5 easy steps for mustering up more courage

Ever wimp out? Leave a situation wishing you’d done or said something different? We all have. If you feel like you lack courage, it’s not due to a personal fault. Protecting your physical and emotional personal well-being is an innate drive that can override your goals.

“Humans are wired for safety, for certainty, for shoring up the status quo, and not for risking it,” says Dr. Margie Warrell, author of The Courage Gap: 5 Steps to Braver Action. “Our instinct for self-preservation in the short term has always been strong.”

Our environment has changed since the caveman days when physical threats were frequent and real. What feeds our fears today is the digitalization of the world with a never-ending news cycle at our fingertips. The pandemic also kept people isolated from other perspectives, creating an unwillingness to be open to other points of view.

“Anxiety is higher than it’s ever been,” says Warrell. “We are being bombarded consistently with reasons that make us feel anxious. The algorithms are wired to fuel a sense of insecurity. When people feel less secure, it impacts who they vote for and what they buy. The digital landscape that we’re in is a digital fear economy.”

Conquering fear takes courage, which Warrell says has two core dimensions. The first is the regulation and management of fear. And the second is the willingness to act in the presence of fear and risk. To let go of your inner wimp and step into courage, Warrell recommends taking five steps:

1. Focus on what you fear

Often, our attention focuses on what we don’t want or what we’re afraid will happen. Instead, we need to identify the highest intention for our current situation and for the long term.

“Focusing on what we want requires not letting our fear govern our decisions,” says Warrell. “Unless we’re clear about what we want, fear will govern our decisions, because that’s the default wiring.”

2. Rescript

Humans are wired for narrative. We tell ourselves stories about the world, our situation, and our beliefs, says Warrell.

“We create operating systems for the actions that we take, and we’re often living within belief systems that are limiting,” she says. “They’re fueling doubt and anxiety, and they’re short-changing our future.”

Instead, step back and look at what are the “vital lies” you tell yourself that give you an excuse not to take action and to keep playing it too safe. What has kept you scared, stuck, or too safe?

3. Breathe into courage

The next step is to connect to the courage that exists within you as well as in our relationships and social networks.

“A lot of people walk around from the neck up,” says Warrell. “They intellectualize things, but they can’t feel things fully. So, this is about transforming the physiology of fear into the psychology of courage. It’s learning to regulate fear in our nervous system, embodying courage in how we walk and talk and show up.”

The quickest way to regulate fear is through breathwork. Five mindful breaths can reset your nervous systems, allowing you to respond with greater calm.

Warrell also recommends connecting to your external environment and people who embolden you to be braver. “We know that fear is a contagious emotion,” she says. “Often people are in an environment where people around them are just continually stoking their fear and cycling away courage. Fear is contagious and so is bravery.”

4. Step into discomfort

You can’t grow until you’re willing to embrace being uncomfortable. “We have to reset our relationship with discomfort and when we do, we turn fear into a catalyst for action,” says Warrell.

“Practice the one brave minute maxim,” she says. “Give yourself permission to feel really uncomfortable for a minute. When we do, we strengthen our neural pathway. We strengthen and expand our capacity to take action amid our fear, and that makes it easier for the future.”

Courage is like a muscle that grows stronger with use. It also grows weaker when we don’t use it. “People that are constantly living in their comfort zone, actually lose confidence over time,” says Warrell. “If you meet someone who’s continually been doing things that are a little bit scary, and continually been stretching themselves, they’re going to be far more confident.”

5. Rise when you fall

Finally, mine through the nuggets of gold that failures hold for us so we can move forward smarter, says Warrell. “We can never control the output of our actions,” she says. “If you’re trying something new, there’s no guarantee that you’re going to get the result you want.”

But when you are willing to look at what went wrong and learn the lessons, you’re able to move forward and take smarter actions that are going to elevate the outcomes that you get.

“Unless you’re willing to look at failure and never let it go to waste, then you could end up just continually repeating the same mistakes again and again,” says Warrell.

Why courage is so important

As humans, we thrive when we’re growing. Growth requires that you step into your courage gap, taking action even though you’re afraid or feeling vulnerable.

“We humans are pretty good at putting ourselves in the shoes of an hour from now and a day from now, if we do something brave,” says Warrell. “What we’re lousy at is putting ourselves in the shoes of us five or 10 years from now and accurately assessing the hidden price that I have paid because I let fear of what could go wrong determine the actions that I take. That’s because our brains are twice as sensitive to what could go wrong versus what could go right.”

Without taking intelligent risks, you put yourself at risk of regret. “People regret far more the risks that they didn’t take than the risks that they did take,” says Warrell. “Even when they took a risk and it didn’t pay off, they still learned something. They grew. They realized they were more resilient. . . . The difference between the life we’re living and the unlived life that we have within us, is closing the courage gap.”