This is more important now than ever.
Showing up every day even when you don’t necessarily want to is one thing. Taking off the masks, the false identities, letting go of the need for everyone’s approval is something else. Courage.
In our current workplaces and workspaces, an interesting phenomenon has occurred. According to the Center for Generational Kinetics, this is the first time in history where four different generations are working in the same marketplace. For example: Baby Boomers, Gen-X’ers, Gen Y’ers (Millenials), and Gen Z’ers could all be working for the same employer. In this context, the expectations for “hard work” or the appearance thereof can be varied. The masks we or others wear can be just as challenging.
The fact of the matter is that, regardless of your generation, you don’t have to fit in anyone’s box. Show up, be you. If you need to step outside of your current paradigm, go for it. Work is work. People are people. You’re the only one who is really going to know if you’re showing up or not. Courage.
We can expand the workplace scenario to the rest of our lives. Are you showing up? Are you being seen? Or are you floating behind the scenes of your own consciousness, your true self shivering in the shadows? Courage.
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I’ll be 100% honest. At a workplace or in any organization in which I’m involved, I make quick assessments of those in charge. This may seem shallow, but I often sum up my expectations of a person with whom I’m working, particularly if they are in a position of authority over me, based upon their physical acumen. If you’re going to be leading me on a project and you’re 300lbs overweight, I’m going to have a much harder time trusting you.
Shallow? No. Here’s why.
If you can’t rein in your diet and exercise, how are you going to be able to rein in a team of wily and burnt-out adults? If we have to burn the midnight oil and put in a ton of hours, I’m going to seriously question your ability to have the stamina necessary to complete the task at a high level in a dire situation. If you are more physically fit, I’m more apt to trust your abilities upfront.
Why? Because holding yourself accountable for your physical well-being takes courage. It follows then that this is more than likely to flow down to how you will run your team or organization. I’m not saying you have to look like Mr. Universe or be a world-class marathoner, but your physical presence in a room will have a huge effect on your immediate impact on your team.
There’s a big difference between being a leader and having mandated authority because of your position in a company.
I’m sad to say that most places I’ve worked in a professional setting had people in charge who weren’t leaders. In those situations, the leaders emerged from low on the totem pole, but it was obvious who they were. They were the people who others came to for advice or counsel, and who others looked to when situations were tough. Often, these individuals were viewed as threatening to those who were “in charge.”
Want to know the main difference between the leaders and those who simply were put in places of authority?
The true leaders exercised courage. And they did it daily. So when the time came for a truly hard decision to be made, it was no factor. It was no different than how they tackled the small stuff each day.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked with organizations that had brilliant leaders who were also in charge. These individuals acted courageously daily, which flowed down the chain of command to their line-level employees. As such, these were both fun and effective work environments.
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When you start poking around at courage, what it means and where it really comes from, you’ll find that it is often misunderstood. Courage is most often misrepresented as a person or group of people who have absolutely no-fear and march into the gates of hell with reckless abandon.
On the contrary, if you have no fear, you have no courage. It’s that simple. Courage, then, is the ability to feel the full force of fear, but to move forward in spite of it. Just like exercising a muscle, the resistance builds the adaptation that creates the benefit. So does fear to courage.
Another misconception with courage is that some people are born with it and some aren’t. This simply is not the case. The people that appear as if they are born brave or with courage, are the people like the leaders I’ve described above. They chose daily, maybe at a young age, to keep moving forward in spite of the fear they might have felt, so by the time an opportunity presented itself to be “brave” they had already been doing it for years. They weren’t born with it. Just like the physically fit boss you’re more likely to trust, these people routinely exercised their courage muscles.
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So if courage can be developed, if it indeed is an attribute that can be learned or enhanced, how do you train it?
The first thing you must do is be brutally honest with yourself. This will only happen if you make a practice of shutting everything off and sitting in silence for a few minutes a day. Take an inventory of yourself and see what you find. You’ll probably discover areas where you already are being courageous and other parts of your life where you’re hiding behind a mask.
If you make this a habit, then developing courage is just a matter of doing the uncomfortable things first, rather than putting them off or praying that someone else will handle the situation. Comfort is the enemy of progress and it is also diametrically opposed to flexing your courage muscles.
Having an issue with a co-worker or friend? Go to them and have the conversation already. It takes courage.
Keep procrastinating that task around the house? Get up off of your butt and take care of it. Now. You can finish reading this article when you’re done. Courage.
Need to keep your diet in check? Then keep your diet in check. Make your next meal a healthy one. Courage.
Work out, train, do something physically exhausting and difficult each day. It takes courage. Sure, it’s not pulling an infant from a burning building, but it is uncomfortable and it takes a force of will and fortitude to push through a hard workout. It’s a tiny act of courage.
You can keep adding your own to the list.
See the trend? The tiny little acts of courage, when performed daily create a compounding interest of might in your courage account.
Eventually, when the going gets tough, you won’t even notice because you’re doing it every day anyway.
Be you. Take off your mask. Be courageous.
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This post was previously published on Medium.
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Photo credit: Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash