Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
It is normal to feel afraid when confronted with variables that are daunting… but what is it that creates courage?
We are instinctively programmed with the lizard brain “fight or flight syndrome” when confronted by stimuli that gives us cause to be afraid. This self-preserving trait keeps us alive in the face of circumstances that threaten to harm or destroy us.
Conversely, courage is learned either through example, teaching by others or through personal trial and error.
Courage is a quality that is slowly aggregated by necessity, as one of our tools for survival.
When we, as infants, learn to crawl, and then to walk, we are exposed to one of our very first moments of learning courage. At that moment, we are beginning our journey of becoming autonomous. As we self-direct our own paths of travel, we learn how to traverse territory, as well as what may happen if we try to walk prematurely, and then fall down.
The willingness to rise upon having fallen, is our first large stepping stone to a life of courageous moves.
Through trial and error, we build those early building blocks, and as we get older, courage is steeped heavily within us through literature, media and stories. Each spelling out new chapters of how others overcame dangerous adversity and rose to evolve into whom they would ultimately become.
So what specific experiences had a young Winston Churchill lived through personally that might have given him ample ammunition to be courageous on September 15, 1940 when large squadrons of the Luftwaffe bombed London in the Battle of Britain?
Churchill suffered from being bipolar, and had to cope with significant depression, regardless of threats to the nation he had sworn to defend and protect. As he was making decisions surrounding how the RAF and the Royal Navy would fend off the current Nazi onslaught, he was unquestionably summoning all of the courage he could muster, in order to quell the fear he must have felt deep within.
We are all put to tests in life in which our courage is summoned and ultimately tested. It is an almost inescapable chapter of life. Perhaps we will not know how courageous we can possibly be, until we are put to the test. When that test arrives on your own doorstep, you may be surprised at the courageous behavior you are capable of.
43 years ago today, on April 1, 1981, an intruder put a gun to my head, in my own home, and told me that I was going to be executed in the next 5 seconds. I learned a lot about my own courage that day. They were lessons I would never forget.
If you are in a position of fear, it is a normal reaction, so do not be ashamed of feeling that way. Keep top of mind that the pathway through fear is always courage and the sooner you are able to summon that within you, the sooner you are going to escape from the fear and be delivered to safety once again.
Happy Monday!
Brian Weiner 