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How To Find Enough Courage To Fulfill Your Potential
Churchill wrote, “Courage is considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it, all others depend on.”
Let me be blunt.
You have many goals and unlimited potential that you want to fulfill. You naturally want to be happy during your lifetime and do the things that bring you success.
The challenge is that the more potential you have, the more obstacles you’re likely to face and the more problems you’ll have to solve.
And if you ever want a chance in hell of sailing to the promised land and achieve all your goals, you need something more than good luck to power through your life’s journey. And that is courage!
But here is the painful truth – most people are afraid of many things, not that fear is a bad thing, in fact, often we need fear to get through life, prevent injury, and guard against financial mistakes.
(Learn ways to prevent fear from getting the best of you)
You might ask, what’s the difference between a person who has courage and a coward?
Well. Let’s get into that.
The real difference is that courageous people discipline themselves to confront, eliminate, and act in spite of the fear, whilst a coward allows himself to be dominated and controlled by fear.
Someone once wrote that:
[Tweet “The difference between a hero and a coward is that the hero sticks with it five minutes longer.”]
Most of the time, it’s not that what you are working on doesn’t work, or your goals are not great, it’s because you have failed to act like a hero toward your goals, you know, just like the hero did, you have refused to stick with it five minutes longer.
Become the one who uses fear in a positive way, and you’ll be amazed to discover you do have the courage to keep moving forward.
You just have to decide what you want and who you’re willing to be to get it.
(Discover the beliefs that hold you back)
The good news is, if you want to learn how to use fear in a positive way, build enough courage and confidence, transform your life, and achieve all your dreams, here are some ideas that will teach you exactly how to achieve that.
1.Ask Yourself These Questions Before Doing Anything
Chances are, you have a great idea that could quickly pave your way to success, but lately your thoughts have been holding you back from taking action on that idea.
You ponder questions like:
What if things don’t go well?
Will this be enough to allow me pay my bills or even better, make me rich?
What if I lose my money and have to declare bankruptcy?
Often the risk attached to our goals will hold us back; but here is the ugly truth, great goals come with great risk. And the decision to determine the extent of that risk is left to you.
But if you want to find the courage to get your task completed, no matter the rate of the risk attached to it, here’s the four questions you should be asking yourself before moving forward on anything you are afraid of.
What is the best thing that can happen if I do this?
What is the worst thing that can happen if I do this?
What is the best thing that can happen if I don’t do it?
What is the worst thing that can happen if I don’t do it?
Write down whatever task you’re trying to get done that is scaring you silly, then ask yourself the question listed above based on the task.
Write down your answer to each question, now you should know if the task is worth doing or not.
Ready to learn more? Let’s proceed.
2.Deal Positively With Your Fears
If you ever want to find enough courage to fulfill all of your potential, you’ll need to deal positively with your fears.
Without a doubt, the fear of rejection can hold you back.
Consider this. Because you’re afraid of rejection you abandon a task, especially if a task requires an open conversation where you feel that your voice won’t be heard, or you don’t have the confidence to speak out.
The fear of having a proposal rejected, or speaking to your audience or your customers is just one example. There might be other things you are quite afraid of, but this one is powerful enough to dominate your life and set you back.
Let today be the day, that you learn to deal positively with any sort of rejection. Expect something wonderful to come out of adversity.
Find ways to become more comfortable when speaking in front of a crowd.
Take a course that will teach you how to speak confidently, either with people or your customers.
Even though you might be rejected don’t stop trying. As you liberate yourself from fear you give yourself a greater chance of fulfilling your dreams. And you deserve this.
3.Develop These Two Types Of Courage
Now that you know how to deal with the most important fear you might encounter in life, you will now need to develop two types of courage to help you to obtain the motivation to achieve the goals you’ve set for yourself.
The first type of courage is the quality of vision. You must have the quality vision of where you want to guide your life and where you want to be at some point in the future.
The second type of courage is to fulfill the quality of vision by doing whatever is necessary to achieve your goals.
These are the two types of courage you need to be successful in life. You must build the momentum to launch, take some important action, and take a leap of faith in achieving your goals.
Ask successful people and they will tell you that they were always looking at the courage someone else had to achieve a goal even if there was no guarantee of success; indeed, with a high possibility of failure.
(Learn the habits of happy successful people)
Start by identifying your three biggest fears in life right now, what are they?
Use the above ideas to answer every question that might be giving you a sleepless night. Start using these answers in every sphere of your life, and then take every possible positive action you can take.
Learn to develop a contagious patience and the ability to hang in there when you’re not seeing any positive result; like the hero, learn how to hang in five minutes longer.
If you want to transform your life, this is the way. Remember, “Denial is not a river in Egypt,” it is a negative force in our lives.
Wonderfully inspiring post Cephas. I do think that using terms like ‘courage’ and ‘coward’ are a little misleading and emotive. All one ever sees is the outcome of one’s actions, not how much was needed to get to that action. we don’t all start out with the same advantages in terms of genes, upbringing, positive experiences, role models etc, so someone who may appear a ‘coward’ who fails to achieve an action someone else aces easily may be a hell of a lot braver than they seems. Otherwise, great post.
Hi Mark…thank for stopping by and sharing your words of wisdom. What I find so interesting about language is how a word has different connotations for different people. We are a gathering of impressions that we’ve picked up since childhood and these impressions create our tendencies of thought, feeling and action. And of course create the way we see our world. It’s such an awesome journey. 🙂
Thank’s for your input Mark,
Here’s a simple definition of coward that work for me: “a person who is contemptibly lacking in the courage to do or endure dangerous or unpleasant things.”
I totally agree with Elle, I think a word has different connotations for different people.
Glad you enjoy the post.
Enjoyed reading your article on courage, Cephas. I have found that courage comes into play in my life when change is needed or desired. It is challenging to get out of our comfort zones, and it can be emotional to weather the ups and downs of change, all of which takes courage.
I like how you broke courage up into two parts; the quality of vision and fulfilling the quality of vision by doing whatever is necessary to achieve your goals. Both are so necessary. Thanks!
Hi Cathy…I like your perspective on courage…and it makes so much sense to me. 🙂
Thank you so much! for your words wisdom Cathy,
Glad it rang true.
This is some strong medicine! Thanks for your courage. I like your analysis of how we hold ourselves back.
Hi Sandra…I too found Cephas’ take interesting. 🙂
Thanks for this incisive piece. I find it truly helpful.
Thank’s Sandra.
I love this post! Those four questions are brilliant as they really force us to look at fear from a rational perspective. I tend to go with my emotions, which can be good in many ways, but it can also allow fear to take over. I’ll definitely use those questions next time I’m feeling scared 🙂
Hi Elle and Cephas, I find this article very informative and relevant. Finding courage to fulfill our potential is very thought provoking, Fear can hold us back but we should never stop trying to reach our goals and fulfill our dreams. I definitely agree that we all deserve it. Thanks for sharing. GREAT READ. 🙂
Hello Sherill…it was an interesting article wasn’t it. Cephas brought his own personal perspective to it and it’s always good to be able to add different perspectives to our lives, so we’re not enclosed in a bubble of thought, and can grow. 🙂