07 May Courage and Cowardice
We’re talking about courage and cowardice in leadership.
Christopher Hart here with Transforming Lives Coaching and Consulting. For those that don’t know me I am a coach and a consultant in the area and field of organizational and leadership development as well as the psychology of success in peak performance. And so we’re continuing our Lead Strong Leadership series where we look to increase leadership impact and influence amongst ourselves and other people whether or not we’re leading ourselves or we’re leading others in their business, our home, or even other environments like churches, organizations, et cetera.
So today’s topic we’re talking about courage and cowardice; and when we talk about courage and cowardice we’re talking about courage and cowardice in leadership. And so we’re going to dig into that today and we’re going to look at both sides of the coin with regard to courage like what is courage, what is cowardice, what causes it. how do we persevere through and what is the outcome look for each, because courage and cowardice are a choice, and what we know about life and definitely leadership is that life is choice. Your life and how it’s defined now and in the future is all defined by your choices, because your choices are going to determine your decisions and your decisions are going to define your destiny. So what we’re looking at here are two choices in leadership, you have a choice to either be courageous or you have a choice to be led, or here’s how I actually put it, you have a choice to lead by courage or lead by fear or cowardice. And so just understand that whichever one you choose in leadership they have completely different outcomes, so you get to determine which outcome you desire for yourself when leading for yourself, your organization, other people, et cetera. So let’s jump into this.
What even creates the element of whether or not a leader has to choose courage or cowardice is the one thing that I say really makes leadership the most difficult, which is fear. Fear I think is the one ingredient that makes leadership the most difficult for many people, why is that? Because leadership is a big unknown, you’re dealing with people, when you talk about leadership it’s about leading people, it’s about inspiring, empowering, influencing people. And people are made up in all different size, shapes, colors, psychologies, et cetera, that they’re the biggest unknown variable. And when you understand the psychology of the brain, whenever there’s an unknown, the brain’s whole job is not to make you happy, it’s not to make you successful, it’s to keep you in a known zone, and that’s part of the homeostasis process within your brain to make sure that you’re out of stress and you’re in what’s called the “comfort zone.”
And that’s why so many people get trapped in that particular zone of comfort because that’s what your brain’s designed to do, it’s a survival mechanism. And as great as it is for you because it will get you out of a lot of trouble if you’re ever in a very stressful situation, but it also prevents you from massive success because massive success requires you to move past the known and into the unknown and as soon as the brain experiences unknown it’s going to create fears, and the fears are designed to move you back out of the stress and into the known. So as a human being on this journey of success and definitely in leadership you’re actually battling this one thing that’s going to prevent you from being successful in anything you do and most definitely in leadership.
Courage is recognizing that fear exists, Cowardice is where fear controls you.
So what we have to understand is that in leadership when you’re going to lead yourself to greater goals, you’re going to lead other people, or the thought of even hiring other people, as soon as something becomes an unknown your brain is going to create a fear. And a fear is nothing more than a thought that keeps you out of stress and into your comfort zone which is the known. And what tends to happen is that fear literally paralyzes and cripples leaders, and it literally forces them into that label of cowardice. And so one of the first steps that we as leaders need to do is we need to recognize that’s a reality in our lives and in our leadership journeys is that fear is going to be present.
This whole no-fear thing that some marketing ploy 10/12/15 years ago, you know coaches and whoever, motivational speakers that are out there like “No fear this,” or “Be the no-fear success,” that’s a load of crap because fear is part of the human biology per se, because homeostasis is from biology, so if you have no fear you’re dead. So you have to recognize fear is going to be a living element within you, and that’s where the courage comes in because courage, what exactly is courage? Courage is recognizing that fear exists; understanding what it is; and pushing through anyway. So when a fear comes up, which is nothing more than the brain recognizing an unknown that could cause stress, and it’s going to give you a known to keep you in that comfort zone.
