This Young Professional Challenge is all about Courage. Courage fits into our self belief toolkit, it requires you to be motivated, have resilience and keep a positive attitude even when things get scary.
What is courage?
Courage can often be misunderstood as being strong, we are talking about being brave. Being brave to make new decisions and take new opportunities that come your way. It isn’t about being physically strong or putting yourself in risky situations but it IS about weighing up your options and deciding to take a chance on something even if you haven’t done it before.
How do you show you have courage?
Courageous people don’t fight lions or fly alongside aeroplanes (as exciting as those things might seem!) instead courageous people:
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- Choose to act even if they are scared. Fear is a perfectly normal emotion that everybody feels. Fear isn’t a sign of weaknesses but it is your brain telling you to be cautious. This could be taking charge of a team for the first time, trying a new sport, leaving your town to study or live elsewhere or quitting your job and finding something completely new. All of these things might make you feel scared. Weighing up the pros and cons and what you are really scared of will help. You need to work out if there is any real danger, will you hurt yourself or someone else? Is what you are doing at the expense of someone else’s feelings? If so it sounds like you are right to be scared and that your actions might not be for the best. If you are scared of failing or because you don’t know what might happen next then chances are it is worth taking the risk.
- Try new things. Trying new things not only helps teach your new skills but it gets your mind used to not being sure what’s coming next. You don’t have to be the best at all the new things you try but giving new things a go can help you in surprising ways (like how dancing can help you problem solve!). You can start off small and try taking on a new role in a team, or try a new hobby – building up to bigger actions when you are ready.
- Keep going when things set them back. We’ve looked at resilience a lot (you can catch up here), hurdles and problems crop up when we least expect but keeping on going is a sign of your resilient. It shows courage to get up and keep going, it can seem far easier to give up than keep on going sometimes.
- Do what’s right. When all of your friends are taking an action you know isn’t right, perhaps they are making fun of someone or they aren’t paying attention in school or work, it takes someone courageous to stand up and do the right thing. It isn’t easy to go against what your friends are doing but it is important that you remain true to yourself, if the fun being had is at the expense of someone else or your future the chances are you won’t always find it so funny!
Young Professional Challenge:
You can keep your superhero cape on the back of your door, we want to start simple with having courage. Think about what being courageous means to you in your current situation, are you choosing to act when you scared, are you trying new things and how quickly are you bouncing back after a challenge is put your way?
Set yourself a courage goal to achieve in the next 3 months. This can be trying something new, it can be swapping your usual team role or trying something completely new – start where you are comfortable and start building yourself up to take on bigger challenges.
