind of strength, a momentum that will help us in all the other ambitious projects we will have. This is why it is more than necessary to get rid of the negative influences that can sometimes stop this dynamic. It is necessary to know how to spot the people who could play this role in our environment and to keep them at a distance so that they do not sap our energy, whether it is by the jealousy that they feel towards us or the fear that they show.
In order to face our enemies, our fears, we must be able to identify them as such. There is nothing like making a list of the fears we have, from the smallest to the biggest. Then, these fears represent challenges that must be overcome one by one so that we become more and more confident in our abilities with each victory. Defeats teach valuable lessons, but victories increase self-esteem.
There are of course many forms of courage and our environment will tend to expose us to one of these forms (physical, emotional, intellectual etc). The idea is to be able to test ourselves regularly in order to progress in one of these dimensions.
The common point of all courage is the effort and the resistance to a form of suffering. Once we make these two things an important dimension of our daily life, we would be able to free ourselves from our chains and live our life fully.