So courage vs cowardice is about understanding that cowardice is where fear controls you; courage is where you control the situation because you recognize the fear, you understand fear is present because it’s part of your psychology and biology and you don’t allow the fear to control you that you as a leader, whether you’re leading yourself or other people, you’re going to push through. And the interesting part about your psychology as a human and a leader is you get to control your thoughts, you get to control whether or not you believe that fear. You see fear and faith cannot co-exist, they’re both elements of your imagination, they don’t exist, you get to choose which one controls you.
Do you have faith in that which created you? Do you have faith in yourself? Do you have faith in your abilities to succeed and achieve, which in turn is going to allow you the opportunity to push into the courage zone and push through that unknown to make it a known, or are you just going to submit to fear? And here’s why, there’s a couple things that I have…there’s a couple of notes that I wrote on this topic I want to share with you guys.
Fear tells us a lot about people, it tells us a lot about people and it tells us a lot about leaders based off of which one they’re going to choose on this journey. Are they going to choose cowardice or are they going to choose courage? See there’s a lot of coward-like leaders out there, and it’s not so much to be judgmental as it is to understand that fear is controlling them. Fear is controlling their inability to grow their organization. Fear is controlling them from making the decisions they need to make in order to create that breakthrough in themselves, in their organization, for other people. They’re more scared of fear, or they’re more focused on fear than they are on their own abilities to be courageous.
Courage and cowardice are both contagious, and what that means is both are going to manifest and both are triggered elements, they’re programmed elements that are triggered by a response, or they trigger a response… excuse me, based off of your programming. So whether you choose courage or you choose cowardice understand that whatever you choose you’ve programmed that in along the way. The great thing is whatever you program in you can program out and you can override, just like a computer, your brain is no different. The computer and its central processing unit was created exactly how the brain operates, so it becomes a choice moving forward. If courage… or excuse me, if cowardice and fear has controlled you in your life and in your leadership journey you can make a decision today to change that just based off your decisions. Because understand, whichever one you allow to control you now is going to manifest itself over time; and the more that it manifests the more deeply it roots in your programming and the more it will control you. It’s almost as if it’s a vicious cycle, and that cycle will not break until you make the choice… that’s why I say life is choice, until you make the choice to choose differently and make different decisions; to choose courageous decisions versus cowardice decisions, why? Because courage and cowardice are contagious.
Here’s the thing about Fear.
Fear. Here’s the thing about fear and courage… cowardice and courage, without courage we’re slaves to our own insecurity and possessiveness. We actually… what that is we become slaves to thoughts that really don’t even exist, why? Because if you think about it, I think…I believe that with leaders the one thing that holds them back from being courageous is not so much the outcome but people’s opinion of what the outcome’s going to be. Because here’s what we know about fear, there’s only two fears that you’re organically born with, fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. Don’t believe me? Go take some pots and pans and cymbals and crash them by a little baby and see them freak out; or just take a baby and throw it up in the air and it’ll start floundering.
Every other fear is programmed in over life. Fear of inadequacy, fear of failure, and quite frankly fear of success, are all of the three common fears that many people experience, and really where those fears come from, I was just thinking… Judy says “Was just thinking that my fear comes from others’ opinions.” That’s exactly where it comes from right, because if you live for other people’s opinions you’ll die to their opinions. If you live for what other people think, people don’t really care about you guys, the only ones that really care about you are maybe the ones that have an immediate impact on your lives like your parents, your siblings, your children, and quite frankly sometimes in life you’re starting to see even they don’t really care. So it’s your life, you have to live for it, you have to live for the outcomes not people’s opinions. Its outcome living versus opinionated living, because understand this, without that courage you are slave to people’s opinions, and that’s where we say that we’re slaves to our own insecurities because we’re not secure about ourselves and our abilities that we’re more worried about people’s opinions and the possessive nature within that than we are about our abilities and how secure we are, and who we are and who God made us to be. God made us to be unique, stop trying to be like other people. God made you unique, stop living for their opinions. God made you for a purpose, live for that outcome not other people’s opinions.
