You need to be Courage-Maxxing

Stop letting fear RULE over you

Where there’s a will, there’s always a way

“Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.” - Aristotle

I’ve been thinking a lot about this powerful quote from ‘The Philosopher’ Aristotle as we approach the end of 2024 and look out into the horizon towards 2025.

In the realm of sports, we often think of courage as overcoming physical fear. but I want you to consider that Aristotle is talking about much more than just physical bravery, he wants us to be courageous in ALL areas of our life.

After my coaching stint at IronMan Florida at the beginning of November, the words ‘the courage to create’ have been floating around inside my mind and been on the tips of my lips in many coaching calls. A few conversations with Tribal Training head coach Ryan Dreyer on some beachfront runs had us talking about the big leaps we see a lot of our athletes taking outside of the arena. I see the same thing with most, if not all, of the 1-1 clients I work with

.What starts out as courage to stay consistent with exercise and face that struggle opens up new possibilities in other areas of their life. And since these individuals have just been courageous by forming a new habit or ditching an old familiar attitude or behaviour pattern, it’s naturally easier for them to extend that courage out into their wider lives.

Here’s a few examples of the courageous leaps I’ve seen:

• Entrepreneurship

  • Starting new side hustles as a means to escape 9-5 and reclaim freedom over time

  • One guy launched a spice business, another an edging and concrete refinishing business, one more broke ground on a health facility on family property, while another just landed his first client in a financial coaching capacity

• Creative Projects

  • Putting pen to paper and being open to sharing ideas and stories online

  • One guy launched a new blog, another finally put together an exciting new online political magazine, another began posting on social media for his business, while another become courageous in appearing on podcasts for the first time

• Leadership Roles

  • People are stepping up to volunteer and serve their communities

  • A handful of guys have become volunteer coaches for their kids sports teams, others have stepped up in their local churches, while a few are creating local run clubs and men’s groups

It’s clearly more than just the body

Aristotle argues that courage involves moral and intellectual qualities in addition to the physical. When I think about ‘the courage to create’ I immediately think of the vulnerability people feel when sharing something created by and close to the heart.

Imagine the person who dreams of being a stand up comic, they finally get the courage to go up on stage on open mic night, only to be met by straight faces and no laughs. Talk about vulnerability. The same plays our for artists, musicians, writers, etc. When you create art from your heart, you open it up for hurt and pain through rejection and honest critique.

The courage to bear yourself open, take the slings, and then keep showing up for yourself is the type of courage I want to maximize in your life. This is what helps you move confidently through the world as your authentic self. The strength to be open and vulnerable is the best way to think of courage.

Finding the Golden Mean

Aristotle always locates virtue in between the extremes, a moderation of sorts. But it’s not a perfect balance. For example, courage lies in between the extremes of recklessness and cowardice, but it’s much closer to recklessness than to cowardice.

First: You need to recognize that courage doesn’t eliminate fear, it just allows you to move through it.

If you weren’t afraid, you’d just act, and that would be reckless now wouldn’t it. But act you must, otherwise you’re just a COWARD.

Second: Understand that the more you act courageously in one area of life, the easier it is to act courageously in the other.

That’s borne out by my experience as a coach and by the courageous acts to take on more potential and responsibility in a few of the athlete stories I shared above.

Third: Internalize the fact that you need to make this process explicit in your life.

You must think about how courage in one area helps make you courageous in others. Let’s take physical exercise and sport for example. Just playing them and training alone doesn’t make you courageous in other areas. It’s your ability to see how you are truly courageous in sport that opens you up to the opportunity to become more courageous.

It’s not coincidence all of these athletes talk a lot about transferring virtues from sport to their life. And if Aristotle is right, courage is the most important of all the virtues one gains and can display in life.

Here’s how these athletes took a courageous step in sport before taking that leap

• Committing to losing weight

• Stopping substance abuse issues

• Gaining control of health conditions

• Breaking mental weakness and a tendency to quit

These are not easy challenges. Each athlete has a coach to help guide them through the process and see each small act as a heroic moment in a larger journey of self discovery and mastery.

How do you become more courageous?

We all want to be brave in the face of adversity. We blame the external world for giving us unfair conditions too often as a way to excuse ourselves from the necessary courage we should instead muster towards the challenge. Here’s how you stop falling into fear and how to instead move courageously through it.

1.Take on Physical Challenges

The body is a place of brutal truth, compared to the mind which is able to powerfully rationalize and twist reality to our own egotistical desires. It’s scary to be at the start line of a race that you know is a bit too long for you. It’s terrifying to have to go one more set, when all your muscles feel like they can’t possible move anymore. The pain you know awaits creates the perfect condition to train courage.

Each time you make it to the end of a workout you wanted to quit in the middle of, you gain courage to move through fear. You haven’t eliminated fear. You’ve grown stronger in the face of it.

Do this consistently for months and years, exercising as a way to improve your willpower and accountability to yourself, and you’ll be filled up with courage.

2.Track Courage as a Metric

You have to make the implicit explicit. But how do you track something subjective like courage?

There’s a hint in the previous tip. Focus on the workouts where mental and spiritual resistance are the highest. There’s a general rule in fitness that about 1/3 of your workouts will be amazing, 1/3 will be ok, and another 1/3 will be terrible. Most of the time, the terrible ones are where we make the most mental and spiritual progress.

The body feels bad, maybe you fail a few lifts or can’t get up to the right running pace, ontop of lack of motivation, high energy, and self belief. Pay attention to this 1/3.

Try this exercise:

Think of the 1/3 breakdown this way: 1/3 are for the body (amazing), 1/3 for the mind (ok), 1/3 for the spirit (terrible).

When you track your workouts add one of these qualifiers to it. For the 1/3 aimed at the spirit make a conscious note of how you wanted to quit but found the resolve to push through to the end.

Just like looking at your workout log to see the progress in your performance metrics, now you also have tangible proof of the courage you’ve gained along the way.

3.Become bold in acting

Now you’re ready to transfer that courage. You’ve aimed at cultivating it. You have the experiences to justify it. Now you need to launch.

What you’ve hopefully gained is a sense of confidence in your ability to utilize the other virtues inside of you once you cross the threshold of fear. When you use courage to move through fear, you get to show your resourcefulness, intelligence, dedication, ambition, leadership, creativity, ingenuity, loaylty, kindness, etc.

Courage exists to help you bring the better parts of yourself towards overcoming a challenge. You don’t need to know how to solve the specific problem, you’re confident the solution will emerge through the same processes that helped you generate that courage in the first place.

Scared to share a poem you wrote? Remember you also were scared to post your Strava stats online at one point too.

Scared to have that difficult conversation with a family member over boundaries? Remember you were also scared of looking in the mirror and taking ownership over your poor health, but you did that.

You’ve already done it in one arena. It’s the same in all the others.

Takeaways

It’s amazing to see how many people I work with don’t let their progress stop at just the body. They take this new found self belief and understanding with them into all areas of their lives. Where they one were too cowardly to act, now they easily find courage.

I know that if you follow these steps and thinks consciously about the spiritual dimension of training you will see the same courageous bleed through in your life. But if you struggle to take the steps on your own, I’m here to help. Send me a message using the button below and let’s work on creating courage inside your heart together while getting into the best shape of your life.

Happy Training Friends