A leader without courage will never ever let go of the familiar because the familiar is the known, and if you don’t have courage, which is the recognition of fear, and saying “Screw that, I’m pushing through anyway because I’ve got God on my side; I’ve got my own securities; I know my abilities; I’m all powerful because God lives within me;” like when that starts to become your psychology, part of your mind and your heart, then courage gets to be a part of your decision-making process. But without that you’ll always stick to the known and you’ll live in that trap of what we call the “comfort zone,” that’s why people get stuck in this comfort zone. Jim Collins wrote a great book, Good Is The Enemy of Great, good is your comfort zone and people become conditioned that good is good. Good sucks people, pardon my French but good sucks because it’s the enemy of great, and in order to be great you must embrace courage. Judy says in the comments “Some may think that my postings are narcissistic…” I don’t think they’re narcissistic, they’re yours, you are who you are, I love you anyway; “… but it’s actually me facing my fears and insecurities, embracing the suck.” Absolutely.
We did a video on embracing the suck Judy, I hope you watched it. Maybe that’s where you got the terminology, if not, you probably got it from someone else, that’s okay too. But embrace the suck because the suck pushes you through, it’s recognizing, and that’s courage. I recognize this journey is going to suck, I recognize there’s going to be some pain, I recognize there’s going to be some unknowns but I’m going to embrace the suck and I’m going to choose courage because I’m not going to be enslaved to my fears; and I know if I don’t choose courage I’ll always be stuck in that comfort zone. And I’ve never seen someone write a book, speak on stage, or speak about success happening in this zone of comfort, never have.
Who do you want to be? You want to be a comfort-zone person who just live a life of average and one that lives for the opinions of others and die to what their two opinions are? Or do you want to be great? Because if you want to be great you have to choose courage. And understand this… we’ll wrap it up here, lack of courage will sabotage a leader, whether you’re leading yourself, you’re leading your family, you’re leading your church, you’re leading an organization, you’re leading something that has an impact on other people’s lives, what you choose will manifest greater in your life and will manifest in your followers. And if you choose cowardice over courage it will sabotage you leading your own life, it will sabotage you leading churches, it will sabotage you leading other women, other men, other organizations, and the organization that you currently lead, and talent will either leave you or they’ll become conditioned to fear which in turn will make it an even greater sabotage lifecycle.
So here’s what we can do…here’s what we need to understand, courage will empower, it will empower people, why? Because it gives them the ability and authority to do that which they desire to accomplish. When you become a coura… when you choose courage over cowardice you show other people it’s okay to face your fears. Quit being that leader that needs to be so strong that, “Hey fear I’m not afraid of anything.” That’s a load of crap. Be the leader that’s authentic, that can show people say “You know what, I have fears and the reason why I’m saying that is because I’m going to choose courage over allowing that fear to control me. Even if the outcome is not the one that I like I can make a choice to make it better and fix it.”
Screw this fail forward stuff guys, how about we understand that forward comes from recognition of fear and choosing courage over cowardice, because understand, it’s a choice. So from this point forward here’s what I’m going to challenge you with, when fear shows up, define it, what is this fear? Is this a fear that’s trying to keep me in a comfort zone? Is this a fear that’s trying to cause me to live for other people’s opinions? Because I know fear is not something of God, fear does not exist in God’s realm, faith does; and when you believe in Him and you believe in yourself and you believe yourself that God created you to live out His design for your life in it, what you’ll come to understand is that you’re going to choose courage, and when you choose courage you grow as a leader and you empower other people.
Guys thank you for joining me today, feel free to visit our website, www.transforminglivescoaching.com. Remember one thing, God loves you, so do I. Have a great rest your day. Lead strong, choose courage and forget fear. Have a great rest your day, take care.
About the author:
Over the course of 8 years, Christopher Hart went from an enlisted Private First Class to a Commissioned Officer-Captain. In 2005, Christopher chose to move on from his military career to focus on starting a family and embarking in the world of entrepreneurship. Christopher’s passion is now working to help others be the BEST version of themselves and helping them Lead others to the same!
To learn more about Christopher Hart or to get in touch with him regarding a coaching program you can email him at Chris@TransformingLivesCoaching.com
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